This rant talks about the city I live in. Feel free to move along.

I’ve blogged about a whole lot of subjects, though mostly Free Software related. I’ve blogged about my life before, but never about ‘life in my city’.

I live in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. Had you asked me a few years ago how the city was, I would’ve invited you to come on over and see it yourself. Not anymore.

For the past few years, there has been a growing number of violent displays across the city, with about half a dozen people dead by stray bullets per day, on average. The ‘drug wars’ between the cartels has terrorized everyone here, and the problem is that even the cops are corrupt, and if media polls are to be believed (When are they, ever?), over 90% of my city doesn’t trust the cops, myself included.

And this situation reminds me of those old movies, where the Italian Mobs came to a restaurant and said things like “It’s a nice place you have here, it would be a shame if something were to happen to it”, because the very same thing is happening here. Monterrey opened up Casinos a few years ago, and now we’re dealing with huge cartel wars, with armed people going into restaurants, clubs, bars, car dealerships and just randomly shooting anything and anyone.You think terrorists are bearded guys that live in far-away lands? I wish.

And this has become so common, I saw a huge gunshot fight right across the street of where I was, and not a single newspaper or radio report said a word about it. Hundreds more happen which go unreported. Twitter says that a couple of trucks were abandoned, which means they probably shot at someone and kidnapped him or her, but no official reports are made. And when official reports are made, they usually sound the same: “X Drug dealers killed by our cops”, with later retractions in very tiny letter saying “Whoops, they weren’t drug dealers, they were just students murdered in cold blood by our cops”.

And part of the problem is that we can’t arrest the criminals, legally. Apparently there’s been an 800% increase of underage criminals. I’m talking about 13-17 year old kids that are handed 2000 pesos, a gun and a target, and start their (short-lived) lives as criminals. These weapons are U.S.-Made, and it’s funny how Obama expects us to arrest the farmers that grow the weed, probably against their will, when his guns are the ones causing the problems here.

Even prisons aren’t enough. We’ve got 2 near my city, and both of them have constantly had people break out of them, start riots, and even fires. Gunfights around the prisons are extremely common nowadays.

The Center of Disease Control says that in the case of a viral outbreak, you first identify how the virus is transmitted, and attempt to break the cycle and thus prevent further cases. And these cartels are little more than a plague. And here’s where I ask… How can we ‘cure’ this?
How did other places, which had mobs and similar problems stop this or at least made it look like it stopped?

The United Nations says we shouldn’t militarize the country, but why the hell not? No one trusts the cops. Our governor lives in Texas.
Even he’s afraid of living here. Mayors of lots of towns have been kidnapped, and many of them have died in the past few years.
The ones that haven’t are probably in bed with the cartels.

If militarization isn’t the cure, what is? Legalization? Then what? They’d all turn over their weapons and dedicate themselves to farming?

All the movies I’ve seen end with some sort of a hero, like The Rock, kicking ass and taking names. We need our Batman. And we need it yesterday.

Edit: Oh and in case it wasn’t clear. I’d really, really appreciate ideas and thoughts on how you’d propose fixing this.