Since declaring independence from Spain in 1810, Mexico has had eight governments (more depending on how you count them). There is presently a very high homicide and crime rate in Mexico as illustrated by the graph above. There are areas that are in various degrees in open rebellion against the federal government, some in the control of criminal gangs that function as a sort of alternative government. There are some people who believe that all government is control by a criminal gang but that’s the subject matter for another post.
Some attribute that to the “War on Drugs”. I think it’s more a product of basic civic weakness in Mexico and the manifest U. S. preference for weak neighbors.
Let’s engage in a thought experiment. Assume that newly-elected President López Obrador is unable to hold Mexico together and the government collapses. What then?
I have no idea, but I think there’s a real chance it could turn into a larger Honduras.
I haven’t looked it up, but it would interesting to see how Mexico’s decline into violence is affecting tourism.
There’s a pretty good article about it here at the San Diego Union-Tribune.
It’s significant.
The United States would then be well and truly screwed, as hordes of refugees flood over the southern border. Squalid refugee camps will spring up on both sides of the border. I can see the situation becoming bad enough that a sort of demarcation zone will be enacted for five miles into the United States from the border, patrolled by our military. A harsh thing, but necessary. All this unpleasantness could be averted if the United States would build and patrol a wall worthy of the name.
It’s not just the war on drugs. No workers have suffered more from NAFTA than the Mexican people. In the forty years prior Mexico had averaged better than 3% annual growth; after NAFTA the country essentially stopped making any economic progress.
No country would benefit more from a national jobs guarantee at a livable wage and those benefits would spread to us, particularly if we negotiate a parallel program. If both countries have equivalent programs at an equivalent wage, we eliminate many of our problems at the border and in our trading relationship.
And yet the Mexican economy has benefited more than either Canada or the U. S. (Canada has actually suffered a little from NAFTA; for the U. S. it was about break even). Sounds like a Mexican social and political problem to me.