Mexico: Not A Failed State--Unless You Are Sven Goran Erickson

The Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs had to deny that Mexico is a failed state:

The Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, rejects the idea that Mexico is a “failed State” due to the violence generated by organized crime, since the violence concentrates in mainly three states: Baja California, Chihuahua and Sinaloa. In a press conference with the Minister of Foreign Relations of Ireland, Michael Martin, she maintains that the perception of major violence in the country is the result of a strategy of organized crime groups. ”The level of violence that we are witnessing for the first time in Mexico, and that we deeply regret, has to do precisely with the strategy of those organized crime groups to intimidate the public, to give the impression that there is a major problem,” she affirmed. She added that the violence should be viewed as the result of the “decided action of the Mexican State to combat them.”

By the way, this is the same violence that Mexican national soccer team coach Sven Goran Erickson cited as the reason he doesn't like to leave his apartment.