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Can anyone explain the Mexico civil unrest to me? I know that a major cartel leader was killed, but why does that lead to widespread violence?
There's... a lot of messiness, and a lot of different motivations. Someone like Dean could probably give the better Rules For Rulers analysis, but from what I've been told:
There's a complex relationship between cartels and local police. The cartels obviously don't want any interference with their people or operations, but they do at least like if their corrupt police stay bought and collaborative, and it's not worth losing the latter just because of a parking ticket. Small enforcements happen without too much (condoned by leadership) fuss; big enforcement starts street warfare. A decade ago in northern Mexico I'd had it summarized in the Juarez/El Paso area as 'you screw around with a pot shipment it's just a game, you screw with cocaine shipments you'll get a show of retribution that could hurt someone, you screw someone that matters over on a lot of money you die, you screw with the leadership or take a bribe and double-cross then they'll kill you and your family'. Dunno how accurate that is on the exacts, and I'm sure it's drifted since, but that's the rough theory. The cartels had a threat raised if anything targeted their higher-ups, their higher-ups were successfully targeted, the cartels don't want to let those threats seem empty. See Culican as a well-known prototype, but it's supposedly common knowledge among Mexican government officials.
The economics of cartel mid-level employees are a mess. Like most tournament economics, the average member gets crap pay, but is motivated because the winners get massive prizes. Even 'better', there's always dead men's shoes available above you. Killing any member of leadership means there's now a lot of empty slots on the ladder, either because they've been directly emptied, because the guy got a promotion, or because they were emptied as a result of conflict between the tournament contestants. Some seemingly-random violence is negotiating who and what gets to win, some of it's to prove capability, some of it's to distract military and police presence so that those attacks aren't readily achieved, and some of it's psychopaths thinking they can prove themselves or just wanting to have fun while management is distracted or a little more bloodthirsty than normal.
All (or at least almost all?) cartels get funds through 'protection' money. My impression is that most of it by count is more a nice bennie for the mid-level people running the 'protection' schemes rather than any serious effort the cartel leadership likes, but it's a thing, and some industry-sized protection schemes are big enough the leadership does care. Sometimes unrest means higher 'protection' fees someone might not be able to pay, sometimes the new boss needs to be paid in addition to the old boss, sometimes this rando might be a good example of why 'protection' fees are important even if he wouldn't normally be asked to pay them.
The interfaces between cartels (and other gangs) are, unsurprisingly, worse.
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