crime

"Hello, son, are you Ok?  We just got a phone call, and someone told us that one of our sons/daughters was kidnapped. We wanted to be sure that you are fine."  You can imagine how scary was the movement that these parents went through after they picked up the phone and received the ugly and unexpected message.  As sad as it sounds, this situation is something that some families in Mexico have experienced.  Sometimes they are lucky to find out that their relatives are fine, and that everything was faked by someone looking for a profit by creating confusion among relatives.  In other unfortunate cases, the message is real and families have to go through very difficult experiences that may last several months and that not always have a good outcome.

It's not new that Mexico is having problems with violence and crime, coming either from drug-cartels or from organized mafias of kidnappers and car thieves, among others.  It's also true that the entire country is not a jungle and lawless area where nobody is safe.

Over the last decade and a half, most of the approaches to solve these issues have looked at the rule of law and law enforcement elements of the equation.  Better legislation that penalizes these criminal activities; well paid, trained, appropriately equipped and not corrupted police corps; military support to fight drug-cartels; better prison's system that functions as social rehabilitation centers and not as universities of crime... and the list goes on.  This is a good direction to follow.  However, I've always told my friends and colleagues that there are other elements in the equation that also matter a lot, namely, poverty reduction and inequality.