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Comment by joshcsimmons | Hacker News Reader

Puerto Vallarta is on fire - seeing tons of videos on my timeline.

Apparently as "retaliation" from the cartel because their boss was killed. Where do you draw the line?

At what point do you decide to go full El Salvador / Bukele on violent cartel members who are willing to put cities on fire when they cannot human and drug traffic at will?

When is enough enough?

Deciding is one thing, carrying out the decision is another. The Mexican government and security forces have been heavily compromised by the cartels for years. Some of the smaller law enforcement actions are a form of "kayfabe". Even if President Sheinbaum gives the order, there may not be enough honest and loyal personnel to carry it out.

Mexico is a failed state. We can argue about who bears responsibility but that is the reality today.

I don't think that's possible in Mexico. There's too much power in the logistical networks that move things into the US. The demand is too great. Even if you kill every drug trafficker and gang member alive today and create huge prosperity the void will be filled by someone and they will be adversarial to the government and they will have to use extra judicial violence to enforce their position.

The cartel's presence in Mexico is extremely muted relative to their power.

Just purely as a hypothetical thought exercise I wonder how infiltrated the US gov is by cartels.

Probably none.

I grew up in Mexico--spending a few years in or near Puerto Vallarta, specifically, funnily enough--and the M.O. of the cartel is overwhelmingly geared towards keeping a VERY low profile. Their whole purpose is to be quiet and subtle.

For every "loud" cartel action in MX, there are twenty that you never see, and then ten that exist as different recyclings and exaggerations and attack ads in the US to (now) perpetuate the current administration's favorite scapegoat, or (then) to prevent people from emigrating from the US.

It's been like that since '07 or so: take a story from Ciudad Juárez or Tamaulipas, then magnify it and convince Americans that the entire country is like that, so that they don't pay attention to the fact that they could get cheaper healthcare, out of pocket, by driving across the border to an equally well-equipped hospital... than they would for the cost of a single ambulance ride in the States... while living in a house that cost 10-100 times more than a house of the same size and quality across the border. All the while, the cartel hums happily along, truly wanting absolutely nothing to do with you.

Fear sells, and fear controls. Just like whatever series of headlines got you wanting to believe that they've infiltrated the American govt. ;)

Not much if at all at the national level. US government is infiltrated by other harmful entities, drug trafficking can't compete with MIC, Big Oil, Sugar, Pharma, government contractors etc

Cartels are the largest non-state owned business operations in Mexico.

They’re overdue. Sheinbaum and other administrators probably didn’t act until now because they’re serving at the cartel’s pleasure. Now with America pressuring them, they’ve finally acted. But if they can’t bring the country under control, it’s going to sink the country and its legitimacy. You can’t have criminals burning airports, school buses, and grocery stores (things I saw videos of earlier).

What if the destabilization of Mexico was the goal so that the US could justify military intervention?

This isn't 1846. Mexico is our largest single trading partner. Spending our own lives and treasure to babysit an unstable nation on our Southern border is in fact the last thing the US (whoever you're asking) wants.

What's the alternative then, if the baby refuses to get its shit together?

That's the pressing question, watching the truth social meltdown following the supreme court tariff decisions really has allies wondering if the US system has functional guardrails and if the will to bell the cat exists sufficiently to exercise them.

> At what point do you decide to go full El Salvador / Bukele on violent cartel members who are willing to put cities on fire when they cannot human and drug traffic at will?

The point for doing that was some time ago. It's like Islamists. They're so sophisticated that it makes more sense for governments to treat them like foreign military threats than domestic police issues. Don't listen to the "human rights" people in developed countries that became safe and stable by doing these exact same tactics hundreds of years ago.

In Bangladesh in 2016, there was a terrorist attack in a cafe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2016_Dhaka_attack. The government then went full Bukele on the Islamists. There hasn't been a significant terrorist attack in the country since then.

The "human rights" thing reminds me of El Chapo. They put him in jail, he escapes, and so on. Seeing how he's not even a US citizen, there's a very obvious solution here.

> Part of Bukele’s truce is to allow gangs to run their networks within the prisons, while their wealth and power remain untouched. In exchange, they have to keep homicides and violent crimes down. The leader of Barrio 18, one of the country’s two most powerful gangs, also alleges that they helped Bukele rise to power directly.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/bukele-trump-gangs/

How does this usually work - they just set some cars on fire to prove a point and demonstrate they are "doing something" and then just switch to the next boss that comes out of the secession fight ? Or is it more complicated or nuanced ?

Hi! I live in Guadalajara (City that was also on fire that day). They burn cars and big trucks to complicate the transit for the authorities and try to make more complicated to send reinforcements

At least that is what the people that is supposed to be more "informed" says

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