Violence in Paradise: Mexico’s Cartel Wars Reach Tourist Playgrounds in Quintana Roo

Mexico’s vacation paradise of Cancun and the surrounding areas have recently found themselves in the news for the wrong reasons: a spike in cartel violence has victimized tourists and provoked a Mexican military deployment. The causes of this violence stem from multiple factors, the most complex of which is the weakening of Mexico’s entrenched organized crime syndicates and the near-meteoric rise of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Regrettably, the addition of military force to the region is unlikely to solve the root causes of the violence and may actually make the situation more dangerous.