Listen to the media conference call linked above from the Council on Foreign Relations and comment here on what you learned, plus who wins our debate similation and why. I will collect all written material from debate on Monday, when we will finish the simulation -- after a slow start, a solid effort on Friday.
Compare the murder rate and body count of each Mexican state against entire countries with our interactive equivalents map (from The Economist)
8 comments:
Last week I followed Enrique peña neito on twitter and his tweet today was extremely relevant to class. https://twitter.com/epn/status/320617519851384833
http://Instagram.com/p/XxmCfRvHqA/
These are the links to the two parts of the tweet.
I couldn't hear a significant portion of the podcast-- Jorge Castaneda's responses primarily-- but I did learn from Shannon O'Neil that a lot of signs point out that Pena Nieto's government will be moving away from a war on drugs and more towards a war on violence. He wants to reduce crimes in general throughout the country (including extortion or general gov. corruption, too) and also seeks to consolidate the police force to make it stronger and more united. Although there is some fear that this could increase corruption (by putting it all under one power) and that decentralization would be better, I think it was actually Castaneda who said something about the need to move away from the last sexeno's tactics and try something new, although how this effects the crime rate is a gamble.
Although we haven't finished the simulation yet obviously, I think that the PAN party was winning when we left off on Friday. They argued their cases well when asked tough questions and answered in ways that seemed correct and made sense. They didn't have any major slips in their positions either. I do think that comparison between each group is hard though because the nature and content of the questions asked as well as those who chose to speak up were so different from group to group. That was just my impression from Friday, if there is any major change in it today in class I'll comment again amending this post later :)
Podcast:
I think it's interesting how O'Neil believes that a war on violence vs. a war on drugs is necessary. However, after the Mexico presentation, when the group discussed how prevalent murder is by drug cartels, it's quite clear that the usage/sale of drugs isn't half as important as the lives being affected (murder, crime, etc).
Also, Castaneda's review on Pena Nieto's immigration policy is very similar to Obrador's proposed immigration policy (partnership between both countries, great reform, etc.), which I found interesting.
Debate:
In my opinion, I think the PRD should win, because of Obrador's view in regards to U.S. relations, immigration, and the economy. By wanting to strengthen the economy in Mexico, he's hoping to increase employment, and decrease work-related immigration. This will put Mexico in a new light, rather then being known as a country of "border hoppers", and will enable Mexico to work with the United States as partners, rather than being dependent on the United States.
Honestly I think ending the war on drugs is a bad idea. Jorge said he wants to do it like Vietnam and just leave but he neglects to note that Vietnam was then overrun by communism similarly, I believe that if the war on drugs is ended then mexico will be ruled by the drug cartels. The cartels are undermining the legitimacy of the Mexican government. If the government wants the power to run their country they need to take it back and root out the cartels.
Now, as for the debate. I think that all of the parties had good points and the all did kind of the same as presentation goes so I cant really proclaim a clear winner.
I think the war on drugs could end in one of two ways: either the war will end because of how the government handles the situation or the cartels will overrun the country. Obviously the first way would be preferable because having the country run by drug cartels just sounds bad within itself, so Jorge's idea of just leaving and letting things pan out is not the right approach to take. As to the debate, I think that the PAN party should have been the winner because using "love" to stop the bad things from happening is not an effective way to do anything, especially as a president. While the PRI candidate argued his point very well, I still found it too risky to put a party in the presidency that is known for corruption so soon.
From all that we've talked about so far including listening to the podcast, right now I think Drug lords and cartels are overrunning the Mexican government. Right now from all parties we are hearing of a defensive strategy. To attempt at an analogy, its like trying to get up from your knees and stand up straight while holding 80 pound bags of, well, in this case, drugs. The government besides from straight up fighting the war, needs to find methods of preventing the younger generation to get involved with the cartels.
I think in our debate the main fight was between PAN and PRI. But I think in the end the PAN won because the PRI wasnt able to answer some questions, along with some very vague and confusing answers.
Their main concern in this call was the drug war. The government is too focused on stopping the war of drugs and is actually ignoring the rest of their problems. Even though the war on drugs is a big problem in Mexico right now, they have smaller problems like getting Mexican co-operation to help immigration reform in the US. If they started focusing on the smaller problems and getting support, stopping the war on drugs will become easier. Immigration, in general, is as big of a problem as the war on drugs is. In my opinion, solving the immigration problem is easier than stopping the war on drugs.
Moving on to parties, I think that the PAN party chose a very soft position to stand on because you can't solve a war using love. And the PRI has a long history of corruption and is the cause of the war on drugs. I think that once each party clears up their stance and makes promises that the Mexican people like and support, it will be easier to implement reforms.
Like what Aly said, I definitely learned a lot about the changing focus of the Mexican government (because of new leadership under Pena Nieto) in dealing with drugs/violence. Instead of a war on drugs, the administration will focus more on eliminating crime, kidnappings, etc. They're not sure at this point how this is going to affect what's going on, but they're hoping that it might curb the drug trade to some degree. It will be interesting to see how this policy plays out in the next six years.
Overall, I think all the parties argued really well, but I think that the PRI party had the strongest position at the debate. They did a nice job spinning the situation about fears of corruption and spoke well about their topics.
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