So many gangsters, so little time. Though President Felipe Calderon's five-year campaign has nailed dozens of crime bosses, many of Mexico's kingpins remain at large.
The Houston Chronicle, 12/30/11
So many gangsters, so little time.
Though President Felipe Calderon's five-year campaign has nailed dozens of crime bosses, many of Mexico's kingpins remain at large. Despite 50,000 dead and tens of thousands of arrests the resilient gangs seem as capable of havoc as ever.
Calderon leaves office in 11 months. The crackdown he couches as crucial to Mexico most certainly will be left unfinished. Most of the leading candidates to succeed him promise strategy changes, but their proposals remain vague.
"What worries me is that you don't have anybody getting to the heart of the matter," said analyst Alejandro Hope, until recently a senior official in Mexico's equivalent of the CIA. "What are we going to ask of the Americans? Is the intelligence interchange going to continue, an aggressive policy of extradition?"....
....Many Mexicans hope the next president will be able to negotiate a peaceful end to the violence. Polls suggest presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto will return the Institutional Revolutionary Party to power, a party that ruled Mexico most of the past century. Gangster violence was largely contained under the PRI's rule through deal making or more effective enforcement. But analysts believe Calderon's successor will find it difficult to put the demons back in their box.
"I don't see that being possible in a macro sense," said Eric Olson, of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. "If you start from the assumption that there are a lot of differences between these trafficking gangs, it might be difficult to sit down and negotiate with them."
The Mexico Institute seeks to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship. A binational Advisory Board, chaired by Luis Téllez and Earl Anthony Wayne, oversees the work of the Mexico Institute. Read more
The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action. Read more
