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Notes -
Help me understand an argument about the US-Mexico relationship
A friend and old-coworker recently posted in a group chat an article quote
They think that if that were to happen “both the general population and government unofficially would side with the narcos (for different reasons).” Radicalization and bad things would follow. Firstly, I thought these things already happened. Was Sicaro not just exaggerated for effect, but complete fiction?
We diverted for a bit into the politics of Mexico under the cartels. It was fun to be reminded that there still are areas not even the military will go into without cartel approval, that AMLO used to visit El Chapo’s mother regularly, that any information given to federal agencies or even directly to the president was pretty much immediately relayed to the cartels. Apparently, cartel-unfriendly political candidates are routinely assassinated. So the state seems to have been completely captured by the cartels. They have also deeply infiltrated the local and federal law enforcement agencies. The cartels have their own military equipment, intelligence agencies maybe, air force?, submaries (not armed though I hope?)
Still, even without local police or federal government involvement (who I understand most are assets of or actual narcos) I assumed the DEA/CIA/FBI still did shit to keep things in check, at least around the border and inside the US. Well actually, cartels are expanding into Colorado these days.
Enter Trump's executive order Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.
My friend was incensed, thinks that any action by special forces would be war, that the Mexican people and government will rally around the cartels, there would be terrorist attacks and sabotage by cartels/Mexican immigrants.
I’m afraid here is where I lost my cool a little bit. Paraphrasing:
I guess what I want to know is, Am I The Asshole?
In the last few years I've come to realize that Mexican politics is much more complicated than The Usual Sources give it credit for. I'm not going to claim to be an expert here (would be interested in more sources that aren't full tomes).
For one, the median Mexican lives very far from the border: ask an American what they think of Mexico and your answer will describe the border, or maybe Cabo or Cozumel. The large cities in Mexico are mostly further south, and many aren't considered particularly dangerous with respect to the cartels.
There is an element of outsider homogeneity bias there, probably helped by the language barrier. Various parts of the country (the northern ones most notably) have long histories of, for lack of a better descriptor, lawlessness and civil discord. Parts have tried to secede -- Texas was not the only province to attempt this, but was notable for its success. Violence in the less-populated northern areas isn't new: Pancho Villa was literally attacking the US a century ago.
And it seems that so much of how we see the issue is clouded by modern politics: "Wait, why did Spain and the Mexico invite mostly-American settlers peacefully to live in what would become Texas and other parts of the future American West? They didn't demand that they identify as Hispanic or Latino in the definition of the US Census Bureau almost two centuries later." From what little I know, Hispanic doesn't align with historical ideas of national origin in Mexico (and other parts of Central and South America) even up until today, although tremendously Amero-centric progressivism is trying.
To answer your last paragraph, back in the early 1800s there were very few people living in northern Mexico, to the point that it was difficult to hold the land from the Comanche. The Mexican government needed warm bodies in that area fast. They did require Anglo settlers to at least nominally convert to Catholicism. Also, the Texas revolution wasn’t the race war/craven attempt at land piracy that it is often portrayed as. President Santa Ana was engaged in a political crackdown that made many people in Mexico unhappy. Texas was the fourth or fifth attempted provincial secession that decade. And many of the people on the Texas side were ethnically Mexican, including some of the leadership like Juan Seguin and Texas vice-president Lorenzo de Zavala.
Indeed, the republic of Texas spent most of its history at war with both Mexico and the commanches simultaneously, and Mexico was embroiled in a civil war(with the antigovernment side allied to the republic of Texas) during the entire period.
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