10mo ago

Mexican mayor murdered days after starting job

The mayor of a Mexican city plagued by drug violence has been murdered less than a week after taking office.

Alejandro Arcos was found dead on Sunday in Chilpancingo, a city of around 280,000 people in the southwestern state of Guerrero. He had been mayor for six days.

Evelyn Salgado, the state governor, said the city was in mourning over a murder that "fills us with indignation". His death came three days after the city government's new secretary, Francisco Tapia, was shot dead.

Authorities have not released details of the investigation, or suspects. However, Guerrero is one of the worst-affected states for drug violence and drug cartels have murdered dozens of politicians across the country.

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If there wasn't such a strong black market for illegal drugs in the US, these cartels wouldn't have this much power/money.
- Cartels sell more than drugs these days. They learned in the 90s that diversifying into different products gave them more stability against drug enforcement. Avocados have turned into legal profit. Logging in another business. Neither of these things will be affected by someone quitting drugs. Stop building houses and stop eating avocado now.
  
  They might be only able to do those other things since they are able to pay an army to terrorize, intimidate and bribe local and state government's into allowing them to exist and set up these protection racquets. It takes a lot of money to be able to be more powerful then a government, I don't think selling avocados or logging could generate that much
  
  Neither of these things will be affected by someone quitting drugs. Stop building houses and stop eating avocado now.
  "The cartels won't be affected if their major source of income gets cut off."
  Yes, sure, they've diversified. But those legal operations aren't their largest sources od income, not enough to sustain their current operations if it was just the legal ones. Most of the legal ones are used to clean some of the income from drugs.
  And besides, I'm pretty sure the cartels are doing this for the money. Sure, it's not all it's about, but I'm sure it's the largest motivator. If drugs we're legal and the easiest ways for the cartels to keep in business was to do it legitimately, and they were actually allowed to, they could use the legal systems to actually enforce deals and debts, so the enforcement methods they use now would be obsolete and even counterproductive to profits.
  People won't stop using drugs. Just like they didn't stop drinking during prohibition. But we can take the trade away from the gangsters and put it in legal markets and regulate the product and business to make it safer for users.
  
  Are you telling me they're doing the same shit as our actual government now? We may as well consider them a country at this rate.
  
  Muh avocado toast!
- I think I heard from somewhere that while that might have worked decades ago the cartels have diversified their ‘business’ to the point where drug legalisation wouldn’t kill them. We should still legalise drugs but I doubt they’ll fix the cartel issue.
  
  It wouldn't end them ENTIRELY, as there were ruthless organizations before drugs, too. What it would do is make it much less profitable. Meaning less to kill someone over.
- So, I don't disagree, but we legalized weed in the civilized parts of the country and it had little effect, I'm not sure I want to legalize cocaine, it's much better at killing people.
  
  Little effect in what regard?
  
  Portugal set the standard years ago. Legalize it and divert all the money that would go to incarceration to inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation for drug addiction.
  
  I think legalizing weed didn't make that much of a difference because the whole claim that buying random weed from a random dealer put money in cartel or terrorist pockets was a lie.
  Not that there weren't any large weed organizations, they just weren't murdering people at the scale the cartels are or doing it to fund violence.
  They'd also rely a lot on temporary workers since trimming was really the only labour intensive step, and then it would be sent out into a distribution network that wasn't so much an organization as it was a collection of independent or small scale distributors. Which in some locations might have been gangs, but I'd guess was mostly normal people looking to make some extra money.
  
  We don’t need to legalize. If we decriminalized, then took the money for jailing and funded mandatory treatment, we could do what Portugal did in the early 00’s.
  
  I am sure. Legalize all of it. Legalize it, regulate it, tax it, use half of the new income for prevention and education, one quarter for medical support for addicts and the rest fills the coffers. You take away the power from the criminal gangs, while at the same time increasing your tax revenue, adding new legal avenues of business and minimizing the health impact considerably.
  
  Still waiting for legal grass.
- Exactly.
  All of the most common drugs have to be legalised. It's the only way to get rid of the black markets, which can not be regulated.
  Just like with alcohol, prohibition simply does not work.
“Come vacation in Mexico! If you don’t leave your hotel, you’ll be perfectly safe!”
- I hate accidentally ending up as mayor on vacation
  
  Dammit it happened again. Honey, prepare my resignation speech again
- I know this is satire, though it was my understanding that tourists were protected. Like, don't walk down any dark alleys and listen when someone strongly tells you to go somewhere else, otherwise you're reasonably safe. This was a couple years ago though, and I may be remembering things wholly wrong.
  I question those years, man.
  
  Mexico is a large country. There are perfectly safe parts and dangerous parts.
  
  I go to CDMX all the time. You stay in the whitey neighborhoods it is one of the best cities on earth. I've never felt in danger even like I have in Tulum or Cancun on occasion (and usually by police)
- However, Guerrero is one of the worst-affected states for drug violence
  This is the same mistake people make in the US when talking about "unsafe cities" ignoring that crime is concentrated in certain parts. The same rule applies everywhere in the world: there's safe and unsafe spots. So no, you're not gonna get kidnapped from a Cancun resort anytime soon.
  
  A duck duck go search of “Cancun” and “kidnapping” would argue against this.
  I made a joke about optics, and people get offended.
Guess he said no to the Cartel / Military
So you're saying there's a job opening...
- I'm wondering if the vice mayor wants to take the job after that.
- Is this a Firefly reference?
  
  Possibly a Pacific Rim reference
  
  All the way back to Dumb and Dumber. (Yes I'm old).
one thing i've been curious about is how receptive the mexican government/people would be to US aid military, or military financial aid for stopping the whole cartel problem.
It would likely be beneficial to the both of us, and canada as well though less so.
- Yeaaahh, since US government policies are the entire reason that that drug war exists, Id say thanks, but no thanks.
  Edit: to expand a little on this: US drug policy caused the entire drug trade, the high prices, and the extreme violence. The US then doesn't send their best, they send their weapons, and they send them knowingly straight to the cartels (thanks, US gun manufacturers!). US government actually supported this for a while to see if it was true and... Did nothing with that.
  Then US army would train Mexican soldier which then took that training straight into the Zetas which murdered even harder.
  At this point, I can only say "FIX YOUR GODDAMN DRUG POLICIES, YOU @SSH@LES" and keep away, please.
- I didn't think the US has much interest in stopping the cartels, the war on drugs is much too profitable and the cartels provide most of the drugs.
  
  Turns out they are diversified and are in a whole lot of industries now. Like the Italian mob and olive oil.
  
  republicans might not, they want these problems, but the rest of the government absolutely does lol.
- The US and Mexico have cooperated militarily on the issue before. The problem is that the roots are much deeper than a military problem, so no amount of US assistance can shoot the cartels into no longer being a problem for any more than a few metaphorical moments. As long as the fundamental causes of the Cartels' power remain unaddressed by the Mexican government, US assistance isn't going to be much help.
- The root problem is that there is a huge self capturing black market demand for drugs, which itself is a problem rooted in capitalist countries throughout the americas prioritizing GDP expansion over human wellbeing.
  It's the result of failing healthcare systems, the evaporation of 3rd places, the requirement of a car to survive, the failing housing system, the lack of job security and mobility, etc
  No amount of military intervention can change that. Even if you somehow successfully destroyed every cartel with a button press, they'd all be replaced overnight because of the huge demand for drugs.
  What can actually effect the demand is:
  food, water, housing, education and healthcare being well funded human rights
  mixed used development/relaxation of zoning laws
  transportation infrastructure that allows people to actually have a choice in how they get places
  unions, workplace democracy, worker protections
  You get the picture. Life actually has to be worth living.
  
  What can actually effect the demand is:
  if we're going to argue market forces here, just legalize drugs and tax them.
  It's that simple.
  But regardless, getting rid of the mexican cartel specifically would be beneficial for many, many other reasons. Notably political instability.
  
  The US legalising drugs would be the biggest step forward possible. Not saying the issues you listed aren’t linked. But they aren’t as directly correlated.
- Pinches gringos vayanse alv
  
  based
Mexico is probably a failed state and the UN will need to rescue it.
- Mexico's murder rate leveled off years ago. It's still unacceptably high, but it's been a while since they've been a less-failed state than today.
  
  Their politician murder rate is the problem. The felons are basically running the show.
The only way to eliminate drugs is to switch to the digital peso...
Let's ignore the fact that Mexico is poor. They got technology. Guns are illegal in Mexico and they got guns, I rest my case.
Imagine a card that you could get at any bank which holds a physical record of your money. A backup would be kept as a record at all banks. There's no Bitcoin shit happening, it's just a credit card subsidized and maintained by the government. If you make money, it goes into it, if you spend money it goes out. Pretty simple. Eliminate the peso coins and physical money, it that will eliminate the cartels. The government would know who hasn't paid taxes, and they would take taxes automatically. The cards can never go negative so you won't have a US-like credit issue, you'll just run out of money.
Out in the wild, there's internet via musk web satellites.
If the government has all the accounts, they can just rank them by size and location and investigate anyone quickly who might be getting paid illegally. Then the only way to get drug money would be thru money laundering. So that's where investigators would quickly figure out who's got money to buy a house and who just bought 10 houses without any money.
It could be interesting.
- You do know the cartels mostly deal in USD?
  In order to deal in pesos they would import their USD from the US, then convert it into pesos?
  That makes no sense.
  
  I don't know the cartels personally like that lol.
- Sounds like a tech bro solution for a problem that's not technological.
  
  Sure but I lived through "El Nuevo peso" era. It happened just like that. Today you got 500pesos, tomorrow your 500 peso coin is still valid but everything is divided by 10. So the government sent out ads on the radio and TV for months about the change. And you could also go to the bank to exchange old money for new money etc. the campaign was simple and it worked.. well it worked to the end goal of changing needlessly to a new set of coins. But I mean it didn't really do much more. With this idea I'm proposing, which is probably not at all new, they can identify where money is going and where it's coming from.
- They would simply set up their own currency.
  
  Or just use Bitcoin.

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