The Decaying Mexican State

Here is a report from Der Spiegel about what the abduction of 43 missing students means for Mexico:

The case got its start on the evening of Sept. 26 when police in Iguala, a city 180 kilometers (112 miles) southwest of Mexico City in the state of Guerrero, opened fire on three buses full of students who were on their way to a demonstration. Six people were killed and 43 others have been missing ever since. Evidence seems to indicate that the police turned them over to the contract killers of a drug cartel.

The message conveyed by the images is clear: There is no hope of finding the students alive. But García has a hard time believing it. "A couple of shreds of plastic," he says. "Pieces of bone and charred teeth that even the attorney general doesn't believe will be enough to identify a person. That is supposed to be it?"

The anger, in short, is widespread. The public is enraged that, according to the latest theory, 43 young men, all teachers-in-training, were executed and then incinerated at a trash dump. Their families, meanwhile, are furious at the uncertainty and at the seemingly endless string of new, unproven explanations for the fates of their sons. Forty-three young men. Gone. It is a case that is incomprehensible even in Mexico -- one that has incensed the population and plunged President Enrique Peña Nieto into his first significant crisis.

The president was unprepared for the crime in Iguala. He entered office in December 2012 promising to proceed differently than his predecessor Felipe Calderón, who spent years battling the drug cartels with tens of thousands of soldiers. Peña Nieto reduced the number of troops deployed against the cartels and promoted Mexico abroad as the "Aztec tiger." He was betting that fewer deaths would translate into increased foreign investment -- and it seemed to work. Now, though, the 43 disappeared students reminded the world that Mexico's improving security was nothing but an illusion.

While Peña Nieto was traveling around the world, the cartels regrouped, diversifying their business portfolios and grabbing for political power themselves. In the state of Guerrero alone, it is thought that 15 mayors belong to organized crime syndicates.

The group that stealthily tightened its grip on power in Iguala and the rest of the state in recent years is called Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors). It is one of more than 100 splinter groups that have formed across the country in the wake of the dismantling of the large cartels. Increasingly, they have turned to kidnappings and protection money as a way of generating revenue.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/mass-abductions-in-mexico-reveal-a-decaying-state-a-1003836.html

These are some of the reasons there are so many "illegal immigrants" in the US. The problem will not be solved with amnesty, and our travails are just beginning. We have been sold out by a President with the emotional IQ of a fifth grader and who has access to nuclear weapons.

We are truly fucked.