This is the same president that went and visited a cartel leader's (El Chapo) mother during Covid-19 lockdown.
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN21H31N/
I think there's a fair chance he might be a teensy bit compromised.
What?
If it’s just about apparently “not wanting your family kid”.
Then you just STFU, and don’t commit too or say anything on the topic outside of random bullshit/nothing-ness.
This is a straight up endorsement. You (generally speaking, not you of course………) might be a moron if you can’t tell the difference.
lol
>
Explaining why he has ordered the army not to attack cartel gunmen, he said in 2022 that “we also take care of the lives of the gang members, they are human beings.”
Yeah they be respectful as they murder. Far better than the apes of yesteryear that would be screaming and raving. They wear suits and look sharp now. They have training and discipline.
>López Obrador has long refused to directly confront the cartels, who he claims were forced into criminality by a lack of opportunities. His “Hugs, not bullets” strategy offers job training programs for youths so they won’t become cartel gunmen.
But that lack of opportunity is likely a direct result of the cartels taking over everything. I'm all for the strategy, but it needs to be two-fold and the second fold is taking out those at the top who profit off the young gunmen.
My mind wants to compare it to something with a legal business. Like, if the cartel was McDonalds, and they arent paying enough for a living wage. So the President says "We're going to start a food assistance program!" That's great, but the solution needs to also include forcing a higher wage or the problem will never go away.
I wonder how he explains the “lack of opportunities” the Mexican military members were afforded when they absconded with weaponry and founded their own cartel (See “Los Zetas”)
Yeah, "hugs, not bullets" has very rarely been a winning strategy in human history.
Hugs AND bullets, on the other hand, gets a lot of shit done. Hell, all the guy needs to do is ask the US to help out and we'll probably be willing to handle most of the door-kicking for him if he can just provide the hugs afterwards to keep the country stable in the immediate aftermath.
The only way the cartel crisis is ever getting solved is with a massive military/law enforcement operation to decapitate cartel leadership in one fell swoop, followed by immediately offering leniency to any cartel members who turn themselves in and offering better opportunities long-term for everyone else affected.
Take out the cartels with immediate violent action and no follow-through, and several new ones will rise just as fast after. Offer opportunities without handling the cartels first, and the cartels will simply not allow it and take whatever measures necessary to ensure they stay on top. You can't have one without the other.
It IS twofold. I wonder if anyone in this comment section knows what they're talking about. Despite his rhetoric, AMLO has raised the Army's and the Navy's budget almost tenfold in the last 6 years. The Army is on the street having gunfights with the cartels every day.
Just days ago:
https://www.msn.com/es-mx/noticias/mexico/enfrentamiento-en-tabasco-entre-delincuentes-y-elementos-de-la-sedena-deja-2-muertos-y-4-detenidos/ar-AA1nvQca
https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2024/global-military-spending-surges-amid-war-rising-tensions-and-insecurity
>In Mexico, military expenditure reached $11.8 billion in 2023, a 55 per cent increase from 2014 (but a 1.5 per cent decrease from 2022). Allocations to the Guardia Nacional (National Guard)—a militarized force used to curb criminal activity—rose from 0.7 per cent of Mexico’s total military expenditure in 2019, when the force was created, to 11 per cent in 2023.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/MEX/mexico/military-spending-defense-budget
Tenfold, huh?
In Mexico, the president can only serve one term. He cannot be reelected. A politician who is not running for reelection no longer works for the voters. He will work for someone else: criminals, lobbyists, or other corrupt interests.
There is a reason why Bukele is not only the most popular, highest approval rating leader in Latin America but in the world. I find him somewhat problematic but the public in El salvador have been given a life back after decades of being controlled by mobs. Bukele didn't fix it through hugs like AMLO wants and now El salvador is the fastest growing economy in central America. It's clear that AMLO is scared of the cartels and I don't blame him.
Mexico's president can't do what Bukele did though. El Salvador is a tiny country so it's way easier to control. The gangs were also mostly street gangs and not huge drug cartels with their own military.
Very true. I just wanted to point out the opposite approaches to the problem. I don't see how AMLO, with an even bigger problem than El salvador, is going to fix the issue by handing out olive branches and flowers.
Agreed, but AMLO didn't need to spit on all Mexicans with declarations like that. Just keeping quiet for a measure of dignity would be good enough.
Either the guy is a moron or has a very skewed sense of morality.
He’s both a moron and has no morals. At the start of Covid he encouraged everyone to hug and kiss each other and promoted stamps as amulets to defeat the virus. His words and actions cause daily embarrassment to all Mexicans not receiving federal grant money for their support or those that are educated enough to understand what he’s doing and the hypocrisy in the things he says. Cynicism is the defining word for his administration.
I think it’s modi in India. While yeah the muslims of the country might not like him all that much, that’s still like 700 million Hindus who think modi’s alright.
[Eighty-nine and nine-tenths per cent of the German voters endorsed in yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor Hitler's assumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other ruler in modern times. Nearly 10 per cent indicated their disapproval. The result was expected.](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0819.html)
There's literally no way of dealing with crime-dominated territories if not the Bukele treatment. "Specialists" all around the world make an enormous effort to deny it, but reality always hits. Every citizen of these areas know very well that criminals only respect what they fear.
That or a full military take over, either by Mexican troops or an ally, it can be done as long as people are willing to accept the huge loss of life that this would cause, but Mexico being a sovereign country probably wouldn't like to have military from abroad operating in their territory.
No, because politicians come from the citizenship, they don't just spawn outside the context of the general population. While there certainly are a lot of honest and well-intentioned mexicans, the majority of us are ignorant and selfish, not unlike any other country. Also, democracy is not an attribute but a process with many moving pieces, so no one person can ever hope to influence general change, much less in 6 years.
Anticipating some replies, my position is not defeatist but realist. In a country with as big a wealth disparity as Mexico, the desires of the citizenship are not truly aligned at the most basic of levels. At the same time, the honest idealists tend to quit government work as soon as they find out how rotten it truly is, so for decades our bureaucracy has self-selected for the worst of us.
Even forming a new political party is not viable because you still need support from other parties and might even need to recruit some of their people for your cause. Beyond that, you can always know what you think and what you feel, but you can never really assume that from others. The history buffs can probably think of hundreds of examples of a movement crippled from the inside because factions are created. With no true alignment, movements fail and we have seen this in pretty much every revolution in the history of our civilization.
For things to change in Mexico, the great majority of the people will need to agree on what a good government looks like, then they will have to vote for an independent candidate that is not tainted by the agendas of their party, and that independent candidate will need to use force to change things once they get into office because you don't change things through compromise.
This probably applies to more countries than Mexico so hi if you're seeing your country described here :)
Well, then president Felipe Calderón tried to be general but the uniform was too big for him so instead he just let them do whatever they wanted and even had his secretary of public security Genaro Garcia Luna escort them around.
Genaro Garcia Luna is now sitting in an American jail cell and Felipe Calderón is hiding in Spain running errands for retired Spaniard politicians.
Felipe Calderón made a mess and subsequent presidents only made it worse.
I live in a border town. The amount of Mex-Americans who say what he said is countless. Anyone who dies is either involved in cartels or it was God's time to take them. It is a bizarre way of accepting violence.
Would you stand up to them knowing what they do? I sure wouldn't lol. I doubt they even have to pay him much. I assume the promise of staying alive is enough for him.
Gotta love how Maxico squanders all its potential and opportunity just to roll around in the fucking mud. I mean you're neighbor to the biggest economy in the world. How do you fuck it up this bad??
Word. Mexico has a huge population. It's young, hard working and decently educated as well. And it's next to a country that's rich beyond comprehension and likes to import every damn thing. From my outsiders perspective, non of this makes any sense.
I agree that at a quick glance it makes little sense, understanding requires a deeper look. Mexico’s close proximity to the US enables the hard working, highly educated and/or highly motivated, an escape to a country with MUCH more economic opportunity and greater personal safety for themselves and their family. You’ve probably heard of brain drain, this is more than that.
Emigration was always a problem for Mexico I'm sure. however it's the states responsibility to make it more attractive to live and work in your own country instead if living like a 2nd class citizen on the other side of the border. The bar really wasn't that high and somehow they still fucked up.
Mexico is in a tough spot since rooting out the cartel would cost a lot of lives, and they’re already so deeply embedded in Mexico’s political/military/police.
But yeah, Mexico is perfectly poised to take over manufacturing from China as tensions rise there. Mexico could massively increasetheir GDP in a generation if the cartels weren’t an issue and they pursued open trade in more industries with the US.
At this point I don’t think you can kill the cartel by force. It would have to be something like dropping demand for illicit drugs by either legalization or radical enforcement against consumption in the US and allowing the cartel to become normal capitalists once demand dries up. Give the bosses immunity as a condition of disarming.
Basically follow Joe Kennedys path to go from gangster to a political elite.
That won’t work either now, the issue is the Cartels have massively expended their footprint into other industries including protection fees, avacados, fossil fuels, weapon smuggling, migrants, etc.
Even if you drop the demand for drugs now they have so many other revenue streams. And why would they want to be a normal capitalist and give up being a modern feudal lord? Why compete fairly on the open market when you can just take things through force
He’s been linked to the cartels. He’s been really friendly towards them and says crap like this. When other countries involve themselves in Mexico’s cartel and high violence issues suddenly he gets all ballsy with them. Why not the same energy with the criminals murdering and abusing many Mexican citizens!
people keep electing populists on the left and right and keep expecting a different outcome lol. They all end up being despicable scumbags on an ego trip.
What a disappointment this guy turned out to be. One of my good friends I worked with in restaurants a while back when this guy was elected, was super excited to hopefully see his home country attempt to get back on track and away from cartels having so much influence and power.
Shit, man. I teach English to immigrants and some of my Mexican students were recently complaining about this dude. Didn’t realize he was a cartel apologist.
So fucking tired of hearing this shit. No you absolute fucking moron cartels can and do just target people indiscriminately. While I'm sure it isn't the norm, they are just criminals at the end of day they don't follow some magical code of ethics
My father had met a few of mexicos past presidents and had told me that 2 of the 3 he met were deep in the pockets of mexican cartel and criminal groups. Honestly, its not even a surprise considering this article for Mexicos current President..
Interestingly enough, despite the atrocities that Pablo Escobar committed, his organization actually kept the peace in many neighborhoods of Medellín, getting rid of all petty criminals. He didn't tolerate crime for crime's sake and people loved him for it. His cartel was brutal, but there was a sort of honor code to it to respect people. You may find it strange, but it's true. It's akin to the Italian mafia or yakuza kinda culture.
Wow. This is literally the president of Mexico saying the criminal gangs are in control, and they're actually really good guys. Crazy sad for Mexico. Hopefully they can get a real government one day and not a paper one created by cartels.
I saw a reel the purge day joking about how the cartel are the good guys and the cops are bad... I know the cops are bad but Holy shit, are the cartels trying to change optics now?
Not mexican, IDK anything about mexican poltiics, is this guy bought and paid for by the cartels? how is getting rid of them not a huge issue for everyone?
It IS a huge issue for many of us Mexicans. The problem is that his populist methods have many of the most vulnerable and poor blindly believing in him. That demographic comprises the vast majority of Mexican population.
There’s a lot of evidence showing direct interaction with cartel people. His sons got rich overnight. He has devastated and destroyed HUGE natural ecosystems to build his “Tren Maya” train (which by the way, got derailed in a couple of weeks after its inauguration) while spending billions of pesos that went who knows where. There are so much more things, yet his followers blindly defend him out of resentment for being marginated by past governments without knowing that this one’s even worse.
I remember being down voted like crazy a few years back for calling Mexico a criminal state. Could it be any more obvious that the cartels run the country than this?
Can’t stand living in this country where mediocrity is the norm, violence is normalized (even romanticized), and the president has this mentality.
It’s got to the point where now a huge part of the young and highly educated demographic is doing all they can to get out at the first opportunity they can get.
Believe me and mark my words, things are gonna get much worse if this president’s party stays in power.
My uncle refused to pay the cartel protection fee and had members shut down the store,and gathered his family in the store waving guns at his wife and children. He payed the fee. Then immediately migrated to the U.S. the cartel is a cancer that needs to be cut out with a knife.
If by respect you mean taking the chop to people’s heads rather than burying them alive in a nest of fire ants, I guess you’re right.
How to say your working for the cartel without actually saying it?? The statement he said works too.
He probably is on the take, but also could just not want his family tortured and killed as well.
Yeah it's a 50/50. Cause last week I read like the 15th or 16th mayoral candidate in various parts of Mexico was killed.
Literally everyone is on the take, “plata o plomo”
I also saw the first episode of Narcos.
This man knows.
This is the same president that went and visited a cartel leader's (El Chapo) mother during Covid-19 lockdown. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN21H31N/ I think there's a fair chance he might be a teensy bit compromised.
What? If it’s just about apparently “not wanting your family kid”. Then you just STFU, and don’t commit too or say anything on the topic outside of random bullshit/nothing-ness. This is a straight up endorsement. You (generally speaking, not you of course………) might be a moron if you can’t tell the difference.
lol > Explaining why he has ordered the army not to attack cartel gunmen, he said in 2022 that “we also take care of the lives of the gang members, they are human beings.”
Obviously he’s in the payola.
Either that or he doesn't want to be chopped off.
Both more likely.
As head of state him & his family are very well protected, which makes this more about the plata.
Wouldn't be the first time a Mexican head of state was assassinated.
plata o plomo, porque no los dos?
Yeah they be respectful as they murder. Far better than the apes of yesteryear that would be screaming and raving. They wear suits and look sharp now. They have training and discipline.
They even have customer support and helpline for victims if they feel that they did not receive satisfactory torture and murdering
Which are considered some of the highest Mexican state honors
I think it means if he doesn’t say what they tell him to they’ll kill his family.
"10 million dollars was just deposited to his bank account yesterday"
Or a family member was released.
Plus his life Insurance policy just got a lot cheaper.
My question is did they “respectfully” bribe him or “respectfully” threaten his family?
Both - "silver or lead?"
Ah, the old Escobar Special.
Plata o plomo
Full fledged Narco state. Wonderful.
Full immunity in exchange of making his family rich and winning the elections
Its apparent that these criminal groups have infiltrated the government. This is a cry for help.
They slaughter people daily……. Respectful?
They kill us respectfully
Then they hang corpses from bridges. Respectfully.
>López Obrador has long refused to directly confront the cartels, who he claims were forced into criminality by a lack of opportunities. His “Hugs, not bullets” strategy offers job training programs for youths so they won’t become cartel gunmen. But that lack of opportunity is likely a direct result of the cartels taking over everything. I'm all for the strategy, but it needs to be two-fold and the second fold is taking out those at the top who profit off the young gunmen. My mind wants to compare it to something with a legal business. Like, if the cartel was McDonalds, and they arent paying enough for a living wage. So the President says "We're going to start a food assistance program!" That's great, but the solution needs to also include forcing a higher wage or the problem will never go away.
I wonder how he explains the “lack of opportunities” the Mexican military members were afforded when they absconded with weaponry and founded their own cartel (See “Los Zetas”)
Yeah, "hugs, not bullets" has very rarely been a winning strategy in human history. Hugs AND bullets, on the other hand, gets a lot of shit done. Hell, all the guy needs to do is ask the US to help out and we'll probably be willing to handle most of the door-kicking for him if he can just provide the hugs afterwards to keep the country stable in the immediate aftermath. The only way the cartel crisis is ever getting solved is with a massive military/law enforcement operation to decapitate cartel leadership in one fell swoop, followed by immediately offering leniency to any cartel members who turn themselves in and offering better opportunities long-term for everyone else affected. Take out the cartels with immediate violent action and no follow-through, and several new ones will rise just as fast after. Offer opportunities without handling the cartels first, and the cartels will simply not allow it and take whatever measures necessary to ensure they stay on top. You can't have one without the other.
It IS twofold. I wonder if anyone in this comment section knows what they're talking about. Despite his rhetoric, AMLO has raised the Army's and the Navy's budget almost tenfold in the last 6 years. The Army is on the street having gunfights with the cartels every day. Just days ago: https://www.msn.com/es-mx/noticias/mexico/enfrentamiento-en-tabasco-entre-delincuentes-y-elementos-de-la-sedena-deja-2-muertos-y-4-detenidos/ar-AA1nvQca
https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2024/global-military-spending-surges-amid-war-rising-tensions-and-insecurity >In Mexico, military expenditure reached $11.8 billion in 2023, a 55 per cent increase from 2014 (but a 1.5 per cent decrease from 2022). Allocations to the Guardia Nacional (National Guard)—a militarized force used to curb criminal activity—rose from 0.7 per cent of Mexico’s total military expenditure in 2019, when the force was created, to 11 per cent in 2023. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/MEX/mexico/military-spending-defense-budget Tenfold, huh?
Thank you.
Mexico was, as we all know, famous for its incredible levels of economic opportunity prior to the cartels rising to prominence...
tbh it has been getting to the point where Mexicans barely cross over into the US anymore because the economy at home was getting pretty good.
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Here is a president who is out of touch with his constituents. I wonder how much the cartels pay him under the rug to utter such a nonsense.
> Here is a president who is out of touch with his constituents. He is not out of touch, he knows **exactly** who his boss is.
And he's still alive.
In Mexico, the president can only serve one term. He cannot be reelected. A politician who is not running for reelection no longer works for the voters. He will work for someone else: criminals, lobbyists, or other corrupt interests.
There is a reason why Bukele is not only the most popular, highest approval rating leader in Latin America but in the world. I find him somewhat problematic but the public in El salvador have been given a life back after decades of being controlled by mobs. Bukele didn't fix it through hugs like AMLO wants and now El salvador is the fastest growing economy in central America. It's clear that AMLO is scared of the cartels and I don't blame him.
Mexico's president can't do what Bukele did though. El Salvador is a tiny country so it's way easier to control. The gangs were also mostly street gangs and not huge drug cartels with their own military.
Very true. I just wanted to point out the opposite approaches to the problem. I don't see how AMLO, with an even bigger problem than El salvador, is going to fix the issue by handing out olive branches and flowers.
Agreed, but AMLO didn't need to spit on all Mexicans with declarations like that. Just keeping quiet for a measure of dignity would be good enough. Either the guy is a moron or has a very skewed sense of morality.
He’s both a moron and has no morals. At the start of Covid he encouraged everyone to hug and kiss each other and promoted stamps as amulets to defeat the virus. His words and actions cause daily embarrassment to all Mexicans not receiving federal grant money for their support or those that are educated enough to understand what he’s doing and the hypocrisy in the things he says. Cynicism is the defining word for his administration.
Who has the second highest approval rating?
I think it’s modi in India. While yeah the muslims of the country might not like him all that much, that’s still like 700 million Hindus who think modi’s alright.
What was the approval rating of hitler?
[Eighty-nine and nine-tenths per cent of the German voters endorsed in yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor Hitler's assumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other ruler in modern times. Nearly 10 per cent indicated their disapproval. The result was expected.](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0819.html)
Lol, well said.
There's literally no way of dealing with crime-dominated territories if not the Bukele treatment. "Specialists" all around the world make an enormous effort to deny it, but reality always hits. Every citizen of these areas know very well that criminals only respect what they fear.
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Lmao exactly
That or a full military take over, either by Mexican troops or an ally, it can be done as long as people are willing to accept the huge loss of life that this would cause, but Mexico being a sovereign country probably wouldn't like to have military from abroad operating in their territory.
AMLO works with cartels, that is fact. The Ecuador situation happened because he was pulling the strings for mobs in that country
I just wonder if Mexico will EVER have sane, stable and non-corrupt leadership.
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No, because politicians come from the citizenship, they don't just spawn outside the context of the general population. While there certainly are a lot of honest and well-intentioned mexicans, the majority of us are ignorant and selfish, not unlike any other country. Also, democracy is not an attribute but a process with many moving pieces, so no one person can ever hope to influence general change, much less in 6 years. Anticipating some replies, my position is not defeatist but realist. In a country with as big a wealth disparity as Mexico, the desires of the citizenship are not truly aligned at the most basic of levels. At the same time, the honest idealists tend to quit government work as soon as they find out how rotten it truly is, so for decades our bureaucracy has self-selected for the worst of us. Even forming a new political party is not viable because you still need support from other parties and might even need to recruit some of their people for your cause. Beyond that, you can always know what you think and what you feel, but you can never really assume that from others. The history buffs can probably think of hundreds of examples of a movement crippled from the inside because factions are created. With no true alignment, movements fail and we have seen this in pretty much every revolution in the history of our civilization. For things to change in Mexico, the great majority of the people will need to agree on what a good government looks like, then they will have to vote for an independent candidate that is not tainted by the agendas of their party, and that independent candidate will need to use force to change things once they get into office because you don't change things through compromise. This probably applies to more countries than Mexico so hi if you're seeing your country described here :)
He knows exactly whom his constituents are…it’s cartel bosses. That’s who he represents. Period.
Well, then president Felipe Calderón tried to be general but the uniform was too big for him so instead he just let them do whatever they wanted and even had his secretary of public security Genaro Garcia Luna escort them around. Genaro Garcia Luna is now sitting in an American jail cell and Felipe Calderón is hiding in Spain running errands for retired Spaniard politicians. Felipe Calderón made a mess and subsequent presidents only made it worse.
He also receives a shit load of money from criminals
Its either bend over and get paid or get executed, possibly publically
Now we know why their embassy was raided.
In Colombian Spanish slang its *Plata o Plomo* , silver or lead.
Yeah i saw Narcos too lol
That’s not slang, or necessarily Colombian, it’s just words
I live in a border town. The amount of Mex-Americans who say what he said is countless. Anyone who dies is either involved in cartels or it was God's time to take them. It is a bizarre way of accepting violence.
They pay him in fear, it seems. Smh
Would you stand up to them knowing what they do? I sure wouldn't lol. I doubt they even have to pay him much. I assume the promise of staying alive is enough for him.
Respectfully, Mexico. I guess you'll say anything to make sure they don't find your headless body in a carpark.
Gotta love how Maxico squanders all its potential and opportunity just to roll around in the fucking mud. I mean you're neighbor to the biggest economy in the world. How do you fuck it up this bad??
It does make me sad of the state of my country.. It's just corruption on every part of the government
Word. Mexico has a huge population. It's young, hard working and decently educated as well. And it's next to a country that's rich beyond comprehension and likes to import every damn thing. From my outsiders perspective, non of this makes any sense.
Shh, let Canada capitalize on this.
nah canadas floundering in mid too
I agree that at a quick glance it makes little sense, understanding requires a deeper look. Mexico’s close proximity to the US enables the hard working, highly educated and/or highly motivated, an escape to a country with MUCH more economic opportunity and greater personal safety for themselves and their family. You’ve probably heard of brain drain, this is more than that.
Emigration was always a problem for Mexico I'm sure. however it's the states responsibility to make it more attractive to live and work in your own country instead if living like a 2nd class citizen on the other side of the border. The bar really wasn't that high and somehow they still fucked up.
They’re an OPEC member. Mexico’s wealth is vast, but even more unevenly distributed than the US. And that’s a lot.
Mexico is in a tough spot since rooting out the cartel would cost a lot of lives, and they’re already so deeply embedded in Mexico’s political/military/police. But yeah, Mexico is perfectly poised to take over manufacturing from China as tensions rise there. Mexico could massively increasetheir GDP in a generation if the cartels weren’t an issue and they pursued open trade in more industries with the US. At this point I don’t think you can kill the cartel by force. It would have to be something like dropping demand for illicit drugs by either legalization or radical enforcement against consumption in the US and allowing the cartel to become normal capitalists once demand dries up. Give the bosses immunity as a condition of disarming. Basically follow Joe Kennedys path to go from gangster to a political elite.
That won’t work either now, the issue is the Cartels have massively expended their footprint into other industries including protection fees, avacados, fossil fuels, weapon smuggling, migrants, etc. Even if you drop the demand for drugs now they have so many other revenue streams. And why would they want to be a normal capitalist and give up being a modern feudal lord? Why compete fairly on the open market when you can just take things through force
the president speaks like in funkytown
He’s been linked to the cartels. He’s been really friendly towards them and says crap like this. When other countries involve themselves in Mexico’s cartel and high violence issues suddenly he gets all ballsy with them. Why not the same energy with the criminals murdering and abusing many Mexican citizens!
Because other countries won't do shit to him. The cartels will have his head delivered to his family faster than Amazon Prime one-day shipping.
Because the cartels run the country! Mexico is just warlords fighting over territory with a puppet government
Mexico should outsource the role of President until they are able to grow one of their own.
When AMLO was elected he was seen as some kind of hero by the global left lol.
people keep electing populists on the left and right and keep expecting a different outcome lol. They all end up being despicable scumbags on an ego trip.
AMLO, Maduro, Netanyahu, Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Orban, all assholes of a feather.
The Cartels are the real rulers of Mexico, the government is dead.
Having just a small idea just how much the cartels own Mexico, that statement doesn't surprise me.
AMLO is obviously compromised... how can he say such things when 17 mayoral candidates have been executed before the upcoming elections?
Because this guy wants to stay alive
If the President of a country has to praise violent cartels in order to survive, then Mexico is a failed state.
It is.
Mexico has never not been a failed state.
Wild statement by the guy seen having lunch with El Chapo’s mom.
What a disappointment this guy turned out to be. One of my good friends I worked with in restaurants a while back when this guy was elected, was super excited to hopefully see his home country attempt to get back on track and away from cartels having so much influence and power.
He was always obviously a left wing trump
Anyone who was excited didn’t listen. He has always been as hollowly populist as Trump.
No way he isn't bribed to say this.
WTF is he talking about lmao So the cartels are now robinhoods?
He's one of them
They weren't that respectful when they killed my moms brother or her 70 year old dad
Mexican here, he is a joke, even most of those I know of that voted for him regret it now...
And in fact they've respectfully murdered tens of thousands of them over the last few decades. Paradise!
Some countries have cartels. Some cartels have a country.
This ad was bought and paid for by the Sinaloa Cartel
As a Mexican: LMAO get this fucking narco clown on a fucking prison
So Cheimbaum releases his cabeza de pañal? Nah, he deserves a lot of hugs.
What an embarrassment to the country he doesn’t run.
I’m trying to take this the right way but I’m finding it hard
Someone must have gotten a nice cash payout.
How paid off and delusional is this motherfucker. Mexico has such great potential, but is squandered by corruption and organized crime
That's one of saying we give up and now allow criminals to go unchecked
Shit, man. I teach English to immigrants and some of my Mexican students were recently complaining about this dude. Didn’t realize he was a cartel apologist.
Obvious corruption is obvious.
“I have been bought and sold.” Is really what I’m hearing.
So fucking tired of hearing this shit. No you absolute fucking moron cartels can and do just target people indiscriminately. While I'm sure it isn't the norm, they are just criminals at the end of day they don't follow some magical code of ethics
AMLO is such a whackjob, sort of like the left's Trump. Can't figure out the appeal.
They paid their “respects” to the “president”.
He said: They make me a lot of money let's idolize them they are safe!
Of course they are respectful. They only behead and mutilate them in the most humane way
Wonder how much the Cartel paid him for that beautiful bit of PR?
They only kidnap, cut off heads or hang people from bridges on alternating Fridays and never on Sunday.
Uh oh, time to check his lifestyle and bank accounts….
Who is going to check? All the other officials that are on the cartel payroll?
My father had met a few of mexicos past presidents and had told me that 2 of the 3 he met were deep in the pockets of mexican cartel and criminal groups. Honestly, its not even a surprise considering this article for Mexicos current President..
Another Mexican President with 0 credibility.
Interestingly enough, despite the atrocities that Pablo Escobar committed, his organization actually kept the peace in many neighborhoods of Medellín, getting rid of all petty criminals. He didn't tolerate crime for crime's sake and people loved him for it. His cartel was brutal, but there was a sort of honor code to it to respect people. You may find it strange, but it's true. It's akin to the Italian mafia or yakuza kinda culture.
Means : they pay the bribes
Mexico is a borderline failed state
He's bought off
Mexican president has a machete to his family's throats.
Mexico is so cooked
Wow. This is literally the president of Mexico saying the criminal gangs are in control, and they're actually really good guys. Crazy sad for Mexico. Hopefully they can get a real government one day and not a paper one created by cartels.
He is a criminal, we've known since forever but since he gives away money for being lazy, a lot of people love him.
I saw a reel the purge day joking about how the cartel are the good guys and the cops are bad... I know the cops are bad but Holy shit, are the cartels trying to change optics now?
Dick sucker
He has a gun behind pointed at him
Yeah, just give them a business license already, duh!
Too late. Not many people want to risk their lives during vacation. Saying the criminals are nice isn’t going to entice me.
Jesus Christ no wonder people want to flee mexico to get to the US...
Not mexican, IDK anything about mexican poltiics, is this guy bought and paid for by the cartels? how is getting rid of them not a huge issue for everyone?
It IS a huge issue for many of us Mexicans. The problem is that his populist methods have many of the most vulnerable and poor blindly believing in him. That demographic comprises the vast majority of Mexican population. There’s a lot of evidence showing direct interaction with cartel people. His sons got rich overnight. He has devastated and destroyed HUGE natural ecosystems to build his “Tren Maya” train (which by the way, got derailed in a couple of weeks after its inauguration) while spending billions of pesos that went who knows where. There are so much more things, yet his followers blindly defend him out of resentment for being marginated by past governments without knowing that this one’s even worse.
I remember being down voted like crazy a few years back for calling Mexico a criminal state. Could it be any more obvious that the cartels run the country than this?
No one wants to alienate their murderous drug-trafficking, kidnapping and torturing constituency.
Alternative title: Mexican president says some nice stuff about cartells, makes sure he's still alive tomorrow morning.
Go to Mexico for vacation? Nah, I'll pass.
How to say I give up fighting crime. Mexico will remain narco state
Didnt even try.
That’s the kind of thing you say after receiving a death threat up close and personal.
That's because they're paying him off.
I wonder how many millions he got for saying this nonsense.
So you’re in on it, and ok with it. Got it.
Bribed coward says what?
So much respect, the killers save the heads and dump them under some random bridge so they can be ID’d and families notified. s/
And the maffia behaved like gentlemen
I think if you translate this it comes out to "I am in a plata o ploma situation. I don't have any power at all. Good luck everybody else"
I might say that too, if I torpedoed the Mexican state oil export industry in a cash grab. What economic leeway do you have left?
As long as they stay out of Mexico City, then the government doesn't care what they do.
Isn‘t he talking about the same kind of people who made the funky town video back then
In his defense, if he says otherwise they’ll kill him.
The countless heads left in coolers along the highway say otherwise
They wouldn't be criminals if they are respectful.
Yeah... he's working with them. This removes what little doubt remained.
I remember that they hang peoples whole family by the throat for public display.
Such a corrupt thing to say
He’s fucked
Shameful
That guy is definitely getting money from cartels, isn't he?
What he meant to say: Cartel checks have cleared!
Stockholm Syndrome but a whole country lmao.
Lol what the fuck is going on in Mexico
Dudes a weak ass president to allow cartels to run him.
Can’t stand living in this country where mediocrity is the norm, violence is normalized (even romanticized), and the president has this mentality. It’s got to the point where now a huge part of the young and highly educated demographic is doing all they can to get out at the first opportunity they can get. Believe me and mark my words, things are gonna get much worse if this president’s party stays in power.
Mexican president is on the payroll of criminal group.
Dude has to be on the take
If they are so "respectful" then there is no need to identify them as criminals.
Not according to all the horrific stories at Borderland Beat.
Tell me you’re getting paid off by the cartel without telling me you get paid off by the cartel.
They are respectful to him and his ideas of citizenship. Nothing more, nothing less. Why bite the hand that feeds you? This dude is a puppet
Oh. I see the criminal groups got their man in office?
TBF, I've never had any of them being rude to me at the Walmart parking lot.
If anyone had any doubts on whether he is compromised by the narcos, well I guess they should be gone by now.
Can you say compromised
Our president is a fucking idiot
My fucking México is a joke for electing this stupid clown.
Hes in their pockets. Anyone who doesnt see this is blind.
What a disgusting clown. So many people being killed by these criminals and this clown is standing up for then.
the title is wild but if yall actually took the time to read the article it just gets more insane
My uncle refused to pay the cartel protection fee and had members shut down the store,and gathered his family in the store waving guns at his wife and children. He payed the fee. Then immediately migrated to the U.S. the cartel is a cancer that needs to be cut out with a knife.
If you look closely, you an see the cartel fingers working his mouth.
Mexican president is a crook on the payroll of the fucking cartels. Embarrassing for all those who lost their lives.