Mexico On the Edge: Is Anarchy Next?
Recourse to the law is a rarity in Mexico, as Mexico’s judicial system is not only antiquated but practically useless (although efforts to change this are being implemented).
Historically, those most affected by the defective judicial system have been the poor, who are often the ones who pay when Mexican law does what it does best – aside from indulging in prosecutorial inaction – namely punishing scapegoats. Mexico’s poor were also typically those most commonly victimized by crime.
And in Mexico’s Old-World-clinging, classist society that was all right with the Mexican elite. But in recent months it’s become clear that no one is safe from drug-related crime in Mexico. Mexican society is being rattled by drug cartels from top to bottom. Now the Mexican middle class is clamoring for an end to violence, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of individuals peaceably demonstrating across Mexico yesterday. But isn’t this too little too late?
It is difficult to justify Mexico’s circumstances. Mexico is not a poor country. If it were, it wouldn’t have been home to ten of the world’s billionaires in 2007. If only the Mexican elite had allowed decades ago for an open society offering opportunity for everyone – through the establishment of fair laws and institutions – instead of counting on American demand for cheap labor to absorb Mexico’s poor, sub-employed, and unemployed, maybe so many Mexicans wouldn’t be tearing Mexico apart as they fight for a share of the $40 billion drug trade.
