We should turn Mexico into the U.S's 52nd state, Puerto Rico is our 51st. It would be so easy to conquer them all right now.
This is a pretty stupid comment, please refrain from any jingoistic rhetoric please, this goes for everyone in this thread. Besides, US invasion of Mexico would be a horrific bloody business, the Mexican people would likely oppose it, so besides fighting the Army, Federales, local police and cartels, the US would find itself fighting the populace too, that is an un-winnable war. In Iraq and Afghanistan the great problem has been separating enemy from civilian, imagine how many times worse that issue would be in a Mexican war. The US didn't exactly succeed the last time they invaded Mexico either, Blackjack Pershing never caught Pancho Villa, remember?
The points cway makes about the Mexican President working for the cartels and the Federal Police doing the killings only ring partly true with me, this is due to the situation in Colombia over the last 30 years. There, the Presidents have often been accused of corruption, but some were good men who genuinely tried to bring peace. Same with the Federales and Army in Colombia, some were corrupt for sure, in fact, possibly the majority, but there will many who weren't.
I will accept that many of the Mexican Federales are corrupt and work with the cartels, but I don't accept that all of them are, I am sure there are many among them who really do wish to serve their country and it's people.
As for the president, well, he could very well be working for the cartels, but surely the CIA would know this and I can't see how it would serve their purposes to leave in power a man who was doing such harm to the US. But if the Federales and President are working with/for the cartels, what way is there to bring down this cabal? I see two primary ways - US invasion or Mexican revolution. I see the first as highly unlikely, the second as highly likely, give it a couple more years and I can see there being a revolution which would probably lead to anarchy for a generation unless some strong figures rose to lead like Villa and Zapata, but even they ultimately failed as while they got rid of Porfirio Diaz and affected some changes in Mexican law, subsequent Mexican regimes have fallen far short of the egalitarian reformist aspirations of the Revolution.
What will the millions of Mexicans living in the US do when a revolution starts? It might be difficult to stop the border states of the US being drawn into the anarchy. It's a really sad situation as Mexico is so rich in natural resources and it's people so industrious and resourceful that it should be a thriving, prosperous country, but foreign exploitation (largely by the US) and domestic corruption has kept the country largely poor.
I wish Villa and Zapata were alive today, I imagine the cartels would fare no better against them than the Federales did, I could see Pancho destroying the cartels in the north then heading to Mexico City to overthrow the government, just as he did before, but that's not going to happen this time and sadly I have a feeling that the bloodshed has only begun.