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 Editorials | Issues | January 2008 
In Mexico, the State Struggles for Control
 Bernd Debusmann - Reuters
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 |  | There is more and more evidence that drug trafficking is trying to impose its law on a society which, unfortunately, responds favourably. This trend must be stopped. |  | | | |
Mexico City - Among the indicators of a country in trouble is the widespread acceptance of insecurity as a way of life, the norm rather than the exception. As in the following dialogue heard in an upscale restaurant in Mexico City's bustling historical centre: "I had my car taken at gunpoint after the robbers took me to an automatic teller machine and forced me to empty my account." The reply: "Ah, well, good thing nothing happened to you."
"Nothing" refers to physical harm, and variations of the exchange are common coin in the Mexican capital. So are reports from the provinces on crimes of a different nature as drug cartels battle each other and the state in a war without fronts.
Its toll is enormous: 2,795 last year according to media counts. "More than 2,500," according to Mexico's outspoken attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, who has publicly acknowledged that local police in parts of the country work for drug barons.
(To get the death toll into context, 762 U.S. troops died in the war in Iraq last year).
Mexico is both a source of illicit drugs and a transit country. The U.S. estimates roughly 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States comes via Mexico, which is also the largest supplier of foreign marijuana to U.S. consumers.
The corrosive effect of torrents of drug money on police forces is nothing new - much of Latin America suffers from it, as does the U.S.-Mexico border region - but at times it manifests itself in surprising ways.
Last November, for example, some 3,000 people staged a noisy demonstration against the presence of the Mexican army in the state of Sinaloa, where the government of President Felipe Calderon had sent them as part of an operation involving 25,000 troops to fight the drug traffic.
They converged on Culiacan, home of the infamous Sinaloa drug cartel. It looked like an energetic public show of indignation over alleged maltreatment by the military. But to hear the army tell it, most of the demonstrators were paid between $50 and $200 by the Sinaloa cartel. "Rent-a-crowds" used to be the preserve of political parties, not of drug lords. El Universal, Mexico's leading newspaper, saw the Culiacan demonstration as a sign of "a nightmare come true."
"There is more and more evidence that drug trafficking is trying to impose its law on a society which, unfortunately, responds favourably," the newspaper said in an editorial in January. "This trend must be stopped."
The government is making the fight against both common and organized crime a national priority. Calderon has called on Mexicans to close ranks against crime and large banners in the capital list telephone numbers for tips on criminal activity.
ECHOES OF COLOMBIA IN THE 80s
"Judging from the experience of my first year in government...it is possible to retake control of public life," Calderon told a summit of law enforcement officials in January.
"It...is possible to cleanse our cities of those who terrify the population through kidnappings, robbery and ransom," he added.
Possible, perhaps, but not easy and there is a long way to go. Less than a week after the president spoke, gunmen shot dead three police officers, the wife and daughter of one, and a civilian in separate incidents in Tijuana, just south of the U.S. border. By mid-January, the death toll had reached 105.
What's happening in Mexico now is reminiscent of Colombia in the 1980s, when the Medellin and Cali cartels had more sway in parts of the country than the government.
Mexico has not reached that stage. There is no way that a leader of a Mexican drug cartel could win a seat in Congress, as did Pablo Escobar of the Medellin cartel, or run for a senate seat, as did the Cali cartel's Carlos Lehder.
But there are parallels. "The violence Mexico's drug traffic generates is similar to ours in the 80s," according to General Oscar Naranjo, the head of Colombia's national police force.
"Mexico is experiencing a second generation of drug traffickers...who try to assert territorial control in parts of the country to ensure their monopoly," Naranjo said in an interview with Reuters last year.
CROSS-BORDER CONTAGION FEARED
Colombia's success in breaking the power of its big cartels was due partly to close cooperation with the U.S. which provided money and intelligence. The unintended consequence: much of the illicit business previously run from Colombia moved to Mexico.
Now, along the border, Mexican drug traffickers are trying to extend their culture of corruption to the north, targeting Border Patrol and military officials they think might be tempted by easy money.
"In the U.S., the region most vulnerable to corruption is the U.S.-Mexican border and particularly the border with Arizona," said Paul Charlton, the former U.S. Attorney for Arizona who is now partner in a law firm. "The temptations are just extraordinary."
Over the past few years, investigators have uncovered scores of U.S. public employees who accepted bribes for helping to move drugs or look the other way. The latest was an Arizona prison officer sentenced this month to 15 months for taking cash from people he thought were drug traffickers.
They were FBI agents and he was one of 53 Americans sentenced in Operation Lively Green, an undercover investigation meant to stop corruption at the border.
You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters com. Editing by Sean Maguire |
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