Mexican cartels have seen a surge in growth in their participating members over the last decade, according to a new study, to the point where they have effectively become the nation’s fifth-largest employer.
Researchers created a mathematical model using homicide, missing persons and incarceration data to track cartel recruitment. Their study, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that some 175,000 people in Mexico are employed by 150 different cartel groups.
The researchers said they hope their study can help analysts and governments who “have long struggled to understand cartels” and find a “better way out of this cycle of violence.”
In the last ten years, 37 percent of known cartel members had been killed or incarcerated, and yet the size of cartels grew. The researchers found they must have recruited nearly 20,000 members a year to make up for losses.
An unrelated report released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in July estimated that the two largest cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation, employed more than 44,800 people. The study’s author, Rafael Prieto-Curiel, a former Mexico City police officer, said his model showed a similar number of 46,000 cartel members in those two groups.
Neither of those numbers might be fully representative of the total number though, the Thursday report said.
“The model only accounts for those directly involved in work that puts them at risk of violence, and not members—such as bankers—who help move and launder cartels’ money,” it stated.
Victoria Dittmar, a researcher for Insight Crime who did not take part in the study, told The Guardian that the numbers depend on the definition of a cartel and what constitutes membership.
“It can be very difficult to say who is a member of a criminal organization and who isn’t,” Dittmar said. “What about a politician that receives money? Or someone who cooperates with the group just once?”
Other researchers have said Prieto-Curiel’s July study is a breakthrough because previous attempts to fight organized crime by the cartels have failed — and the study has shown combatting the crime starts with decreasing the cartels’ ability to recruit new members.
“At least we know we have to focus on that question rather than just sending more money to armed forces and building prisons,” said Carlos Gershenson, a computer scientist at Binghamton University who did not participate in the research. “You need to cut the source of the problem rather than dealing with the consequences.”
Edit: Wrote this whole wall of text about Mexico being conquered. Posted. Then came back to check if I had answered your question correctly. Realized you weren't even talking about Mexico being conquered. Meh... I am leaving it.
It doesn't matter if Mexico is ripe for conquering. There is no appetite for conquering Mexico by any major portion of the US. The reasons are many and complex, but I can think of six major ones off the top of my head.
First, the general perception of most Americans is that there isn't much of interest in Mexico except pretty beaches, cheap drinks, and Aztec/Mayan architecture. All of which are already currently accessible to Americans.
Second, it would be expensive, there are a lot of aspects of Mexico that would need complete overhaul to begin to match US regulations and expectations. Many existing states would demand the Federal government pay to bring them up to code, the expense of which would end up being footed by the American people.
2.1: The expense couldn't even be passed on to the Mexican states through taxes since they would almost certainly be brought in as territories. US territories and their populations have no voting power in the federal government but also have no Federal taxes because of our history with Britain. "Taxation without representation" and all that. More on Territories in the third segment.
2.2: Cleaning up the cartels would be a huge expensive mess under the American legal system and would like cause even more oppressive laws to be implemented to the detriment of current US citizens.
Third, voting and politics, Mexico's 31 states would have to be added into the US in some fashion. Even if they started as territories, the population of many of them are too great to leave them in that status quo for long. Bringing in new states would be a huge issue and quite possible would help push us to civil war, like last time we added a bunch of states. Pre-Civil War new states were added in pairs; one slave state, one free state. Something like that would need to happen again. Neither Democrats nor Republicans would allow a new state to be brought in that gained the other side a majority.
Fourth, the people of Mexico are pretty different demographically from most of the US, not just in culture, language, and skin color, but also in the variety of religion or non-religion practiced. (This was the largest paragraph but it was getting way into the weeds so I pared it down.)
Fifth, would have to be an open travel, outsider, racism, etc issue. Whatever you want to call it, the Supreme Court has upheld the right of any American to move to any other part of America freely and many of the newly joined citizens would want to utilize it. There is a clear majority (currently) of Americans that think we have an issues with too many immigrants. Even people who are vehemently against Trump's wall may support decreasing immigration. Absorbing Mexico would be throwing open the flood-gates in the eyes of those who want to slow immigration down.
Sixth, American relations with the International community. Any way you spin it, an offensive war to conquer more territory would be viewed poorly by our allies, and used as justification to increase expansionism by our adversaries. Most Americans have no stomach for continuing to be viewed as colonial, or the consequences of such an action, even if we wouldn't mind some of the benefits.
The edit made me laugh. Plus, your comment was worth reading anyway!
Glad you enjoyed the edit. I am doubly glad someone actually read all that, even though it was mostly irrelevant. 🙃