Along with my own views on U.S.-Latin America relations, you can find writings from Peter Hakim, President of the Inter-American Dialogue, and Amb. Paul D. Taylor, Senior Strategic Researcher at the Naval War College. Assuming Arturo Valenzuela will in fact be confirmed now that Congress is back in session, he will be soon facing the many issues we discussed – public security, sustainable energy, economic advancement, and hemispheric migration among others.

Mexico’s rise on the American foreign policy agenda should not come as a surprise. Over the last generation, deepening business, personal, cultural, and community relations have drawn the two countries closer together. Trade between them has tripled, with Mexico becoming the United States’ third-largest commercial partner. Flows of people, always part of the bilateral relationship, skyrocketed: over four million Mexican citizens have headed north in the last decade, while over a million U.S. citizens have migrated south, forming the largest nonmilitary community of American expatriates in the world. At the start of the twenty-first century, Mexico is still forging its political, economic, and social identity. It has undergone a true democratic transformation, and its three political parties now compete in clean and transparent elections. But it remains unclear whether Mexico will follow a path of growth, stability, and market-based democracy or one of instability, corruption, and crime. What is certain is that understanding Mexico — where it came from, how it got there, and where it might be headed — is vital to U.S. interests.

Politics in Mexico: The Democratic Consolidation. By Roderic Ai Camp. Oxford University Press, 2006.

In this book, now in its fifth edition, Roderic Ai Camp, one of the preeminent scholars of Mexican politics, deftly guides readers through more than 200 years of political evolution in Mexico, analyzing the events and concerns that created the Mexican state one sees today and exploring both the continuities and changes in that state’s relationship with societal organizations and interests. Camp focuses on Mexico’s extended transition to democracy, including reforms to the electoral process, the expansion of political participation, and the subsequent shifts in power among the various branches of government. Those interested in delving deeper can consult Camp’s specialized works on many of the themes presented, such as the recruitment of political leadership and popular political attitudes. But Politics in Mexico, drawing on decades of experience and innovative research, provides a comprehensive overview of the main issues and forces affecting the country today.

Mexico: Biography of Power. By Enrique Krauze. HarperCollins, 1997.

This exhaustive history, written by one of Mexico’s best-known intellectuals, chronicles nearly two centuries of Mexican politics, from independence to the early 1990s. After identifying major themes underlying the country’s political and social identity — its colonial legacy, its mestizo population, and the early power of the church — Enrique Krauze turns to a leader-driven historical narrative, examining the lives of Mexico’s various strongmen and presidents, who, from the battlefield to the executive office, shaped Mexico’s political development. This personalized dynamic has faded with democratization, but the memory and vestiges of it remain relevant in Mexican politics today.

Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy. By Julia Preston and Sam Dillon. Macmillan, 2005.

Written by Julia Preston and Sam Dillon, the New York Times correspondents covering Mexico in the late 1990s, this readable narrative provides a thoughtful analysis of the country’s democratic opening. Spanning the period from the devastating 1985 earthquake in Mexico City to the 2000 presidential elections, the authors investigate the economic changes, security threats, and political intrigue crucial to understanding the shifts that occurred in Mexican politics. The book explores the many pressures on the old one-party PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) system, the individuals and organizations that pushed for change, and the events leading up to democracy’s final breakthrough: the election of the opposition PAN (National Action Party) presidential candidate Vicente Fox.

First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the Twenty-First Century. By David Lida. Riverhead, 2008.

Spanning 570 square miles and home to more than 20 million people, Mexico City is the largest metropolis in the Western Hemisphere. Even as federalism has decentralized power to Mexico’s states, the capital remains the political, cultural, and economic center of the nation. In this journalistic account, David Lida offers many telling vignettes that capture politics, culture, and life in el D.F., the federal district. He lays out the intricacies of Mexico’s economic inequalities, its sex and age discrimination, its traffic jams, and its deep-seated corruption. But he also illuminates the thriving high- and low-brow art scenes, from well-respected galleries and theaters to lucha libre (Mexico’s version of professional wrestling). Lida explores the country’s cabarets, cantinas, and street food, as well as the coexistence of traditional markets and Wal-Marts that make the city — and Mexico — what it is now.

The United States and Mexico: Between Partnership and Conflict. By Jorge I. Domínguez and Rafael Fernández de Castro. Routledge, 2001.

At the turn of the twentieth century, strongman Porfirio Díaz lamented, “Poor Mexico! So far from God, so close to the United States.” Some still share that view, but whatever the tone of bilateral relations, all would agree that Mexican politics cannot be understood in isolation from the United States. Expertly dissecting the complicated relationship of these two neighbors, Jorge Domínguez and Rafael Fernández de Castro analyze the impact of the end of the Cold War, internal changes within Mexico and the United States, and the creation and strengthening of bilateral and multilateral institutions over the last two decades. The authors show how these multiple factors led to closer ties in areas as diverse as security, the economy, and the border.

The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration, and Security Since 9/11. By Edward Alden. Harper, 2008.

Mexico’s possible futures cannot be fully understood without a thorough comprehension of U.S. concerns over and approaches to border management. Edward Alden skillfully investigates the transformations of U.S. border policy since 9/11 — in particular, the rise of immigration enforcement as the predominant means of protecting the United States against further terrorist attacks. This shift has had strong repercussions for Mexico, because of the 2,000-mile-long border it shares with the United States, its estimated ten million citizens living in El Norte, and the deep economic and social links between many U.S. and Mexican communities. It also has had significant consequences for policymakers trying to develop more effective bilateral relations, as this mindset influences approaches to issues of organized crime, trade and economic development, and the health and safety of populations on both sides of the border.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr user kgardinger.)

For those of you who may prefer to read in Spanish, my Foreign Affairs article on Mexico has been translated and appears in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs Latinoamerica, which you can find here.

President Obama has recognized that Mexico should be a high priority for his administration. In the issue of Foreign Affairs that hit the newsstands today I argue that U.S. and Mexican interests will be best met if the United States goes beyond the current focus on border control and support for Mexico’s public safety institutions and pursues a more ambitious goal: supporting Mexico’s democracy. I hope you enjoy reading it and look forward to any comments you may have.

(Photo: Presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon at Los Pinos. Courtesy of El Enigma at Flickr.)

The drug cartels’ operations are fueled by one thing: money. This money buys guns, buys people, and buys power. The vast majority of this money – estimated at some $15-20 billion dollars a year – comes from drug sales in the United States. These profits are then sent back to Mexico, and fuel the insecurity and violence.

Mexican immigrants also send back large amounts of money – about $25 billion in remittances every year – to aid their families and help support their communities. This occurs mostly through money transmitters such as Western Union or through informal mechanisms such as “viajeros”—individuals who travel between countries carrying remittances in cash. Many immigrants use these means – rather than formal bank accounts – because they are underregulated and therefore less threatening to those without documents. U.S.-issued personal identification cards are not usually required and few questions are asked.

These same characteristics make these systems attractive to DTOs. The U.S. government, through the Department of Homeland Security as well as through state and local efforts, is beefing up efforts to target these flows. DHS is focusing more resources on bulk cash smuggling, sending 360 more officers and agents to the border as part of a recently launched multi-agency $700 million dollar plan. In one week in March DHS seized $4.5 million in south-bound bulk cash on the border. On the state level, Arizona in particular has been very active. Attorney General Terry Goddard has brought seizure warrants against suspect money transfers, and between 2003 and 2007 has seized over $17 million through intercepted wire transfers. Nevertheless, these are paltry fractions of the money heading south. Drug profits mingle among and are camoflouged by the steady stream of remittances sent by Mexican migrants in the United States. Finding the DTOs funds among the billions sent every year by millions of people without proper documentation in the U.S. will remain a huge challenge.

Immigration reform would alleviate in part this security challenge. While legislators differed in recent years over various issues, every realistic immigration reform proposal presented includes a process for undocumented immigrants to step forward and undergo background checks in order to receive proper documentation. This process would, first of all, help authorities identify criminals among the undocumented immigrant population. It would also facilitate migrants’ access to formal banking, and in the process help separate legal and illegal money flows and transactions. Bringing the United States’ over 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows would limit the DTOs main monetary hideout.

Immigration reform would also cut into DTOs profits in other ways. As the border tightened and the cartels’ territories changed, many DTOs diversified their businesses beyond drugs into kidnapping, extortion and other types of smuggling – including people. The tighter border means would-be immigrants are increasingly using coyotes, or smugglers, to help them cross, and in the process funding these criminal organizations. The rates charged by smugglers have climbed precipitously in recent years from about $500 to close to $3,000, and there are also reports that some force migrants to carry drugs with them as part of their payment. An immigration reform that recognizes the supply and demand forces in the bilateral labor market, and provides a legal means for Mexicans to enter the United States would cut back on this flow of illegal entries, again hurting the profits of the drug cartels.

Finally, a recent Departmant of Justice Report shows that Mexican DTOs have established networks in over 200 U.S. cities. This distribution chain – the anchor of their business – thrives in part because these nefarious elements can hide among a larger population forced to live underground. Fearing deportation, undocumented individuals are unlikely to contact the authorities about suspicious activity, to report crimes, or to step forward to cooperate with U.S. authorities. Immigrants’ marginal status in the United States gives many criminals refuge.

As Mexico becomes a foreign policy priority, the Obama administration should not lose sight of the broader bilateral relationship. A myopic focus on security will not only limit a much broader agenda, but it will hinder the very efforts to improve security. Issues of security, immigration, trade, the environment, and infrastructure are interrelated, and success in one area will remain dependent on success in the others.

 Photo courtesy of Flickr user Daquela Manera under a Creative Commons license.

Brazen assassinations, kidnappings, and political intimidation by drug lords conjure up images of Colombia in the early 1990s. Yet today, it is Mexico that is being engulfed by escalating violence. In 2007, drug related killings topped 2,250; in 2008 they reached nearly 6,000. Drug cartels are adopting guerrilla-style tactics – sending heavily-armed paramilitary battalions to attack police stations, ambush military brigades, and assassinate high-level security officials, political officials, and journalists. They also are adopting innovative public relations strategies to encourage recruits and intimidate their enemies and the population in general: hanging narcomantas–drug banners–in public places, placing videos on YouTube depicting gruesome murders, and more recently staging street protests against the military’s presence in some of Mexico’s largest cities and most violent regions.

Mexico’s drug business has changed significantly since the 1980s. Previously primarily middlemen, Mexican drug cartels now produce, transport, and distribute drugs. Every year over 500 metric tons of cocaine, 15,500 metric tons of marijuana, 18 metric tons of heroin, and a still unknown amount of methamphetamines make their way through Mexico into the United States. These cartels also supply Mexico’s growing domestic market for illegal substances, and their networks have become increasingly sophisticated. U.S. and Mexican interdiction efforts in the last two decades weeded out mom-and-pop operations, leading drug trafficking organizations to professionalize their operations and add former Mexican military officials, some of them U.S.-trained commandos, to their payrolls. They also diversified their business structures, adding new products (such as meth) and moving into U.S.-based distribution and production.

Sending in the Army

Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon has not taken the growing power — and increasing violence — of the drug cartels stoically. At the start of his term a little over two years ago, he launched his own war on drugs, deploying over 30,000 military troops in several states to quell the violence and take back the streets from narco-traffickers. He has pushed through legislation to reform the judicial system and to revamp Mexico’s intelligence gathering and federal police forces. He opened an academy to train federal-level police officers and instituted new evaluations to test police officer honesty (in particular potential links to narco-traffickers).

Calderon sees the increasing violence and brazenness of the cartels in recent months as evidence that the government’s multipronged attack on the drug cartels is working. The increased bloodletting is taken as a sign of cartel disorder and even disintegration, as drug kingpins are arrested and “business as usual” disrupted. Others are less sure, seeing the growing number and audacity of attacks as a threat to the very state. Newspaper pundits have already dubbed the military effort as “Calderon’s Iraq.” While the vast majority of the public, according to opinion polls, lauds Calderon for his efforts, they increasingly question whether the president’s campaign can succeed. Polls also show that most Mexicans distrust the police, highlighting that the challenges to law and order also come from within the government.

At this juncture, it is still unclear who will “win” this war on drugs. What is clear is the outcome is vital to the United States, given that the two countries share the most active border in the world (with over 500,000 crossings each day), and that Mexico is the United States’ second largest export market, our third largest oil supplier, most significant source of immigrants, and largest source of illegal drugs.

Stirrings in ‘El Norte’

The broader U.S. foreign policy community only recently woke up to this mounting violence next door. Retiring CIA chief Michael Hayden stated in January that Mexico could be as serious a challenge as Iran for the Obama administration, and may be more problematic than Iraq. The U.S. Joint Forces Command’s “Joint Operating Environment 2008″ depicts a rapid and sudden collapse in Mexico (as well as Pakistan) as one of its “worst case scenarios” — unlikely, but possible. Mexico’s nefarious criminal organizations have already infiltrated across the border. In fact, the U.S. Justice Department identifies Mexicans gangs as the “biggest organized crime threat to the United States.”

What can and should the United States do? First, the United States should “do no harm” to its southern neighbor. This, essentially, involves the United States getting its own house in order and enforcing its own laws. U.S. gun laws prohibit the sale of weapons and ammunition to foreign nationals or “straw buyers.” They also forbid the unlicensed export of guns. Nevertheless, the Mexican government and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) have tracked over 90 percent of the guns used by the cartels in Mexico to U.S. gun shops and shows, most of them within miles of the border. Enforcing U.S. gun laws and inspecting traffic on the border going south — not just north — would help reduce the tools of violence in Mexico.

South-bound traffic inspections would also hinder the smuggling of large amounts of cash from U.S. drug sales. Estimates of these flows range widely, but most believe some $15 billion to $20 billion heads across the U.S. border into the hands of Mexico’s drug cartels each year. This number overwhelms the $400 million in security-oriented funds the U.S. government provided to the Mexican government for 2009 (until last year it was only $40 million). The successful CIA-based Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, ramped up in the years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 to thwart terrorist financing, should be replicated to go after drug-related money.

It is also time for the United States to shift the emphasis of its drug policy toward demand reduction. Numerous studies show that a dollar spent in the United States in the drug war is vastly more effective than those put toward eradication and interdiction abroad. Furthermore, a study by RAND found that, in the longer term, treatment is more than five times as effective as conventional enforcement. By reducing the number of hardcore addicts (and their willingness to pay almost anything for a fix), prevention and treatment can lower the drug profits that buy guns, corrupt law enforcement agents, and undermine the Mexican government.

The United States should also work with Mexico to tackle this mutual problem. Until just last year, the United States provided less than $40 million dollars a year in security funding to its southern neighbor — in stark contrast to the over $500 million designated for Colombia. This changed with the passage of the Merida Initiative last June, which provides Mexico with $1.4 billion worth of equipment, software, and technical assistance over a three-year period. While an important corrective from the past, the Merida Initiative cannot be the full extent of U.S. involvement in Mexico’s security. It needs to be just the start of a more comprehensive program to the broader — and perhaps more intractable problems — that Mexico faces.

Building Institutions

While explicitly recognizing the need to reform and strengthen police and judicial institutions, Merida’s first year of funding is equipment heavy. Given the long-time horizons of institution-building work, back-loading U.S. support for these efforts pushes the long-term sustainability of any successes further down the road. In addition, the Merida Initiative ignores the most difficult aspects of Mexico’s situation — namely the failure of state and local law enforcement. Drug money decimated these front lines through cooptation and repression. Local civil servants are those most apt to face the difficult choice of “plata o plomo” — money or death. The deep-seated dysfunction of the local police and court systems forced Calderon to rely on the military. But the military cannot permanently fill this void. Nor can the federal police — comprising a mere 5 percent of the 380,000 officers in Mexico — take on the burden of national security. Mexico must strengthen state and local law enforcement to democratically reassert control throughout its territory. The United States (and Mexico) must recognize this reality, and refocus efforts accordingly.

Drug trafficking is a mutually-created problem demanding cooperative solutions. As long as U.S. demand for illegal drugs persists, vendors from Mexico (and elsewhere) will supply this lucrative market. Increased cooperation, funding, and law enforcement actions will not “end” the drug trade. Realistically, the best the United States and Mexico can hope for (given the presence of the illegal drug market) is for organized crime to decline from a threat to the state in Mexico to a law enforcement problem, similar to the illegal drug business in the United States and now in countries like Colombia.

The United States and Mexico are now inextricably intertwined through their economies, their societies, and their security. The United States benefits from Mexico’s successes, but also shares its challenges. In this new phase of the war against drugs, neither country can afford to lose.

Tuesday’s results show that Latinos were crucial in many states that switched from red to blue. In 2004 56% of Florida’s Latinos (639,225) voted for George Bush, propelling him to a 5% (380,978 vote) victory. This time around, 634,500 Latinos—57%—voted for Obama, propelling him to victory with a 2.5% (204,577 votes) margin. Despite the still solid Republican vote of Florida’s Cuban-Americans, the growing non-Cuban Latinos pushed Obama over the top. Latino votes for Obama also exceeded his margin of victory in Colorado and New Mexico. In Nevada and Virginia, Latino votes also played an important, if not decisive, role in moving Nevada and Virginia into the Obama camp. All told, without the Latino vote, Obama would have won 41 fewer electoral college votes. Not a deal breaker, but this demographic helped orchestrate his electoral college landslide last Tuesday.

Nearly one out of every two new Americans is Latino, meaning this demographic could increasingly dominate the future electorate. But to do so, they have to get out the vote. While 10 million voters is a record, it means that nearly 7 million eligible Latino voters didn’t make it to the polls. That places Latino turnout at 58% – below the country’s 62%, and particularly lower than white voters’ 67% . To strengthen their political heft, and shape the issues that matter to them such as education, the cost of living, jobs, health care, and immigration, turnout will have to increase. As Latinos expand to become 30% of our population (expected by 2042) the question will be whether this population resides in the heart, rather than the margins, of American democracy.