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 Editorials | Issues | December 2006 
US: Calderon Showing 'Guts'
 Alfredo Corchado & Tim Connolly/Dallas Morning News
| | Mexican President Felipe Calderón |
Mexican President Felipe Calderón has been in office less than a month, but already U.S. officials and analysts are buoyed by his first steps to impose the rule of law and use his political skills to broker deals with a divided Congress.
But the same officials also warn that Mr. Calderón has little choice but to aggressively address some of Mexico's most urgent issues, from poverty to organized crime, whose powerful reach is threatening local and state authority in some areas.
"We have great hopes and great confidence in Calderón," said Thomas Shannon, U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere affairs. In meetings with U.S. policymakers, Mr. Calderón said he would continue to follow the reform agenda begun by his predecessor, Vicente Fox, Mr. Shannon said in an interview.
He said Mr. Calderón recognized that "the state has the capability of reaching down and grabbing those parts of Mexico that are most disadvantaged and pulling that part of Mexican society along with the rest of Mexico as it develops."
In his talks with U.S. officials, Mr. Calderón "left a really good impression as someone who was very focused on the job in front of him," Mr. Shannon added.
Others agreed.
"I think Calderón is saying the right things, doing the right things so far," said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, director of the Mexico Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization. "For now, Washington is breathing a sigh of relief."
Mr. Calderón took office Dec. 1 amid hopes on the part of U.S. officials that he would move quickly to turn around a security situation that some described as intolerable in the final days of the administration of President Vicente Fox.
"So far he hasn't shown any hesitation or fear in taking on some formidable interests that stand in the way of Mexico's future," said a senior U.S. official. "He's showing he has guts and determination and is not afraid to show who is boss."
Mr. Calderón wasted little time in confronting the security issue, sending thousands of troops and federal police to Michoacán, a state wracked by drug-related violence, including a series of beheadings.
Over the last week and a half, the government forces have recorded advances nearly every day against drug-trafficking groups that sometimes appeared to have free run of the country for the last year.
On Thursday, 10 alleged drug traffickers were arrested in Michoacán, and the crackdown is reported to have cost traffickers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost merchandise.
On Friday, an alleged key member of a rival drug trafficking group was detained in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz. Hundreds of police and soldiers were guarding the man, for fear of attack by a paramilitary group, the Zetas. "The government of Felipe Calderón has gotten off to a firm start," wrote political columnist César Cansino in the Mexico City newspaper El Universal. "After a six-year (presidential) term in which the authorities allowed organized crime and delinquency to grow, resulting in a society kidnapped and at the mercy of the drug cartels, the new government has not only declared war on crime, but has taken concrete actions."
U.S. officials have expressed concern about the security breakdown in Mexico and its implications for the United States, particularly along the border.
Over the past three years, more than 100 Americans have been kidnapped along the U.S.-Mexico border, most of them along the Laredo-to-Brownsville corridor, a senior U.S. law enforcement official said.
This year, 33 Americans have been kidnapped, the majority of them in the Nuevo LaredoLaredo area. Ransom appears to be the main reason, as drug cartels seek money to fund their operations.
"We're seeing increasing violence along the border as a big concern for our government, particularly the FBI," said A.J. Turner, section chief of the FBI's criminal investigative division.
"We consider the violence along the border a very serious issue and a national security concern," he said, adding that drug traffickers also control human trafficking routes that could be used by terrorists.
In addition to confronting drug traffickers, Mr. Calderón has recorded some early success with Congress. The divided lower house passed the income side of the president's first budget 400-44 early Saturday after Mr. Calderón dropped his proposal for an unpopular 5 percent tax on soft drinks. Instead, he agreed to use more money from oil income as part of the compromise.
U.S. immigration experts applauded Mr. Calderón's decision not to put immigration at the top of the U.S.-Mexico agenda, as Mr. Fox did.
"That was just about the smartest policy advice he could have taken," said Demetrios G. Papademetrou, co-director of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan organization. "I think the Mexicans finally understand that the Mexican government has no control over what kind of legislation we pass here."
While the initial reaction over Mr. Calderón is positive, some U.S. officials warned that there is much to be done to win over the discontented voters who nearly handed victory to his leftist opponent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Staff writer Laurence Iliff in Mexico City contributed to this report. Email acorchado@dallasnews.com and tconnolly@dallasnews.com |
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