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Something else so going in in Mexico beside the Drug Cartels fighting the Central Mexican Government. It appears, more and more a general revolt against the Central Government and how it is running the Country, and the biggest objections is at the local level NOT the national level (i.e. peasants have seen their income drop do to the massive importation of American Corn since NAFTA was adopted, this leading to massive unrest which the Cartels are taking advantage of).
I compare it to Pancho Villa of the 1910-1920 period. Pancho Villa was an outlaw ever since he killed the man who tried to rape his sister when he was 12 (The man who tried to rape his sister was the owner of the ranch he and his family worked on as peons). Villa survived for the next ten years as a bandito, but the corp around him were never outlaws in the sense they choose to be outlaws, but was forced to become outlaws by how the laws of Mexico was enforced. The central corp around Villa were like him, do to circumstances tied in with the ongoing fight between the Peons and the ruling elite of Mexico, these men and women turned outlaw to survive.
This differs Villa and people like him from the Cartels, who generally choose to be outlaw do to the huge money to be made in drugs. The problem is Cartels do NOT want to kill people, that cost money and makes enemies. Drug Dealers prefer to pay people off. Violence, if it does happen, is between drug dealers over who control want lucrative part of the drug trade. Such Violence was seen in Chicago under Capone, but Capone also had a policy, adopted by most of the underworld NOT to kill innocent bystanders. This was adopted so that the people as a whole did not turn against the mob. Capone knew once the people turned against the mob, he was doomed, but as long as the mob just fought among themselves the people did not really care.
Thus drug dealers, like Capone, do NOT kill third parties, they do NOT do anything that would turn the people against them. Thus the present fighting in Mexico do NOT fit a Drug Dealer/Cartel/Drug Smuggler profile.
One the other hand it fits Villa, a person FORCED to become an outlaw and looking at illegal activities as a way to survive and fight for a better life. The Drug Dealers will pay such people for the same reason they pay the police, to minimize the times these Villa type outlaws raid them for money. A Villa type outlaw is fighting for a place for him or herself and his or her family within society. Thus they are better called Revolutionaries then outlaws. The line between the two is often blurred (and in the case of the drug war in Mexico to Columbia deliberately) but is better understood if you view them as two separate and interrelated activities.
Now Sometime a Revolutionary movement is never quite suppressed, but never takes control. This tends to be the start of long term "Criminal" Agency, like the Mafia of Sicily (and the Provisional Irish Republican Army of Northern Ireland since the 1980s, run today by the people who were the most successful at raising money by smuggling drugs then by the founders of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who started more as an Anti-Protestant/Ruling group of Northern Ireland then a criminal organization).
Now, we have to be careful. Sometime the Criminal element of a Revolutionary movement wins out. Stalin was the bank role of the Communist Party of the Russian Empire. Stalin planned and executed several bank robberies (Including the largest bank robbery ever up till his time, larger banks had been robbed since but he was the first to hit the big time). Stalin was in and out of Jail for his crimes (Stalin either bribe his way out of jail, was released for giving information or "escaped", which is the official reason for Stalin getting out of Jail). Thus Stalin was the center of the Criminal elements of the Communist Party of the Russian Empire. Whenever someone needed money, Stalin was the man who provided it. Stalin's actually work during the Revolution was minimal, Lenin and Trotsky were the two who did the most work for the October Revolution, but once the Communist was in Charge, Stalin's attention to details, his ready access to cash, provided him power within the party the Trotsky could not match. Thus Stalin was the Criminal element within the Communist Party, but he also embraced the concept of Communisms. Trotsky and Stalin disagree on how to achieve Communism, but both agreed that was the way to go.
The point I am trying to make here about Stalin and Trotsky is that there is a huge overlap between the Revolutionary and the Criminal. One can to one or the other, one can be BOTH. Stalin was BOTH. Trotsky was a revolutionary only. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) started out as a Revolutionary movement and held on to that concept for 10-20 years (The 1960s and 1970s), but as we entered the 1980s the Criminal elements came to control the movement for like Stalin they had the money. Till the peace accords the Provisional IRA was divided between the Revolutionaries and the Criminal elements. The Former embraced the peace accords, the later rejected them. The Former accepted the peace accord for all that could be achieved via violence had been achieved and peace was needed for the next step. The Criminal elements just saw their lucrative business model collapsing do to a drop in demand for weapons do to the peace accords. Now some revolutionaries also rejected the peace accords and stayed with the Criminal elements (And many, like Stalin, had always been both) but in the long term want remains of the Provisional IRA is like the Mafia, the remains of a Revolutionary movement that survives do to the profits the movement makes do to its control of what had been the source of revenue for the Revolution.
Now, back to Mexico. Unlike the Provisional IRA and the Mafia (Where the Revolution long surpassed), the situation in Mexico is in a pre-revolutionary stage. Being a pre-revolutionary state things are fluid in Mexico right now and the Cartels are under pressure to survive AND to provide cash to any group large enough to demand cash (including revolutionaries AND the Government). Furthermore, since no center for a revolution has yet form, people who are dispossessed do to the NAFTA are willing to work for who ever is willing to pay them, including the Drug Cartel. Thus the Cartel are getting a lot of cheap help, but help that is willing to do what is its best interest NOT the Cartel (i.e. going after the ruling elite of Mexico as oppose to doing what the Cartel wants).
In my opinion what Mexico needs to do given the above is as follows:
1. Abandon NAFTA, get that local Corn prices up so the Peasants stay home. American Corporate Farmers will object to this but it has to be done (American Corporate Farmers main thrust is to dump corn and other excess grain production anywhere including Mexico).
2. NAFTA is preserved for imports from Mexico, so to encourage Mexican manufacturing.
3. Mexican Oil profits more evenly spent throughout the country (Hard, the ruling elite of Mexico wants the money, the recent drop in oil production has lead to the present crisis as the elite still want what they received in total dollars of Mexican Oil, even if that means services to the rest of the Country has to be cut do to the drop in Revenue do to the drop in oil production).
4. Enforce the traditional Mexican law on how many acres any one person can own AND preservation of most of the remaining "Community" land.
5. Restoration of most of the "Community" land that the Government has taken from the Peasants and given to individuals land owners, almost always members of the Mexican elite.
The above Five changes would do the most good for Mexico and stop the upcoming revolution, but it will be resisted like similar reforms were resisted in the 1910-1920 revolution AND after the revolution over the last 100 years. The above will do more good then any reform of the Drug laws. The present criminal activities is more a reflection of the instability of Mexico do to declining Mexican Oil income AND a push to take over even more peasant controlled land. The Urban areas are NOT yet affected (Through hard hit by last years increase in Corn Prices do to American farmers turning to Ethanol instead of exports to Mexico), but the Urban masses are kept quite do to cheap corn prices (Which went up last year, not enough to benefit the peasants of Mexico, but enough to cause increase hardship among the Urban Poor given that other subsidies had been cut and prices of other needed items had gone up).
Mexico is a mess, but the Drug Cartels are just a symptom of that mess not the cause and we have to remember that for if we concentrate to much on the Drug Angle, we will miss what is occurring in Mexico and when Mexico blows up we will apply the wrong medicine to a sick Mexico.
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