Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Mexican politics and organized crime

Is there a correlation between politics and crime? Want to give students a little project of researching correlations and speculating about causations? Here are some places to begin.

The LA Times has an interactive map illustrating the "number of people who have died in drug-related violence since the start of 2007." It's pretty dramatic.

Al Jazeera has an interactive map illustrating which cartels "control" which areas in Mexico.

National Public Radio, the New York Times, and the BBC have similar maps on their web sites.

Then there's the Electoral Geography site showing the legislative election results from 2009.

This site offers a map of the presidential election results from 2006.

Mexico Insider offers a profile of major parties and a map of which parties control which states' governments.

Are there any correlations between the areas controlled by the cartels and the areas won by candidates in the last presidential election? Do the winners of state or legislative elections show similar patterns?

For background, there's a Congressional Research Service report on Mexican Drug Cartels written in 2007.

As of 29 December, the Wikipedia entry about the Tijuana Cartel included an informative chart about the main cartels in Mexico.


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