For Mexico’s middle class, drug war deepens trust deficit

Throughout the country, not only are levels of trust in public institutions - government, courts, and police in particular - very low, but now even among ordinary Mexicans. As cartels shift their focus from the wealthiest Mexicans, the middle class is increasingly the target of extortion and other crimes and less trusting of neighbors and co-workers. 

Washington Post: CUERNAVACA, Mexico - By many measures, this country has made great strides in recent decades toward becoming a middle-class society, with broader access to education, consumer goods and professional careers that promise upward mobility.

And yet, while prosperity has expanded here, researchers and polling experts say Mexico remians stricken with a form of social poverty that presents a vexing obstacle to the emergence of a more developed, democratic neighbor on the southern U.S. border. 

Mexico's trust gap is considered especially threatening as the country struggles to keep the corrupting powers of billionaire drug cartels from further undermining democracy and the rule of law. If Mexicans don't trust police and political leaders, and they're too wary of fellow Mexicans to join citizen campaigns and social movements, scholars say, there may be no one left to turn to. Read more.