This article appeared in the spring issue of the Americas Quarterly. It can be accessed in full here.
Open any Mexican newspaper today and the drug carnage is front and center. In the last three years, narco-related murders surpassed 18,000, nearly 8,000 of these occurred in 2009 alone. The macabre nature of the violence ratcheted up too, featuring heads rolling across an Acapulco disco floor, a “stewmaker” admitting to dissolving some 300 bodies in acid and a dead man’s face stitched onto a soccer ball. The drug cartels openly taunt the authorities and each other, hanging narcomantas, or banners, over major thoroughfares boasting about their latest kills and threatening future violence if not left alone. Both the number of the attacks and their brazenness—particularly in states such as Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Michoacán—are unprecedented.
Yet crime-related violence in Mexico is not new. Mexico has always been a supplier of illegal markets in the United States, from alcohol in the prohibition era, heroin during World War II, marijuana throughout the 1960s, and in recent decades, a variety of drugs including cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamines. As illicit businesses without access to formal contracts and courts, disputes and “mergers and acquisitions” have traditionally been settled with blood on the streets.
What has changed in recent decades is the scale of Mexico’s narcotics operations. U.S. demand has grown and diversified, and Mexico has increasingly become the primary supplier. While in 1990, 50 percent of U.S.-bound cocaine came through Mexico, today the figure is 90 percent.
It’s also important to note that the power base of the hemisphere’s drug trade has shifted from Colombia to Mexico. After four decades and billions of dollars, the U.S. “war on drugs” has pushed the epicenter of these illegal criminal networks closer to the U.S. border. The sheer amount of money that has accompanied this fundamental shift to transportation and smuggling just south of the U.S. border has upped the stakes. More resources have transformed the cartels into increasingly sophisticated organizations—with more professional enforcement arms.
Mexico’s democratization throughout the 1990s, which upset the long-standing collusion between some members of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and particular favored drug traffickers, has been another contributing factor. The PRI’s eroding political monopoly brought in new actors, undermined old deals, and opened up the illicit sector to those previously kept out in the cold. The combination of more lucrative opportunities, heightened competition and changes to the political game created dramatic uncertainty in the market, escalating the bloodshed. Legacies of the PRI’s 70-year rule—in particular the political manipulation of law enforcement and judicial branches, which limited professionalization and enabled widespread corruption—further aggravated the situation, leaving the new government with only weak tools to counter increasingly aggressive crime networks…
Three weeks ago, Reynosa, Mexico–just across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas–exploded in violence. The Zetas and the Gulf cartels, once allies, began what may become a fight to the death. The turf war over a lucrative passageway to the United States reportedly claimed over one hundred lives, though no official headcount is available, as observers bemoan the lack of official presence–the local government as well as the army.
But what happened some eight hundred miles to the west on Saturday in Ciudad Juarez, when three U.S. consulate workers–two of them U.S. citizens–were killed in their cars in broad daylight wasn’t likely masterminded by drug cartel leaders. Such assassinations would be bad for cross-border business. Instead, this first case of serious violence against U.S. citizens in the “war on narcotraffickers” waged by President Felipe Calderon’s administration was probably committed by one of Ciudad Juarez’s gangs. Initial intelligence points to the Aztecas, a local gang of hitmen who have worked with “La Linea,” the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel, which was also implicated in the January 31 massacre of sixteen youths at a birthday party.
In places like Ciudad Juarez, the prevalent depiction of a battle between highly organized and disciplined drug cartels is misleading. Instead, these “organizations” are sprawling networks full of freelancers who might work one day for a cartel, the next on their own or with a local gang. Some of the violence of recent years is between street toughs and gangs, often resolving local turf wars. This growing problem, while fueled by the money and guns associated with the drug trade, is distinct from the presence of multinational criminal drug-trafficking organizations.
Ciudad Juarez today presents a bleak picture. City infrastructure and manpower are overwhelmed; the dominant maquila factories offer only low-wage labor; and over 40 percent of the city’s youths are neither in school nor lawfully employed. Exclusion from the hope of joining Mexico’s developing middle class along with weak control mechanisms mean disaffected youth coalesce around an alternative source of social “status”–urban gangs.
In the aftermath of the shooting, President Obama vowed to continue to work with the Calderon government “to break the power of the drug trafficking organizations that operate in Mexico and far too often target and kill the innocent.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed to “ensure that the perpetrators . . . are brought to justice,” reasserting that “this is a responsibility we must shoulder together, particularly in border communities where strong bonds of history, culture, and common interest bind the Mexican and the American people closely together.”
The United States should support Mexico during this moment–as the events of the past few weeks and this weekend show how closely tied Mexico’s stability and safety are to our own. Yes, weapons and equipment are needed for Mexico’s police forces–particularly at the local level where beat cops often patrol without bulletproof vests and in rundown squad cars. Many are even required to buy their own bullets.
But it is not just more gun power that Mexico needs. Instead, it is a functioning police and court system, a better and more open education system, and programs for early intervention, and professional development for at-risk youth. Partnerships between the United States and a wide range of agencies and stake holders at Mexico’s federal, state, and, most importantly, local levels will be vital for the coordination and pooling of resources and expertise.
This broader challenge of reknitting Mexico’s social fabric in places such as Ciudad Juarez is what Mexico struggles most with today. In light of the weekend violence, the United States should prioritize efforts that will assist Mexico in pushing through the changes that will actually matter, changing today’s violent dynamic for the long term.
Philip Caputo paints a grim picture of Mexico’s current war on drugs in which appears in the December 2009 issue of The Atlantic. His pessimism reflects more than just skyrocketing murders in places such as Ciudad Juarez, or the seeming inability of the local police forces and courts to get to the bottom of these crimes. His chief concern revolves around Mexico’s military.
Caputo suggests that the military is in cahoots with the drug cartels today, much as they were in the past. Laying out what he can piece together from the few wary interviewees willing to speak to him, he depicts an independent military dismissive of human rights in the best case, and a military turned cartel in the worst. With both the Calderon and the U.S. government pinning their hopes in the war on drugs on this military, either scenario is bad news.
However corrupt the military is today, there is a fundamental difference from the earlier parallels he poses, and these differences matter for Mexico’s future. In the 1980s the secretary of defense was found to be working with no less than three drug cartels, and in the 1990s Mexico’s “drug czar” was discovered to be on the payroll of the Juarez cartel. But these incidences were part of a larger systematic relationship between drug traffickers and the long-standing ruling political party, the PRI. The military’s past drug ties can’t be seen in isolation from an organized system of control and enrichment constructed by the PRI that also encompassed the police, courts, and politicians.
Today, it isn’t that corruption has ended. But it is no longer as centralized and coordinated as in the past. Democratization opened up not just the political system to different political parties, but also the illicit economy – effectively ending the unwritten contracts that existed for years between the PRI and particular drug traffickers.
What this means is that corruption in the military today is more autonomous than in the past – not linked to a larger system, not controlled or checked by any political party, and perhaps not coming from the top of the chain of command. For some, this may be even worse news – well armed forces with no master. But, this shift may also mean that it is now much more possible to attack corruption – whether in the military or other parts of the government. With each pocket today no longer part of the larger functioning of an authoritarian system, a focused combination of vetting, training, prosecution, and long-term institution building could yield results. Mexico’s corruption remains a very difficult, but no longer insurmountable problem. And the current democratic political dynamic – forcing politicians to appeal to voters – may increase the chances that the Mexican government goes down a different road.
This better outcome is by no means guaranteed. It will take an incredible amount of work and resources over a long period of time. But the underlying dynamics today are quite different, and they provide Mexico – and the United States –an opportunity so that in ten years another journalist will not be writing a similar “Fall of Mexico” story.
Since Calderon took office nearly 2 years ago, crime has increased at an alarming rate. Spilling beyond border drug violence, assaults, shootouts and kidnappings frighten citizens across the country. Perceived widespread corruption in the ranks of public security forces heightens the unease. In the wake of a particularly high profile and gruesome kidnapping/killing, Mexico’s civil society marched on mass in August 2008, demanding change. In response, local and national governments signed a pact-the “Acuerdo Nacional por la Seguridad, la Justicia y la Legalidad”-to improve Mexico’s public security.
Based on this agreement on October 22, 2008, President Calderon sent two reforms to Congress to overhaul Mexico’s federal police system, combining existing forces and redrawing responsibilities. Mexico’s federal police is currently composed of two separate federal forces: the Agencia Federal de Investigacion (AFI) and the Policia Federal Preventiva (PFP). Although on the operational side both forces report to the Ministry of Public Security (SSP), on administrative issues the AFI is linked to the Attorney General’s office, the PGR. Reforming two already-existing laws, the Federal Police Law and the Federal Attorney General Office’s (Procuraduria General de la Republica, PGR) Law, the new bills would merge these two police forces into one single branch under the SSP. This should, according to the Calderon administration, clarify the different roles of the SSP and the PGR and as a result strengthen their mandates. The executive argues that the new centralized police force will make the federal police more efficient, more effective, and less corrupt.
If congress approves the reforms, the first one would transform the PFP into an autonomous new Federal Police. The second reform would reorganize the PGR and change the process of selection and training of its officials in the effort to improve its performance. In this process, the AFI would disappear. Its officers could join the new Federal Police police force, but only after they prove- by undergoing an invigorated evaluation and certification process- that they are qualified (i.e. not corrupt among other skills).
It is good to see the Mexican government taking on these serious challenges, but it is not all that clear that the reforms will improve the situation. Given that today’s PFP suffers from corruption, it is unclear how the consolidation of authority and renaming of its force will clean up the system. Mexico’s past two Presidents also revamped the federal police with great fanfare, but with few material results. The infiltration by drug traffickers into the most elite forces combating organized crime, as was revealed last month, is just the most recent reminder that Mexico’s police forces do not have adequate measures in place to stem corruption. The proposed laws don’t look to change this situation.
Furthermore, while the new police force’s greater autonomy could increase efficiency, it will also reduce its interaction with the PGR. Whether the reforms then boost the new police’s ability to investigate and procure evidence on crime is a question.
Lastly, corruption is not exclusive to the federal police forces. State and local police forces, as well as the army and other government agencies (which are now all involved in the battle against organized crime) are all contaminated with corruption. The federal police accounts for less than 5 percent of Mexico’s total police presence. Therefore, although at this point almost any change is welcome, the Mexican government must address the dire situation of local police forces. It also needs to tackle the impunity (due to malfunctioning court systems) that allows corruption to flourish. Though seemingly insurmountable, cleaning up all these links in the “rule of law” chain are necessary to turn back the tide of organized crime, and better the lives of ordinary Mexican citizens.
I’ve been in Rio de Janeiro these last two days. The police presence in this city is impressive, as the city and state government prepare for the Pan American games in a couple of weeks. Police cars are spread throughout the city on all the major roadways and along the beaches. Nevertheless, just yesterday there was a gun fight between the police and the gangs, centered in the favelas located near the international airport. Let’s hope the city can pull off this international event without any real problems.
