As far as the drug cartel...this is going to do absolutely nothing to stem that problem. I have no idea how to address that problem, but you are right, it is absolutely insane. It seems like it has gotten progressively worse over the last 10 years. I lay much of the blame for this at our own feet. Our own war on illegal drugs has created the massively profitable market, and has also broken up many of the largest cartels. While breaking up the large cartels sounds like a good idea on paper, it seems to have left a power vacuum, which resulted in many smaller cartels struggling for power, with the end result being the increased violence that we are seeing now.

I recently hear a man speaking on NPR; I think he was a former minister for Mexico but I am not sure what ministry. He was discussing just this issue of competing cartels. He was quite critical of Calderon's "Drug War" and claimed Calderon only started it to try and prop up waning popularity (imagine a politician doing that!). I do not know if that is true or not but what this man had to say about the way the cartels used to operate was interesting.

He claimed that there used to be less cartels and that they pretty much handled their disputes with each other under the radar; not in big shootouts on the street where citizens were caught in the crossfire. Likewise, they didn't encroach too much on each other's territory; they were more interested in profits. Now, this guy claims, there are too many cartels that have formed from the ashes of the Mexican government's battles with them that some of them are out of control and retaliating with extreme measures in order to try and maintain their new found power.

I do not know if it this is a good answer but this former minister claims that probably the only way out is to try and strike a deal with several of the larger cartels (probably secretly of course) to clean up these other cartels and eliminate them in return for a wind-down of their anti-cartel campaign and return to the way things used to be (a kind of look the other way policy).

Like I said, I don't know if that is really what the Mexican government should do but one thing is clear, their anti-cartel campaign has been a miserable failure. It was curious to me that a few weeks after I heard this guy saying this I read that three (maybe it was two) main cartels have now ganged up on La Familia in an effort to wipe them out once and for all. They claim it is in retaliation but I have to wonder if this man's strategy might be being implemented at some level now.