Enrique Pena Nieto addresses Mexican street violence

Drug traffickers and criminal warlords may wreak the most gruesome organized crimes in the country, but Mexican President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto casts street violence as an underestimated social cancer.

Enrique Pena Nieto Image Credit: i.telegraph.co.uk

Throughout his campaigns, he was frequently heard condemning street crimes that beget more violence. Mexico, much like Colombia and Venezuela, has often been depicted for its desensitization to its own crime rates. Few know the sources of bloody impunity, always attributed to powerful clans who control the narcotics trade and carry out shady operations.

Little is often said in the press about the small guns of petty village crimes. In another vein, they are the clichéd results of rampant poverty and a stark cultural valorization of honor.

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However, the vast network of organized crimes has blurred the distinction between petty and deep-seated. The logic of Enrique Pena Nieto’s campaign could work both ways. By curtailing the access of organized crimes to the small players and informal village armies, he is also showing an attempt to hack away at the biggest criminals.

The problem may be more complex than this solution, but so are motherhood statements about what Mexico needs to overcome its social malaises. Cutting poverty may not be enough to cut off the entrenched systems of organized crime, nor dissuade common folk from benefiting from the narcotics trade.

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The plate is looking full for Enrique Pena Nieto, who officially turns president on December 1st. Follow more of his plans on this Facebook page.

Enrique Pena Nieto: No negotiations with organized crime

Enrique Pena Nieto Image Credit: jornada.unam.mx

In Mexico, rampant violence is a by-product of several social malaises that new President Enrique Pena Nieto has to snuff out with immediate results. His predecessor, Felipe Calderon, has alienated the population with his violent crackdown on suspected drug dealers. The death toll from such adventurism had cost President Pena Nieto some buying time to introduce reforms.


Subduing narcotrafficking is one of his campaign’s more ambitious sound bites. The layers on this problem, however, won’t yield to linear measures, especially bilateral diplomacy. Rooted within its virulent reach is the vast influence of organized crime, which controls both legitimate and underworld businesses. Narcotrafficking is just one of the mob’s feeding tubes.

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State forces such as the police and military have also been regularly accused of coddling organized crime, while the mingling of politics and business has provided a passage for nurturing a symbiosis with the mob. Enrique Pena Nieto has vowed to put his foot down on this special relationship, issuing a strident statement that there will be neither “a truce” nor “a compromise” with organized crime.


The rise in violence in Mexico and in Central America has sparked comparative discussions on effective solutions. International opinions have been urging Mexico to consider peace talks with organized crime, patterned after a recent incident in El Salvador where a truce has been brokered between young, murderous marauders and a local village bishop. Crime rates were reported by Le Monde to have fallen 50% since.

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But with Mexico’s President-elect sternly countenanced against this suggestion, there is an assumption of all-out war among his preferred solutions. Rather, it may be the only option around if visible results are expected.


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