Edgardo Buscaglia describes the ticking time bomb that is Mexico in a New York Times op-ed that should give Mexico boosters second thoughts.
All countries, of course, are afflicted to some degree with internal organized crime. Russia and China generate criminal groups even more powerful than those in Mexico; West European nations face the lawless cross-border activities of many well-financed criminal groups. But none of these countries experience such extreme forms of organized violence as do Mexico and some of its Central American neighbors, all of which face unprecedented rates of homicide, human trafficking, kidnapping and extortion.
Mexico’s extreme violence is caused rather by the power vacuums and failures created by the country’s chronically corrupt governments. The corruption creates huge incentives for criminal groups to consolidate their markets through savage competition for voids in “authority.”
