Should Mexico be allowed to host the World Cup?
Authorities are more worried about naive tourists than “narco-terrorists.”
The best way to explain the Mexican security situation to a newcomer to the subject is to help them understand its extremes:
Mexico is a country roughly the size of western Europe, composed of 2,478 municipalities. Over half of the violence occurs in 2% of these municipalities. It follows that most of the country is relatively safe. It also follows that those 50 or so municipalities must be hell on Earth.
The same calculus can be made when assessing if Mexico is a viable place to hold the FIFA Word Cup, where 13 of 104 matches will be played in three months time. The three Mexican host cities will be Monterrey, Mexico City, and Guadalajara—the capital city of the home state of the New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG).
Over the past days, cartel propaganda has done its best to project a show of force as its leader was snatched and killed by Mexican special forces early on Sunday. Across the international media, they broadly succeeded in making Mexico look like bedlam.
The display was certainly impressive: About 20 of Mexico’s 32 states were affected, but Mexico City and popular tourist destinations across the Yucatán peninsula weren’t.
Get even more granular and, within these states, just over 100 municipalities were affected by cartel violence. Taken like, the city of Monterrey can also be said to have been untouched by this week’s uprising.
And, finally, looking into the around 250 acts of specific violence, car-burning, and looting, one might say that the tourist area of Guadalajara was also left relatively unscathed—as locals went about their business, often finding out about the chaos on their phones.
Yet, in the final analysis, the violence of the CJNG reaction was too close for comfort, and too close to the cartel civil war just north in Sinaloa state after the capture of another drug kingpin just over a year ago.
FIFA requested a meeting with the Mexican government to discuss what is to be done with Guadalajara. Little is known as to what has been decided.
So, The Mexico Political Economist spoke to security experts who have worked independently or with various Mexican administrations and across the different levels of government to discern if Mexico, and specifically Guadalajara, are safe for one of the world’s biggest tourist events.
