I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Despite horrific violence related to the drug trade, Mexico is not on its way to becoming a failed state, George Friedman, president of Stratford Global Intelligence, says in a recent essay that is both provocative and illuminating.
Many of us in New Mexico have watched the violence escalate just across the border, prompting this question: What does it mean? Will the gruesome violence fueled by competing drug cartels spill over to our side of the border in a horrifying paroxysm of public decapitations and bullet-riddled bodies? Has the Mexican government bitten off more than it can chew? And then there’s this one — Is Mexico headed toward becoming a failed state? — which gained traction in some corners over the past two years.
Reading Friedman’s observations and conclusions gave me pause as I wrestled with what he was contending. Regardless of the author’s conclusions, which I found interesting if not totally persuasive — I render this review as an interested observer, not as someone following every twist and turn of the issue (in other words I’m speaking out of ignorance) — I loved that he made me stop and ponder aspects of this complicated geopolitical issue that never entered my head, like this: The drug trade boosts Mexico’s economy with untraceable profits that are laundered (semi-) clean by investing in ‘legitimate’ businesses similar to the actions of the Mafia decades ago in the U.S. And because of this shadowy infusion of money the drug trade, whether we like it or not, has a mollifying effect on Mexico’s economy, although it’s accompanied by terrible byproducts — horrific public killings, the loss of faith in government by the populations of some Mexican states.
Therefore that economic reality fits somewhat uncomfortably with public pronouncements about ending the drug trade and, in a twist, could actually become part of a rational national policy
Friedman also tackles geographical nuances, arguing that the northern part of the country, where most of Mexico’s violence is occurring, is less populated than the South and closer to the U.S. and therefore not as connected to the daily life of the government in Mexico City.
As I said it’s a provocative essay. Agree or not with Friedman, it’s an essay worth wrestling with.
