Enrique Krauze: Mexico is no failed state
Unsettling violence in Mexico over the past year and a half has understandably provoked the question: is Mexico becoming a failed state? In our current edition of Foreign Policy, Sam Quinones argues that — with more deaths due to drug violence than all U.S. deaths in Iraq since 2003 — Mexico’s chaos is spiraling out ...
Unsettling violence in Mexico over the past year and a half has understandably provoked the question: is Mexico becoming a failed state? In our current edition of Foreign Policy, Sam Quinones argues that -- with more deaths due to drug violence than all U.S. deaths in Iraq since 2003 -- Mexico's chaos is spiraling out of control.
Unsettling violence in Mexico over the past year and a half has understandably provoked the question: is Mexico becoming a failed state? In our current edition of Foreign Policy, Sam Quinones argues that — with more deaths due to drug violence than all U.S. deaths in Iraq since 2003 — Mexico’s chaos is spiraling out of control.
But in the New York Times today, top public intellectual Enrique Krauze says he is certain that Mexico will not fall apart. He decries the "failed" portrayal of his country:
While we bear responsibility for our problems, the caricature of Mexico being propagated in the United States only increases the despair on both sides of the Rio Grande. It is also profoundly hypocritical. America is the world’s largest market for illegal narcotics. The United States is the source for the majority of the guns used in Mexico’s drug cartel war, according to law enforcement officials on both sides of the border.
Back in October, Krauze told Foreign Policy much the same thing. While he worried about Mexico becoming a narco-state, he maintained that the government was in control:
There are many municipalities that are clearly under the rule of the drug traffickers, and that’s frightening because of course they kill the journalists and they corrupt everything. There is a danger [of Mexico becoming a narco state], but it’s still an embryo.
Read FP‘s the full interview with Krauze, as well as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency Special Agent Michael Sanders, here.
Elizabeth Dickinson is International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Colombia.
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