Mexican Presidential Candidate: Social Development Will Stop Violence

By Adrianna McGinley

The U.S. has a responsibility to help Mexico better social conditions in order to halt growing cartel violence, according to Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The former Mexico City mayor spoke Tuesday as part of the “Dialogues with Mexico” program of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute.

Lopez Obrador said the solution to the rising violence, caused by the crack down on drug cartels, is to create equal education and work opportunities for Mexican youth. He cited failed policies and lack of economic and social development in the last decades as the cause of the violence and called on the U.S. to change its approach in combating cartel violence and illegal immigration.

“Bilateral cooperation has focused on security issues without addressing the causes that have led to the violence and the increasing migration of Mexicans to the United States,” Lopez Obrador said. “We will convince and persuade the U.S. authorities that, for the sake of the two nations, a policy of cooperation towards development is more effective and more humane than to insist, as at present, in giving priority to police and military cooperation.”

Lopez Obrador said the 450 million dollars allocated to law enforcement organizations under the Merida Initiative, out of 478 million total U.S. dollars provided to Mexico in an effort to curb cartel violence, has been a failure.

“The problems of economic and social nature are not resolved with coercive measures…and the migratory influx will not stop with the building of walls, raids, or the militarization of the border.”

Lopez Obrador also called on President Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to regularize the immigration status of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.