Mexico Can’t Solve Its Three Biggest Crises Alone
Dealing with Central American migrants, rising crime and faltering energy supplies will require more U.S. help.
Too much to handle.
Photographer: Herika Martinez/AFP/Getty Images
A flood of people, a rise in murders, a dearth of energy. Three big crises face Mexico today. How it resolves these challenges will reverberate far beyond its borders. The U.S., which has played a part in creating some of these problems, should be part of their solution.
Migration is the crisis with the highest profile. Hundreds of thousands of Central Americans have passed through Mexico in the last five years, joined by Cubans, Haitians, Indians, Africans from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo and others in a trek to the southern U.S. border. The previous administration of Enrique Pena Nieto deported 600,000 of these sojourners. Yet still more come. And not all continue, with Mexico absorbing tens of thousands who stop and stay.