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.
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
Avocados and logging also don’t need to worry about getting shut down by the law like the cocaine and heroin business does.
Legalize the coke and dope, and the incentive to resort to violence to avoid criminal penalties goes away.
“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.
Muh avocado toast!