So much for "it's a manufactured crisis"..

[Dill]

(04-02-2019, 04:27 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: 3 years is more than a couple and less than a dozen, but hey, we've been sending aid for much longer than that right??

But let's talk %'s

Percentages--data--are important. But we also need to talk cause and effect--that is the key to understanding any decision to stop aid to the "Mexican countries" south of Mexico.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/central-americas-violent-northern-triangle
Why has violence persisted?

Weak, underfunded institutions, combined with corruption, have undermined efforts to address gang violence and extortion. Tax revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) in the Northern Triangle are among the lowest in Latin America, exacerbating inequality and straining public services. Transparency International, a global anticorruption watchdog, places all three countries in the bottom half of its corruption perceptions rankings. Honduran institutions remain particularly shaky following a 2009 coup—Latin America’s first in nearly two decades—and a contested presidential election in 2017.

As many as 95 percent of crimes go unpunished [PDF] in some areas, and the public has little trust in the police and security forces. (The police and military were accused of widespread human rights abuses during El Salvador’s and Guatemala’s civil wars.) “There has been so much penetration of the state and so much criminal involvement in security forces, it makes it difficult to think about how they would [reform] without some outside intervention,” says Eric Olson, an expert on the region at the Wilson Center.

How have Northern Triangle countries tried to stop the violence?

In the early 2000s, Northern Triangle governments enacted a series of mano dura, or “heavy hand,” policies that expanded police powers and enacted harsher punishments for gang members. Around the same time, military personnel were deployed [PDF] to carry out police functions.

Though popular [PDF], these policies in most cases failed to reduce crime and could have indirectly led to a growth in gang membership. Mass incarcerations increased the burden on already overcrowded prisons, where gangs, which effectively run many of them, recruited thousands of new members. The U.S. State Department, human rights groups, and journalists have raised concerns about these policies, denouncing prison conditions and police violence against civilians.