The Foreign Service Journal, June 2011

24 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 1 1 been evacuated. Kidnapping and extortion by the TCOs have also become more common. In one notable case, the 1994 presidential candidate of Partido Accion Nacional, Fox’s and Calderon’s party, was kid- napped and held for six months until an undisclosed seven-figure ransom was paid last December. One notorious group, a particu- larly brutal organization of Mexican military deserters and other criminals called “Zetas,” has even gotten into the business of hijacking oil from the state-owned company, Pemex, and selling it to customers in the U.S. Howmuch of the fault for the increase in crime and vi- olence lies with the United States? There is no question that we are the main source for weapons. Pres. Obama promised to seek reinstatement of the assault weapons ban during his campaign, but admitted during his first visit to Mexico in 2009 that he didn’t have the votes in Congress to do it. Even a proposed rule to require stores to report when any individual purchased multiple “long guns” in one week was temporarily blocked by Congress this spring. As for the narcotics market, U.S. consumption has re- mained relatively constant in the last two decades. White House documents estimate that the number of adult users of marijuana in the United States is about 25 million; co- caine, about five million; and approximately 850,000 methamphetamine users and 450,000 heroin users. But there is also a major domestic market in Mexico, which is said to have doubled in the last decade. Calderon Agonistes No one could claim that Calderon hasn’t been trying hard to address this crisis. Using a poker analogy, one sen- ior Drug Enforcement Administration officer put it sim- ply: “Calderon is all in.” He was elected in 2006 by the skin of his teeth. With personal security already the num- ber-one issue, all but three of the 17 states north of the capital went for him. The opposite was true in the south, where poverty and unemployment were of even greater concern, and voters preferred the populist candidate of the left, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Calderon’s over- all margin of victory was less than 1 percent. The new president wasted no time implementing his mandate to take action. A first step was to call in major military reinforcements for the overwhelmed police in the “pla- zas” (nodes of narcotics traffick- ing). The military simply had more personnel available, could concentrate force and weaponry more effectively than police against TCO squads, and had the advantage of being far more trusted by the people. Some 45,000 troops have been deployed in 10 Mexican states since 2007. An embattled Calderon went so far as to don a military uniform soon after his election, reportedly the first time a Mexican president has done so since the 1910-1917 revo- lution. In parallel, he sought authority to change an outmoded system of administration of justice under which, accord- ing to an authoritative Mexican study, only 12 percent of crimes are reported and only 2 percent result in arrests — but 85 percent of those brought to trial are convicted, largely because there are no procedural rules of evidence to protect the accused. Confessions are routinely made under duress. (A prize-winning Mexican film, “Presumed Guilty,” made in 2008, illustrates this poignantly.) In 2008, the Mexican Congress and the states approved a constitutional amendment to adopt some parts of the sys- tem the U.S. and most other Latin American countries use: an adversarial (as opposed to inquisitorial) system. Mexico has still not adopted juries, but trials are to be open and will have oral witnesses, so the public can see and hear what happens. The states have eight years to implement the amendment. Although he is not the first Mexican president to at- tempt police reform, Calderon has also been accelerating his predecessors’ efforts to make the police more honest, effective and technically qualified, starting at the federal level. He inaugurated a national police academy in San Luis Potosi, which has already graduated several thou- sand new, college-educated additions to federal forces, and has brought most federal law enforcement functions together under Public Security Minister Genaro Garcia Luna, who now commands over 40,000 federal agents. A next step — still stalled in the Congress — is to con- solidate the 4,000-odd state and municipal police forces into 32 unitary forces, one for each state and the Federal District. F O C U S Secretary Clinton earned substantial credit with Mexicans in 2009 when she acknowledged that insatiable U.S. demand helps fuel the drug war.