Conclusions

Abstract

Violence related to organized crime is Mexico’s biggest security threat and at the top of the policy agenda as the country gears up for elections in July 2012. The authors in this volume agree that the problem is deep, intractable, and global in scope. In providing a historical analysis both of the drug market in Mexico and of the government’s response to it, several of the authors remind us of the interconnectedness among producer, transit, and consumer countries. Even if the Mexican government succeeds in the long run in its battle to dismantle the cartels, this might merely push problems to neighboring countries in Central America and the Caribbean, which are less prepared to tackle powerful criminal networks. Indeed, as Alejandro Poiré and Jesús López note in this volume, it was a concerted effort by law enforcement agencies to close the Caribbean drugs route in the 1980s that caused cartels to relocate to Mexico in the first place.