Meanwhile, the journalist in the article had just published about their extortion racket.
I've lived in Mexico for a long time and I'm about to book a ticket across the country to visit a friend in Playa del Carmen soon. It's just not something that affects me. I'm more worried about getting maimed by a car hopping a curb in the scheme of life, and I still walk with my back to cars.
I thought cartel didn't kill DEA? Source: Narcos
If you want to visit Mexico and don't plan on trying to unearth and publish cartel activity, you'll likely have a great time as well.
Snark isn't very effective rhetoric.
When my in-laws visit us (Europe) they were more worried about a terrorist attack than I am about cartels.
Mexico has a lot of violence in those cartel communities. But it mostly stays within those communities.
From everything I have read, challenging the cartels in Mexico is suicide for individuals, and often even for governments (at least it is for politicians). I would "let things go" if I lived there too.
Its really insidious. Everyone has a price and drugs brings in billions of €. Honestly if someone offered me 50 thousand to look the other way I would be tempted.
Perhaps I misunderstood, but what are you basing this on? The Netherlands has one of the lowest rates of intentional homicide in the world (0.5/100.000)[0] and ranks fourth in World Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders[1].
With having Europe‘s largest port (Rotterdam), The Netherlands does serve as a gateway for South American drugs, cocaine in particular. The vast amount of global MDMA is also manufactured here[2], but the fallout in the form of violence is nowhere near that of Mexico?
0. https://dataunodc.un.org/crime/intentional-homicide-victims
2. http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/2473/T... (p. 5)
And it's easy to snark about it ("oh, what cowardish" etc) when you don't live there.