Ensayo sobre max way y la guerra al narcotráfico

Walter Quintero Navarro

Essay question on Max Ways article

The Mexican government currently has a policy (at least publicly) of confronting the drug cartels with force. Many people howeverquestion the effectiveness of this strategy. Do you think it might be a better idea for the government to change strategies and start negotiating with the cartels? Why or why not? In class we've said thatthere are certain essential elements to a negotiation. Do you think those elements would be present in a negotiation between the Mexican government and the cartels?

The problem of drug traffickingbegins with the consumers in the United States, which is one of the countries with the higher rates of drug consumption in the world. It is necessary to understand this if we want to know how to dealwith it. But the Mexican government does not seem to understand it and they declared a war without measuring the consequences. First of all because as they believe in the markets they have tounderstand that if there is a demand in the United States there will be an offer in Mexico or in any part of the world, it is the essential mechanism of the economy. The problem is that United States buydrugs to the Mexican cartels, they also sell arms to these groups and they also make money laundering. Another point is that this situation represents almost 40% of the Mexican economy and it ispractically impossible to fight these cartels without eliminating money laundering, which is exactly what they do not do because they know this will affect the country more than anything.

Max Ways said inhis article that different forms of how we see negotiations, and one of them is that any compromise is better than conflict and that is exactly what the Mexican government has done since they startedto deal with drug trafficking in the times where the Partido Revolucionario Intitucional ruled the country.

But nowadays this policy has change and the current government of Felipe Calderon is...