Felipe Calderon: The Man Who Took On the Drug Cartels Marina Jimenez - Globe and Mail go to original May 29, 2010
Calderon says casualties are an unfortunate part of the drug war.
The Mexican President spoke with The Globe's editorial board on Friday: Listen to the Story
Nearly four years into Mexico’s war on drugs, more than 22,700 people have been killed. The bloodshed continues unabated, and the citizenry remains terrorized by the cartels’ macabre acts of violence. But the man who unleashed this all-out assault on the drug syndicates says he has no regrets about being the first Mexican President to make this the centrepiece of his sexenio, six-year term. He says he had no choice. “What was the option? If we ignored the criminals, we allow them to take over towns and communities and that’s not fair to Mexican people,” said Felipe Calderon, 47, in an interview with the editorial board of The Globe and Mail on Friday, the final day of his three-day visit to Canada. “When I took office, I said this will be a battle that implies costs, huge costs … in terms of time, economic resources and, unfortunately, costs in terms of human lives. But it is a battle in which our children’s future is at stake and it is a battle that we will win.” Mr. Calderon, a Harvard-educated lawyer and conservative Catholic, doesn’t wear cowboy boots and lacks the tall swagger of former president Vicente Fox, but he is a decisive, confident speaker. The President makes a compelling case for Canada to support Mexico’s drug war and its “transformation,” as the government enacts reforms of the judiciary, police, and pension, tax and energy sectors. U.S. President Barack Obama has called the bespectacled technocrat Mexico’s Eliot Ness. In the past, Mexican authorities turned a blind eye to the activities of the drug cartels, allowing them to extend their power and infiltrate local police forces and political circles. Mr. Calderon said that if his predecessors had only acted sooner, organized criminal groups wouldn’t be so entrenched in society, now selling drugs to a domestic market as well as smuggling them north for sale in the United States and Canada. “If you let them [the cartels] do whatever they want, they will take control of the population,” he said. “You can see this in other parts of the world. … In Jamaica … the criminals took control of Kingston and now the government is trying to enforce the law and that’s impossible because the criminals are the real authorities.” This week, Jamaica had to declare a state of emergency as pitched battles broke out between security forces trying to arrest a suspected leader of a gang who is wanted in the United States on drug charges, and his supporters. Since taking office in 2006, Mr. Calderon has sent in 45,000 troops and 5,000 federal police to 18 states. More than 300 suspects have been extradited to the U.S. for drug offences, and a number of drug lords have been arrested or killed, including kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva, shot by Mexican marines in December, 2009. Security forces have seized 100 tons of cocaine, 6,500 tons of marijuana and 950 kilograms of heroin – and 70,000 arms. While media headlines present an image of Mexico as a country besieged by violence, much of the bloodshed is confined to members of the cartels themselves, operating mostly along the northern border in cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. Officials estimate that 90 per cent of those who have died are gang members, their hit men and security forces. Many are killed in disputes between rival gangs, as they battle one another for control over narcotics routes, and territorial influence, often beheading their victims and dumping their bodies on sidewalks, in discos, and even in schoolyards. Mexico’s overall homicide rate remains well below the region’s average, and is lower than in Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil and Jamaica. But there are troubling signs the violence is spreading. In Monterrey, the country’s wealthiest city and business capital, drug syndicates are now active, demanding protection money. Traffickers block streets and have recently engaged in gun battles in the Holiday Inn hotel, and even on the campus of a prestigious university – an incident that left two graduate students dead. Earlier this month, a former presidential candidate from the ruling party, and close friend of Mr. Calderon’s, disappeared without a trace from his ranch in Queretaro. He is presumed to have been kidnapped. There are fears that the drug cartels could seek to infiltrate politics directly and control the July 4 local elections in 10 states by supporting candidates who co-operated with organized crime, and killing those who don’t. The war on the cartels has been politically costly, too. As the casualties mount, Mr. Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN) has slipped in the polls, although his personal popularity remains at 50 per cent. Polls show that most Mexicans support the President’s war, though they think the drug lords are winning. Born in Michoacan state, Mr. Calderon comes from a political family. As a boy, he put up election posters and campaigned for his father, who helped found the PAN and, after six attempts, went on to win a congressional seat. At 33, Mr. Calderon became the PAN’s youngest leader, and later served in Mr. Fox’s cabinet. Considered an unlikely presidential candidate, Mr. Calderon won by less than one-half per cent of the vote against Mexico City’s popular, leftist former mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. However, the President has proven to be a likeable, politically astute leader – as well as a determined fighter. He acknowledged Friday that the drug trade is inevitably located in Mexico, because “we live beside the largest consumer market in the world. Everyone tries to sell drugs through my windows and doors.” The United States is also the source of illicit weapons flowing south, and during his recent visit to Washington, Mr. Calderon pressed the U.S. to re-introduce a ban on assault weapons. He would like the U.S. to reduce further its domestic consumption of illicit drugs: “This is not just Mexico’s problem.” He thanked Canada for sending eight Spanish-speaking RCMP officers to train Mexican police, and hailed Thursday’s announcement in Ottawa of $4-million in initiatives to help Mexico strengthen its judicial system. The need to establish a professional, national police force, and to enact judicial reform, is pressing. The Mexican government is now dealing with complaints of human-rights abuses committed by the army, sent into cities such as Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana to re-establish order. The country’s official National Human Rights Commission has received nearly 4,000 complaints since 2006. Mr. Calderon has pledged to act quickly in cases where civilians are killed, and send in teams of civilian prosecutors, instead of allowing the military to investigate complaints itself. His government succeeded in passing a reform allowing states to overhaul courts and move to an adversarial, oral system of hearings, which would improve both policing and the judiciary. However, only a handful of states have implemented the changes. The war on drugs has prompted thousands of Mexicans to flee to both the United States and Canada, seeking asylum from drug violence, and prompting Ottawa to introduce a visitor’s visa for Mexicans. Mr. Calderon wants Ottawa to remove this visa, which has led to an 80-per-cent reduction in Mexican refugee claims from a high of 9,309 last year. But the President emphasized that his trip to Canada isn’t just aimed at lobbying for the removal of the visa – but has a much broader purpose, aimed at re-establishing and strengthening bilateral relations on all fronts, including investment and tourism. Already, 1.2 million Canadians visit Mexico every year – a number that is expected to increase by 15 per cent this year. “The relationship between Mexico and Canada is much more than the visa problem. I am not coming only to talk about that. I believe that Canada and Mexico are natural partners and friends.” A NAFTA partner, Mexico is also Canada’s third-largest trading partner and fourth-largest export market. While its economy shrank in 2009 as a result of the U.S. recession and a decrease in remittances, 4 per cent economic growth is projected for this year. The local financial system is solid, inflation remains low, and public and private debt are under control. The country of 110 million has a young population, an expanding middle class and an average GDP per capita of $10,000 a year – three times that of China. When asked about his legacy, Mr. Calderon declared: “I want to finish the task of building a strong, reliable, federal police force for Mexico and establishing a new judicial system.” Even he knows it is impossible to wipe out a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry. But if the President can succeed in turning a national security problem into one that can be handled by law enforcement, and bring about a cultural change in a country long accustomed to looking the other way, then that is a measure of success.
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