Lowering violence



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I still do not find in the polls at the end of July 10 a definitive answer to a question that puzzled me: López Obrador's overwhelming vote was against the PRI, the government, Peña Nieto, the system, or a support for his figure, his program, his allies? It is obvious that both can be answered: it was a repudiation of the status quo and an endorsement of the draft change that AMLO embodied. But, without numbers, the abstract answer seems … abstract

Above all, it does not serve to draw conclusions, in particular, any of them. If the tsunami was primarily negative, the AMLO honeymoon can last a long time. People wanted to discard the PRI, and they do not care how the new ones rule. With some symbolic gestures – Los Pinos, the plane, the salary, the guaruras, etc. – He will reach Morena to keep her in a lot of probation and popularity. Something like this happened to Fox: 43% of voters wanted to "throw the PRI to Los Pinos", and he worried little about the alternative. It is only when this government felt obliged to increase electricity rates in February 2002 that the honeymoon ended.

On the other hand, if more than half of Mexican society voted for López Obrador a change – in its economy, its security, in terms of corruption – and, in particular, if nearly two-thirds of the population with a training academic suffering in this way, the immediate future becomes more complicated. These voters expect results, are informed and tend to be impatient. In economic matters or corruption, beyond the symbols that matter a lot in this country, it will not be easy to generate perceptible changes. In the field of security, however, there is a possibility

In a chart published yesterday on the first page of Reform there is a very strong correlation between the number of soldiers deployed in the war against drug traffic. and the number of deaths, as measured by records of malicious homicide investigations, over the last 11 years. If we also include the numbers, not easy to find and do not necessarily belong to the same series, from 2006, we see that the number of soldiers outside the barracks in the war against narco has gone from 37.253 in 2006 to 49,650 in 2011 – the record year -, then go down to 34,529 in 2013, and return to 54,980 this year. The pattern of intentional homicides is virtually identical, very low in 2006 and in 2007, begins to increase from 2008 and until in 2011, between 2012 and 2014, it goes down, bounces and reaches unknown limits in the first 5 month of 2018.

It is obvious that causality can occur in both directions. The violence increased, measured by intentional homicides, because more soldiers were deployed, or, as most analysts probably think, the Calderón and Peña governments increased the violence and more troops had to be sent to contain it. With these data, it is very difficult to determine which of the two causalities is "the right one". However, if we accept the hypothesis that it is the deployment of troops that generates the violence rather than the reverse, there would be a short-term, effective and affordable solution to reduce the violence: reduce the number of troops deployed. length and width of the Republic

AMLO said that he will keep the army in the war against drug trafficking until there is a civilian police capable of replace it. This is, more details, less details, what Zedillo, Fox, Calderón and Peña Nieto said. It does not mean absolutely nothing. However, her candidate for Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, said something very different: that the reduction of violence in the country depends on different approaches, which include the possible legalization of marijuana and the Regulated poppy cultivation for doctors, and not to continue with a war that has clearly failed. This second option seems much more reasonable, although it is not necessarily that of López Obrador himself.

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