The Foreign Service Journal, June 2011

J U N E 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 25 The U.S. Steps In Pres. Calderon found a sympa- thetic audience in the U.S. when he called for stepped-up anti-narcotics assistance soon after his December 2006 inauguration. Washington had already been providing about $40 million per year, principally for train- ing. Meeting Calderon at Merida in March 2007, Pres. Bush agreed to enhanced cooperation. The Merida Initiative, announced in October 2007, pro- posed a dramatic, tenfold increase in assistance for three years. This assistance was intended to cover helicopters and border inspection equipment, plus training and tech- nical assistance, and to help create a complete national electronic police database. The Merida funds were appropriated, but among the Mexican disappointments have been the human rights conditions attached to the funds by the U.S. Congress, and the slow pace of disbursements. The Obama admin- istration plans to continue the initiative as new funds are appropriated, but to focus the assistance more on training than on equipment. Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa and Secretary Clinton agreed last year that the joint focus would be fourfold: disrupting the drug-trafficking organ- izations; institutionalizing the rule of law; building a mod- ern border; and creating strong, resilient communities. Modernizing the border will be challenge enough: a million people, 300,000 passenger vehicles and 70,000 trucks cross it daily. Former Mexican Deputy Foreign Minister Andres Rozental characterizes the frontier as the site of “the three I’s — irritation, inefficiency and illegal- ity.” Homeland Security has allocated major separate ap- propriations to a Southwest Border Initiative and designated Alan Bersin as a border “czar” to coordinate bringing border operations into the 21st century. Even more challenging is the goal of rebuilding com- munities. A test case may be Ciudad Juarez, where the crime rate has reached appalling new heights and the so- cial context has virtually disintegrated. The Calderon government has inaugurated “Todos Somos Juarez” (We Are All Juarez), a program infusing new funds into schools, recreational facilities, etc., to recapture the streets from youth gangs recruited by rival trafficking or- ganizations. There’s little improvement to show for it to date, but the goals are long-term, and consistent com- mitment to it may yet bring results. Unintended Consequences Ironically, the breakdown in law and order may be partly a product of the country’s recent democratiza- tion. Throughout the 70 years that it dominated Mexican politics (1930-2000) the PRI maintained a patrimonial hierarchy that ensured stability. Garcia Marquez called it “the perfect dictatorship.” PRI national leaders coopted dissenters into the party; selected their successors, state governors and union bosses; made sure they got elected; and expected them to maintain order and loyalty in their districts. In return, the officials were free to collect whatever it cost to keep things running smoothly, including from the narcotics traffickers. At least half a dozen Cabinet-level officials in the 1980s and 1990s were implicated in lucra- tive “pactos” with narcotics capos. As the archtypical PRI politician, Carlos Hank Gonzalez, put it: “Un politico pobre es un pobre politico” (A politician who is poor is a poor politician). Now many of the tools of centralized control are gone. One of them, the secret police (Direccion Federal de Se- guridad), operated for years outside the law under the in- terior minister (in effect, the vice president) before it was discredited and disbanded in 1986. The political opposi- tion now holds two-thirds of the country’s governorships, so the central government is far less able to exercise re- gional control. Nor have state institutions yet filled the vacuum. The longstanding practice of paying mordidas (bribes) to po- lice officers and other government officials is economi- cally driven and hard to change. Mexicans aren’t used to taking issues of citizen responsibility and local adminis- tration into their own hands — to “empower” themselves in effect — to resist the TCOs operating in their areas. In short, cultural change is needed, which will take a lot of time. Until it does take hold, the U.S. role in this part of the Merida program will perforce be limited. One source of Mexican resentment is the claim often heard from some influential Americans that a state of in- surgency exists where TCO rivalries have led to the most violence — the northern Mexican Gulf states; the Juarez area; Baja California Norte; the “Golden Triangle” of nar- cotics cultivation in Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango; Mi- choacan state; and the Acapulco area. It’s true that civil F O C U S No one can claim that President Calderon hasn’t been trying hard to address the problem.