Hacker Cinema
El Infierno
2010 · Film · 148 min
Directed by Luis Estrada
After being deported back to Mexico, a man has no choice but to join the vicious drug cartel that has corrupted his hometown in order to survive.
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1 comment on Hacker News
> And for all the trouble drug gangs cause in Mexico, they kill fewer people than car crashes.
Debatable, actually. War on drugs related deaths are >250,000 in 10 years by some counts. Car crash related deaths average 24,000 a year in Mexico. But the thing is that violence related deaths are worse than car accidents in one significant way: they erode people's trust in others and the feeling of safety. They lead to more conservative risk-taking behavior and have far reaching consequences on people's mental state (would you react the same if you hear that a university classmate died in a crash than if you learn he was killed by armed cartel members or the army as collateral damage in a clash?). Also, beyond the deaths: large-scale organized crime exacerbates corruption, imposes costs on businesses (extortion), harms free press, etc, etc. Drug trade in Mexico is definitely a national crisis, in a way I don't think people who don't live there quite understand (no, is not a Mad Max-like hellhole, no, not everything looks like in the movie "El Infierno"[1], but that doesn't mean is just a "localized" crime problem in the sense that gang violence in certain cities of the US is, is an entirely different beast when parts of the country are known to be primarily under organized crime control).
In terms of the original comment, Mexico can't easily go against the US in these matters. But even if it did, the US market would still be both lucrative and illegal, which means the drug cartels would continue operating much as they do now. It would still not be worth it for them to obey Mexican law and it would still be worth it to them to fight for control of drug routes. Legalization in the US would mean competition from Pfizer, GSK and the like, which might actually hurt the cartels. Legalization in Mexico would be pretty much meaningless on its own.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1692190/