[Dr_Birdbrain]

Source: I lived in Mexico for a few years.

I don’t think it’s accurate to say Mexican governments are underfunded—they have oil money, from the nationalized oil industry, to the extent that they are extremely chilled out about tax collection.

It’s not that they are underfunded, but the criminal gangs (drugs, extortion, etc) are absurdly overfunded. Strong organized crime weakens and delegitimizes the government, which means that weaker, petty crime can also thrive. Like if you are sick with something big, small infections are more likely to opportunistically take advantage of your weak immune system.

Aside from organized crime, there is something else that is hard to articulate. It’s hard to explain exactly what it is, but to a large extent it feels like the population at large can’t agree who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, I.e. in many cases they will not unambiguously say that the drug cartels are bad and the government is good. They’re probably right about that, in many cases the two are inextricably enmeshed. It’s a vicious spiral that is hard to break, expectations of crime and corruption lead to more crime and corruption, but in many cases people won’t even agree that the gangsters are unambiguously bad. Sometimes the baddies get lionized to an unhelpful extent, and there are even ballads “narcocorridos” written about their exploits

[alephnerd]

> Strong organized crime weakens and delegitimizes the government

Hot take but I blame the early 2000s Drug War for this - not because of the economics of drugs, but because this meant the Mexican govt couldn't co-opt Organized Crime into the political system.

Looking at countries like Taiwan [0], South Korea [1], Japan [2], and Italy [3], when they were at a similar stage as Mexico in the early 2000s (1980s, 1990s, 1970s, 1980s respectively) these countries co-opted Organized Crime into the economic system by cracking down on certain black market industries (eg. Drugs) while allow them to operate in other grey market industries (eg. Construction, Real Estate, Loan Sharking, Commodities, Sex Work) or operate abroad (eg. In VN/PH/TH/Mainland for Asian gangs and South America+Eastern Europe for the Mafia).

Organized crime is morally reprehensible, but Mexico in the 2000s was not in the position to combat them. Co-option would have saved thousands of lives, and given an easier off ramp out of Drug industry into other high value sectors (which cartels have started to break into), which would have allowed them to legitimize or at least have less of an incentive to pursue a de facto insurgency.

[0] - https://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/563

[1] - https://www.refworld.org/docid/45f1476234.html

[2] - https://academic.oup.com/book/37281/chapter-abstract/3308936...

[3] - http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/292/italian-politic...

[miguelazo]

>criminal gangs (drugs, extortion, etc) are absurdly overfunded

Not only this, they are "overarmed" with military grade weapons thanks to the USA's insane gun laws. The saying of (former president/dictator) Porfirio Diaz, "Poor Mexico: so far from God and so close to the United States" rings just as true today, if not more so.

>to a large extent it feels like the population at large can’t agree who are the good guys and who are the bad guys

As if this is any different in the US, where film and music have also lionized the "baddies" for well over a hundred years!

[rolandog]

> As if this is any different in the US, where film and music have also lionized the "baddies" for well over a hundred years!

Agreed. IMHO, we all could benefit from some critical thinking when watching movies or TV series: that someone is the main character, doesn't automatically make them "the good guy", and they shouldn't be emulated even if you love binge-watching their antics.

[BSEdlMMldESB]

a lot of these 'baddies' are bad due to war on drugs policies perpetrated by the american government against all of latin america because imperialism

the huge amount of funding of organized crime is a direct consequence of imperialistic war on drugs. "a matter of national health??" ahahahah, just think about the american health system for a minute.....

[throw0101b]

> […] to the extent that they are extremely chilled out about tax collection.

This is probably a bad habit to get into, both from the government-enforcement side and the public-acceptable side of things.

If you're not particularly worried about sales/income tax revenues, then perhaps have a low rate, but I would think building up an infrastructure for it would be useful in case the situation changes down the road.

[BSEdlMMldESB]

mexico and usa have a very very close culture.

just like during all the 19th and a bit of the 20th century USA immigration was dominated by Irish, Italian, and other europeans. Mexican's have been the largest source of immigrants into the USA... and this is also as an aside of parts of USA which were part of mexico at one point (Texas, etc..)

as a mexican I'm aware that the biggest drug cartel in the country is the same thing as the government. this is specially true at lower levels of government; but then I went on to learn that the biggest drug cartel in a worldwide level are actually the american government, I understand this may be impossible to accept for a few people.

as a mexican from veracruz, I KNOW as far as I can know (meaning I don't know, but I guess) that the state's executive was controlled by the zetas cartel (first decade of the 2000s)

final tidbit: the technical name of Mexico is "United States of Mexico" (in spanish, clearly)