[dragonwriter]

> Judging from what you read and hear about Mexico it seems to be trapped in a downward spiral degenerating every aspect about its society and government.

From what I read and hear -- being married to someone who grew up in Mexico and follows the news there pretty closely, and having studied Mexican history a bit myself, it seems that since the end of one-party rule by a party with a fairly stable relationship with the major cartels, the level of violence between cartels and the government, between rival cartels, and between cartels and the populace designed to put pressure on the government, has gone up -- and its visibility has been magnified beyond the actual increase because there is less ability to sweep it under the rug and more genuinely competing interest groups with access to some of the levers of power.

Its obviously not a great situation to be in, but I don't think there was any route from where Mexico was to a good situation that didn't go through something like what they've been going through the last few decades.

I'm also not sure there is any route out of it -- other than back to the where it came from, which is bad in other ways -- so long as the combination of the US market, US domestic prohibition, and US international anti-drug policy is effectively pouring vast stacks of money into both sides of the fight.