Carlos Pérez Ricart at The Ideas Letter:
Two decades have passed, with operations, clashes, and the arrest of drug lords. And yet the same questions remain. What is the true nature of this conflict? How can we understand a phenomenon that seems to repeat itself over and over? How might it change as the US attempts to assume a new role in the world?
Over the past twenty years, criminal organizations, the Mexican state, and the ways of governing territories ravaged by violence have changed. Mexico’s place in the hemisphere’s illicit flows has also changed. The world has changed. What began in 2006 as a strategy to combat drug-trafficking organizations—Mexico’s own War on Drugs—ended up revealing something much broader: a global network of illegal markets for drugs, money, people, and weapons in which Mexico plays a central role.
To understand this, let’s look at a map.
More here.
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