Not something to trade on, but worth the ( long ) read: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mexico-violence-oil/ You must be completely braindead to kill Zetas members.
No kidding. What a joke. The entire country has a long standing culture of bribery and corruption. It's too bad too, because the normal citizens of Mexico are very good people. They deserve better than their leadership has given them.
Government is a always a function of its citizens. Either their action or inaction has created the current situation, just like everywhere else.
The sad thing is that the current wave of violence started precisely because Vicente Fox broke the established PRI corruption setup and cracked down on corruption. Turns out the country was much safer at least with a higher level of corruption, which is just damn depressing especially as you noted it's a country full of good people getting screwed.
Those are good points "much safer with a higher level of corruption". It could be compared to the U.S. with the mafia or other highly organized crime syndicates that have working agreements about how to conduct business. Typically, the out of control violence begins once the head of the organization is either removed or imprisoned and the underling's start making power grab's.
Funny thing is they could just have made corruption perfectly legal like in the US. And then poof, corruption gone.
Said tongue in cheek I know, but current headlines aside, actual corruption in the day to day bureaucracy of both federal and state government in the U.S. is vanishingly rare, so much so that it makes headlines when found. The federal government does something like 75,000 purchase solicitations a year, for example, and at most there are a small handful where something improper turned up. In several years working in this area myself the only reasonable bid protests I saw were the result of shoddy work on the part of a federal employee rather than corruption. My understanding from friends who run businesses in Mexico is that it's a much different story there permeating to every level of the society, from running a business to getting a speeding ticket. In the U.S., the Koch's did certainly donate half a million to Ryan and friends days after their tax bill passed, so at the national policy level there's clearly quid pro quo corruption going on and that's a horrible thing. At least it hasn't seeped down to main street yet, by and large, although I guess it might just be a matter of time.
I get what you're saying and largely agree. An all out civil war/regime change is probably the only way to break the cycle because the corruption is soaked into the governmental infrastructure. There's probably no way to do this, without foreign involvement and/or bloodshed.
Not tongue in cheek at all, things that are outright illegal and corrupt in shithole countries are perfectly legal in the US. Things like lobbying, citizens United, PACs, gerrymandering, voter suppression measures, corporate donations and law bending for said donations.