You are completely correct. As much as many people don´t want to hear it, Mexico is a failing state. It´s extremely obvious when you are there that the United Mexican States lost most of the reins some time ago.

It started with the debt crisis, and its causes, but was definitively realized by 1994 when the Zapatistas took much of Chiapas.

Too much emphasis is put on the drug cartels alone, when the problem is much larger. I suspect by the end of the century maps will no longer show Mexico in its current form.