The drug trade fuels this violence and can cause a state to fail. The numbers are grim. The rate of killing in Guatemala and El Salvador is higher than that of their bloody civil wars (Economist April 14, 2011). According to Guatemala's government about 40 percent of murders are linked to the drug business (Economist April 14, 2011) and in Mexico the drug war has claimed more than 40,000 lives (Wyler 2011). A recent report from the Global Commission on Drugs claims that the US led war on drugs is a... ... middle of paper ... ...s the border illegally, the drop can also be attributed to the economic recession.
Latin America has seven big economies Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile and Peru. The largest economy can be shown as Brazil. Mexico is the second largest economy in Latin America and expanded at a strong pace for most of 2011 but started to show signs of slowly decelerating. Result to that seems to be multinational firms. The multinational firms set up their factories to Mexico to reduce the cost of production.
The nation's gross domestic product (GDP), the value of all goods and services produced domestically by a country, declined 6.2 percent from 1994 to 1995. Since then the economy has been recovering. In 1998 the GDP was $393.5 billion. Mexico City, capital of Mexico and the center of the nation's political, cultural, and economic life. Its population of 16.9 million (1996 estimate) makes Mexico City the second largest metropolitan area in the world, behind only Tokyo, Japan.
These individual drug cartels monopolizing the trafficking market are a growing problem for the U.S economy and need to be located and controlled. If this trafficking continues, the U.S. informal economy will crush the growth of legal industries. The trafficking and abuse of drugs in the U.S. affects nearly all aspects of consumer life. Drug trafficking remains a growing issue and concern to the U.S. government. The U.S. border control must find a way to work with Mexico to overpower the individuals who contribute to the drug trafficking business.
“[The war on drugs] has created a multibillion-dollar black market, enriched organized crime groups and promoted the corruption of government officials throughout the world,” noted Eric Schlosser in his essay, “A People’s Democratic Platform”, in which he presents a case for decriminalizing controlled substances. Schlosser identifies a few of the crippling side-effects of the current drug policy put in place by the Richard Nixon administration in the 1970s to prohibit drug use and the violence and destruction that ensue from it. Ironically, not only is drug use as prevalent as ever, drug-related crime has also become a staple of our society. In fact, this essay argues that the current policy of the criminalization of drugs has fostered a steady increase in crime over the past several decades. Controlled substances come with a higher price tag, which means drug addicts need to pay more for drugs.
Mexico is among the fastest- growing export markets for the United States. In 1985, Mexico became the third largest market for total U.S. exports, behind Canada and Japan. In 1992, Mexico surpassed Japan as the second largest export market for U.S. manufactured goods. Mexico now accounts for $1 out of every $10 of total U.S. exports. After the passing of NAFTA, bilateral trade was quite balanced in 1994, with the U.S. registering a surplus of $1.3 billion, virtually unchanged from 1993.
In 1910, the Mexican Revolution occurred, which made their government to change their Constitution, and their political system. In 2008, Mexico’s economy was hit hard by credit crunch. However, their economy has recovered since then, especially with helps from foreign companies pouring money for investment. Now, Mexico has one of the largest economies in world. Mexico is the tenth largest oil producer in world, and also the largest silver producer in world.
With more than 80 million people in the mid-1980s, Mexico's overall population density exceeds 110 per square mile. More than half of its inhabitants live in the country's central core, while the arid north and the tropical south are sparsely settled. The stereotype of Mexico is that it is a country with a population consisting mainly of subsistence farmers has little validity. Petroleum and tourism dominate the economy, and industrialization is increasing in many parts of the nation. Internal migration from the countryside has caused urban centers to grow dramatically: more than two thirds of all Mexicans now live in cities.
And this problem has caused higher crimes rates as well as the spread of infectious diseases within the prisons particularly in Brazil and Mexico because their countries with higher prevalence of injecting drug users (IDUs) and because they go unseen (Dolan 36). Prisons systems are difficult to support especially in countries like Brazil and Mexico where crime is rising like there’s no tomorrow an... ... middle of paper ... ... an issue now because the government is trying to fight crime as well as a war with drug cartels and during the last three years they have arrested more than 67,000 criminals. The inmates that are incarcerated are from different gangs and once there inside the same walls it creates these riots, which means another war inside the prisons (Ellingwood). And in 2009, there was another riot in which 20 died and 15 were wounded was due to drug cartels in Juarez (CNN). This is happening a lot and it will continue to happen as long as the drug war keeps being a problem in Mexico.
Cartels use immigrants wanting to enter the US, as mules to carry over drugs as they enter the US’s. The constant tension between the United States and Mexican governments and the cartels has risen as the violence continues and worsens. Cartels have played a major role in the relations between the Untied States and Mexico as the US has cracked down on foreign policy regarding drugs and violence on the border and in Mexico through the Merida Initiative and Beyond. Drug policies in the United States are now targeting the root of the problem; the cartels in Mexico that push illegal substances over the border. As violence has increased on both sides due to cartels and drug trade, the US government has made strides to help Mexico deal with their problems in an effort to stop cartels at the source.