Mexico's Democratic Transition

Narcotics has for the most part have always been an occurring issue in Mexico. Drug cartels used Mexico as a focus for conducting their narcotics operations. However, for the past decade, the drug war has spiraled out of control. Thousands of people are killed each year, including innocent civilians who are not involved in drugs, as a result of the Mexican drug crisis. One of the key factors that created Mexico’s current drug crisis is Mexico’s democratic transition. Mexico started to transition from the PRI, who were in power for decades because they did not have any real opposition. During the time period that the drug crisis was starting to brew, the PRI left office and their opponents started to be in charge of Mexico. The PRI were
Instead of simply leaving the cartels alone, the decided to fight them, which caused the drug cartels to fight back. These new leaders decided to initiate a war on drugs in hopes of eliminating drugs from Mexico. However, Mexico’s drug war created more problems than it solved. The drug cartels have always been associated with corruption and bribery, but the drug cartels had to resort to bribery, extortion, and other forms of corruption in greater instances in order to stay in power and keep the authorities from interfering with their operations. Authority figures whose job it is to fight the cartels, such as policeman, were bribed into ignoring the crimes that the cartels partook in. In addition, they resorted to more killing in order to help them keep their operations under control. They killed witnesses, journalists, innocent civilians, and many more groups who were considered to hinder on their operation in some
Like Mexico’s recent response to the drug cartels, the U.S’s response to drugs has largely been criminalization. Our criminalization tactics have forced the cartels to use violent and destructive tactics in order to avoid detection and continue to smuggle drugs. In addition, we often do not help drug addicts as much as we should. Doing so would likely reduce the demand for drugs by limiting the number of users by helping them get unhooked. Our current methods of fighting drugs creates a huge demand for them to be brought into our country, because drug cartels reek massive profits from the drugs we buy. By using their profits, the cartels can get away with violent crimes because authorities in Mexico can be bribed into ignoring or participating with the crimes. The U.S also supplies the cartels with weapons that are used in their operations. Cartels go to the U.S to purchase guns, and are successful at doing so because the U.S has very lax gun restrictions. These guns are then used to commit violent crimes, including murder, which has been devastating to Mexico. Tens of thousands of Mexican are killed every year due to violence stemming from the drug