Mexico Becoming a Failed State

Events in Mexico seem to be conspiring to validate fears that the country could become a “failed state.”

The latest policy and public-relations disaster for President Felipe Calderón’s government occurred on February 20. Inmates at the state prison in Apodaca, not far from Mexico’s main industrial city, Monterrey, staged a riot. It turned out that most of the rioters were members of the increasingly powerful Zetas drug cartel. They used the riot to kill forty-four members of the rival Gulf cartel, then escaped from the prison. Mexican authorities immediately launched an investigation of the guards who were on duty at the time, suspecting (with good reason, given their total inability or unwillingness to prevent the bloodshed) that at least some of them colluded with the Zetas cartel.