The arrest earlier this month of the son of notorious Mexican drug lord El Chapo sparked violence in the northern Mexican city of Culiacán in Sinaloa.

The U.S. Department of State has put much of the country under a travel advisory, including an advisory not to travel to the state of Sinaloa due to crime and kidnappings. 

Guillermo Sanhueza, associate professor in the School of Social Work at Loyola University Chicago, said the violence can lead to more migration and an increased threat of corruption and criminal activity.

“It’s really a story to me more of a failure of state, a failure of Mexico in dealing with corruption, in dealing with effective presence of a state,” Sanhueza said. “El Chapo … many of these guys are celebrities, are semi-gods in their towns. People look for them for help, for assistance, and that role should be the state’s, the municipality.”

Oscar Chacón, executive director of Alianza Americas, said violence is the “ghost that continues to haunt Mexico” as the country continues to experience a significant number of murders, disappearances and extortion.

“Even though there is so much emphasis on deploying the military, assassinations continue to happen, kidnappings continue to happen,” Chacón said. “It’s not only of common people but of human rights defenders, as well. In the long haul, I think that the real solution to this issue is going to be to find a way to make Mexico truly more prosperous for the widest segments of Mexicans as possible.”