HomeNewsBriefFormer President Fox Urges Mexico to Negotiate with Cartels
BRIEF

Former President Fox Urges Mexico to Negotiate with Cartels

MEXICO / 12 MAY 2016 BY SAM TABORY EN

Vicente Fox, former president of Mexico, is urging the country's current administration to negotiate with drug cartels to put an end to rampant levels of violence, inserting himself into a deeply divided and unsettled regional debate about engaging with organized crime. 

In an interview with Carlos Marín, host of the television show El asalto a la razón (The Assault on Reason), Fox expounded on what he perceives to be the failure of the current administration to quell drug-related violence and the need "to negotiate and reach agreement with" cartels. 

"I am going to tell you something that I will get a lot of criticism for," said Fox. "But I would sit down to negotiate, to look for solutions with these cartels and these [criminal] types to see how we could reach an agreement so that they can stop killing one another and stop killing our youth." 

The former president specifically referenced the Mexican government's negotiations with Subcomandante Marcos, the infamous leader of an indigenous rights rebel movement in southern Mexico in the early 1990s, as well as the US government's longstanding tradition of using sentence reductions and plea bargains to work with criminals turned informants as precedent for his position.

Fox also suggested that current President Enrique Peña Nieto's decisions to deploy militarized security forces in an attempt to rein in violence has been counterproductive. His comments come as Mexico is seeing worsening security conditions nationwide.

Fox held office from 2000 to 2006 and was succeeded by Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), who was the first president to deploy Mexico's military in the so-called "war on drugs."

InSight Crime Analysis 

Fox made similar comments in 2011 calling for a more collaborative approach to engaging organized crime in an effort to reduce violence. He was widely criticized for the comments, with many commentators at the time suggesting a long history of détentes between politicians and powerful organized crime actors in Mexico is what allowed cartels to accumulate such power in the first place. 

However, the idea of developing a more diplomatic engagement strategy is gaining purchase in certain circles, with business leaders in violence-affected Acapulco advocating for a "pacification proposal" as recently as April 2016.  

Regionally, the question is unsettled. Currently, El Salvador is embroiled in a debate about the legitimacy of a 2012 government-facilitated gang truce, that has since unraveled. In Colombia, the possibility of initiating a demobilization process for powerful organized crime operations descended from paramilitary organizations is a controversial issue

Logistically, Fox's proposed negotiations would be difficult to orchestrate and any resulting agreements would be nearly impossible to enforce given the increasingly atomized nature of organized crime in Mexico. The vertically integrated cartels of the past have been largely replaced by a more horizontal power structure of loosely affiliated cells and chapters. 

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

CHINA AND CRIME / 14 APR 2022

The full threat posed to Mexico's biodiversity by both Mexican and Chinese organized crime networks has been revealed in a…

FENTANYL / 10 JAN 2022

The hideous levels of violence plaguing Zacatecas, exemplified by ten bodies abandoned in a van outside the governor’s office, are…

CONTRABAND / 18 MAY 2022

Cattle from Mexico and the Central American nations of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua help feed the domestic beef markets of…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Chemical Precursor Report continues to be a reference in the region

19 MAY 2023

For the second week in a row, our investigation into the flow of precursor chemicals for the manufacture of synthetic drugs in Mexico has been cited by multiple regional media…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime’s Chemical Precursor Report Widely Cited

THE ORGANIZATION / 12 MAY 2023

We are proud to see that our recently published investigation into the supply chain of chemical precursors feeding Mexico’s synthetic drug production has been warmly received.

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime’s Paraguay Election Coverage Draws Attention 

5 MAY 2023

InSight Crime looked at the various anti-organized crime policies proposed by the candidates in Paraguay’s presidential election, which was won on April 30 by Santiago Peña. Our pre-election coverage was cited…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in OAS, CARICOM Reports

28 APR 2023

This week, InSight Crime’s work was cited nine times in a new report by the Organization of American States (OAS) titled “The Impact of Organized Crime on Women,…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Staff Cited as Experts by International Media

21 APR 2023

This week, InSight Crime deputy editor, Juan Diego Posada, was interviewed by the Associated Press about connections between the ex-FARC mafia and Brazilian criminal groups, and…