DESPAIR & NOSTALGIA

This editorial by Pedro Miguel appeared in the May 23, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexicos’ premier leftist daily newspaper.

How much desperation must be experienced in the various criminal spheres. If you think about it, the essential lines of the Fourth Transformation are like facets of a clamp closing around it: sustained wage reinforcement and social programs—particularly those aimed at young people—Wellbeing Hubs, Utopias, PILARES, peacebuilding actions, justice for Indigenous peoples, accelerated construction of higher education centers, and job-creating infrastructure projects are taking away from criminal groups much of the labor force they need to operate.

The promising deception of the path that leads from being a look-out (halceono) to contract killing, to becoming a city boss, and so on, to criminal leadership, has lost much of its charm as decent and peaceful paths to exercising the rights to education, health, food, housing, and a dignified, peaceful, and long life have become established.

Furthermore, the security and citizen protection strategy, based on police intelligence actions, the strengthening of the National Guard, the removal of prosecutors involved in crime, and the cleanup of the police —a thorny and time-consuming task—has not only resulted in a significant reduction in crime rates and the neutralization of thousands of individuals and cells generating violence, but has also contributed to increasing the population’s confidence in civilian and military forces.

Contrary to the rhetoric that attempts to sell the public on supposedly out-of-control crime, crime rates have been declining, although not at the speed most people would like. Declaring war is easy; the difficult part is defusing the inertia of violence it leaves in its wake.

Third, the fight against corruption and the implementation of austerity measures have drastically reduced the scope for impunity and collusion between public servants and criminals of all stripes: from the high-flyers who lived too well by selling nonexistent goods and services to the public sector or at inflated prices, to the murderers, rapists, and kidnappers who operated with the protection of corrupt authorities without ever setting foot in jail. This network of complicity between institutions and criminals has narrowed in many areas of the State—although pockets of corruption persist and must be documented and eradicated—and will suffer a devastating blow when the renewal of the Judiciary, resulting from the elections to be held in two weeks, is finalized.

The most criticized and vilified of the lines of action for the change that began in December 2018 and was confirmed on October 1 of last year is the revolution of consciences, which consists of the recovery of the social ethic that was weakened during the cycle of neoliberal governments. However, the pacification of the country and the restoration of public safety necessarily require the strengthening of fundamental convictions among society at large: for example, that the public interest must prevail over the individual; a society that neglects or mistreats its weakest members is a society headed toward the abyss; and the culture of legality must banish the impulses of the law of the jungle.

How desperate must be those who grew accustomed to profiting from extortion, illegal drug trafficking, human trafficking, child exploitation, public treasury plunder, filthy and irregular real estate deals, dispossession, fraud involving nonexistent or substandard projects, the sale of overpriced medicines, logging, the illegal appropriation of water resources, tax fraud and evasion, outsourced services, the construction of prisons, gas pipelines, highways, and hospitals at inflated costs, bribery, the misappropriation of public resources through the undue collection of salaries and pensions as astronomical as they are undeserved, operations to distort public opinion, and betrayal of the country. And with how much rabid nostalgia they must be yearning for the old regime.