Breathe
By Pamela Cerdeira
Last week a headline grabbed everyone's attention, drug cartels are Mexico's fifth largest employer, with more people working for them than Oxxo, Bimbo and Pemex. The data comes from a study published in the journal Science by Dr. Rafael Prieto-Curiel and others. The study has a much more important edge than the list of "employers", it also dares to propose a novel solution: the only way out of the violence we are experiencing is to stop or reduce criminal recruitment. How did he come up with it?
It was 2009 and Rafael was working in the Mexico City police force where he was until 2013, first in the area of statistics and then in strategic analysis. He left the country to do a master's degree and a doctorate at the University College of London with the promise that Mexico was going to be a less violent country: ten years later, Mexico is worse. It would be desirable to have today the figures we had in 2012, he tells me.
His hypothesis already pointed to recruitment as the basis for the strengthening of the cartels, and then, with the data that we do have: homicides, arrests and missing persons, he was able to make a mathematical model that would allow him to understand where we are and where we are going if we continue to grow at the same rate. His calculation is that if we continue the way we are going, by 2027 we will have 30% more homicides than we have today.
