Soldiers stand guard in their military vehicle outside a clandestine drug processing laboratory discovered in Zapotlanejo (Courtesy Reuters).

There are many theories out  there about why we have seen a huge uptick in violence in Mexico – now running close to 25,000 homicides a year. An interesting academic paper by Melissa Dell, PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),  tests one particular theory – elaborated by Eduardo Guerrero among others — that the policies spearheaded by Calderón and the PAN more generally have actually caused the increase in violence.  To do so she uses statistical models to examine how PAN victories in close mayoral elections affect violence locally, and whether they have “spillover effects”, causing traffickers to divert their routes to neighboring municipalities.

She finds that when a new PAN mayor comes in after a close election, homicides become 9 percent more likely, and drug traffickers are much more prone to have confrontations with the police. The movement of drugs also shifts to nearby towns  — causing an increase in violence there — confirming the so-called cucaracha, or cockroach, effect.  Dell argues that government’s policy is behind these statistically significant differences, and specifically that  the PAN’s decisions — from top to bottom — to take on drug traffickers more aggressively than other parties is behind the surge.

This rigorous analysis is extremely helpful, and is the type of work that academics should be sharing with policymakers on both sides of the border. Yet we should also be mindful of the limitations.  For one, Dell only considers locally produced drugs – marijuana, heroin, meth – leaving out the biggest cash cow, cocaine. Her analysis also exclusively focuses on drugs and not organized criminal groups’ other businesses such as extortion, kidnapping and human trafficking (she does nod to these, but finds no adequate dataset to use). As the business model has changed, so too have the targets, bringing these criminal groups much closer to the general population –as customers and as prey.

This leads to the third limitation – the assumption that “more than 85 percent of the [drug] violence consists of people involved in the drug trade killing each other,” a figure repeated a number of times without any footnotes. Though this has also been the mantra of the federal government over the last five years, so far neither the Mexican government nor outside sources have provided any proof that this is true. Of the nearly 50,000 drug trade-related deaths since 2006, the Attorney General’s office has investigated less than 1,000 (and solved less than 350). Given the shifting commercial interests of the criminals (bringing them closer to innocent civilians), it seems doubtful that the deaths are  still almost all between the gangsters themselves, or that the percentage of bad guys killing bad guys hasn’t changed.  Indeed, as a recent Human Rights Watch report points out, there are many cases of misclassification, where the authorities presume that murder victims are linked to drug traffickers until proven otherwise (which they rarely are, since the Attorney General’s office investigates less than 2 percent of the killings). The rise in extrajudicial killings by the military, also laid out in detail by Human Rights Watch, further questions these claims.

Finally Dell makes the assumption –  repeated in the press and elsewhere – that drug-related violence picked up with Calderón and his “war against narcotraffickers.” But the data show that the uptick started earlier, under president Fox, increasing some 40 percent from 2004 to 2005, and another 25 percent from 2005-2006. This doesn’t necessarily disqualify a PAN-ista effect (given both Fox and Calderón hail from the same party), but it needs to be explored more, as the security policies of the two differed in some respects.

The paper provides some policy suggestions, particularly regarding how to best use scarce law enforcement resources (for starters, don’t set up roadblocks). But the other more ominous implication is that if drug traffickers are rational economic actors, and PAN victories are so costly for them (in terms of relocating their routes or bringing in competitors), it makes sense for them to invest up front – and buy more local elections. As we head into 2012, all should be worried about this conclusion.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

An obvious question is how does this affect crime and violence? The answer is less obvious. Overall, the data shows no straightforward correlation. Patrick Corcoran lays out many other factors that affect public safety, including each officer’s moral compass,  the chances of getting caught the severity of the punishment. Daniel Sabet’s study on corruption within the Tijuana police makes this point, laying out the complicated calculus  behind an officer’s decision to fall in (or not) with the bad guys.

Still, the graph below of police salary vs. homicide rate by state suggests that police pay does matter. While we see a lot of variation at the low and the middle end of the scale, high salaries and low violence are strongly correlated. The top nine payers– including states that are in drug traffickers’ line of fire (e.g. Baja California) –  have relatively few murders per capita. While not the only and last word, this should encourage lagging state governments to rethink their spending priorities.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

At least 27 people were found dead in the Guatemalan village near the border with Mexico last May. Police look at a message written with a victim's blood, which reads: ‘What’s up, Otto Salguero, you bastard? We are going to find you and behead you, too. Sincerely, Z200.’ (Courtesy Reuters).

In the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s recent hearing, “Has Merida Evolved? Part One: The Evolution of Drug Cartels and the Threat to Mexico’s Governance,” Committee Chairman Connie Mack (R-Fla), among others, expressed his support for a U.S. counterinsurgency program (COIN) to fight Mexican drug traffickers. Calling the cartels “a well-funded criminal insurgency raging along our southern border,” Mack said the only way to win the drug war is through an “all U.S. agency” COIN approach, which would require greater U.S. military involvement.

I’d tend to agree instead with this article by Patrick Corocan, which says that sending U.S. troops into Mexico will not provide a long-term solution to the country’s security challenges, first because the nature of narco-violence is distinct from that of an insurgency (so a COIN response to it would be inappropriate) and because of the “practical difficulties” involved in such an approach (including a popular backlash to it in Mexico).

This week the U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control released its report, “Responding to Violence in Central America,” which draws attention to the rapid escalation of violence in the region – most of it tied to the ramped up activity of organized crime, as detailed by the Woodrow Wilson Center study I discussed last week. The report offers a number of policy recommendations to deal with the problem, the most critical (and innovative) of which include placing more emphasis on extraditions of drug traffickers to the United States, improving witness protection programs and expanding cooperation between U.S. law enforcement and regional counterparts. It also notes that while U.S. security assistance for Central America has grown over the past three years, it is likely to stagnate – or even decline – in the future,  making it even more critical for countries in the region to seek other sources of security funding by reaching out to other donors and to the domestic private sector.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Governors (L-R) Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan of Baja, Humberto Moreira Valdes of Coahuila, Texas Governor Rick Perry, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jose Natividad Gonzalez Paras of Nuevo Leon, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano and Eduardo Bours Castelo of Sonora pose as characters from the movie "Terminator" at the 26th Border Governors Conference (Courtesy Reuters).

This week the Mexican state of Baja California will host the two-day Border Governor’s Conference. Started nearly two decades ago, the annual meeting brings together governors from all four U.S. and six Mexican border states to discuss the issues directly affecting their states and citizens. At its height in the early 2000s, the governors and their ministers met not just with each other but also with representatives from Commerce, Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and other departments and agencies to influence border-centered debates in both Washington, DC and Mexico City.

But in recent years the conference has fallen on hard times, a victim of polarizing politics. The 2009 session hinted at the divides, as the governors of Arizona, California and Texas failed to make it to Monterrey due to “scheduling conflicts.” It hit its nadir in 2010 in the wake of Arizona SB 1070. The Mexican governors wrote a letter calling the law “discriminatory [and] racist” and announced their plan to boycott the meeting if hosted, as planned, by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in Phoenix. Brewer cancelled the conference in retaliation. In the end, Governor Richardson of New Mexico held the meeting, but no other U.S. governors attended, leaving the future of this consultative mechanism in limbo.

The conference also has suffered from a sprawling agenda and size. With its initial successes the agenda items grew, as did the number of participants. In recent years there have been some 25 working groups on topics ranging from wildlife to science and technology. The influx of hundreds of staffers and activists has made the process much more cumbersome, and reduced the intimacy and spirit of cooperation that guided the conference in the past. Reduced in large part to the signing of agreements and photo opportunities, many governors (particularly from the United States), began skipping the event.

As the United States and Mexico search for common ground and mutual solutions to pressing problems, it is time to revitalize this mechanism. It should refocus on practical problems facing the border states and their residents. Rather than covering the gamut, the agenda should be streamlined to emphasize a few vital issues. It must enable leaders to actually meet and discuss the serious challenges facing their states and constituencies, re-energizing the consultative element of the event. Most pressing today is security, where policy so far has been guided from the center, even though the effects are concentrated on the border.

Once refocused, the border governors need to organize better to influence their respective governments, shaping policies that in turn shape the border. One potential model is the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER), which brings together state legislators, governors, civil society and businesses to lobby the federal government and strengthen U.S.-Canada border security and the region’s economic competitiveness. Another is scaling up the San Diego Association of Governments’s (SANDAG) annual binational conference, which brings together local leaders in California and Baja California to address just one broad agenda item at each meeting – such as the economic impact of wait times at shared border crossings.

As Arizona Governor, Janet Napolitano repeatedly said that one of her closest day-to-day working relationships was with Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours. This reality – that cross-border issues and events strongly affect border state residents’ daily lives — hasn’t changed. Revitalizing the Border Governor’s Conference is one means to address these shared challenges, and reincorporate regional problem-solving strategies into larger U.S.-Mexico debates.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Narco Killings 2011 Map (Courtesy WM Consulting).

There has been much debate in Mexico about the number of drug-related killings since the start of drug war in 2006. The Mexican government provides an official database that puts this figure at some 35,000. Others, such as Reforma, provide an estimate near the official number — but more current — now totalling some 37,000.

As important as the total numbers is their breakdown. Here, the Mexican government provides some estimates, sorting the murders according to whether they were acts of aggression, executions or occurred as a result of a confrontation. Walter McKay at WM Consulting has built a useful tool by scouring local newspapers in many (but not yet all) Mexican states. This map depicts the murders according to whether the victim was a civilian, politician (or other high profile individual), or law enforcement official, and also shows the sites of car bombs and mass graves. McKay puts the number of deaths as a result of the drug war at some 47,000, significantly higher than the government estimate. As the policy debates continue, these various sources of information will be vital to informing steps forward.

This week the Woodrow Wilson Center released its report, “Organized Crime in Central America: The Northern Triangle”, which has many well researched and written chapters on the accelerated rise of criminal structures over the past three decades in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. To bolster weak rule of law institutions vulnerable to the influence of organized crime in the region, it argues, the U.S. will need to contribute more funds to the region’s security initiatives – even as individual  countries play a greater part by collecting more taxes. Though overall the picture is disheartening, this useful study lays out the complex factors underlying the violence in Central America today.

It also shows that while all Central American nations struggle with crime and violence, the real security challenges are in the Northern Triangle – where the magnitude and type of organized criminal operations are unparalleled. This finding questions the traditional blanket regional approach taken by the United States (through CARSI), or the way other Latin American or European countries develop multilateral security initiatives within Central America.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Workers harvest soybeans at a farm in Tangara da Serra, Brazil (Paulo Whitaker/Courtesy Reuters).

A recent article by Mariano Turzi argues that soy is the most recent of Latin America’s commodity booms, creating many of the same challenges that metals, minerals, and oil brought in the past. Whether economic booms and busts, populist leaders, or fights between more powerful (e.g. Brazil) and weaker (e.g. Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia) nations in the supply chain, Turzi worries about the fallout for the Southern Cone and its future.

Mexico Evalúa recently released the first study I have seen evaluating the outcomes of Mexico’s New Security Model. The results are mixed, at best. Some of the most fundamental measures differentiating the new security model from its predecessors – such as tracking law enforcement officers and their arms in a national database – have not become universal, and in fact have actually declined in recent years. The huge government outlays – now six times the amounts at the start of Calderon’s term – remain at times unspent and in others poorly accounted for. Accountability in general remains perhaps the biggest challenge. Mexico Evalúa finds it hard to judge these programs from the outside, as few metrics are provided. The military maintains even less oversight than the other security agencies they analyze. But reports such as these are at least a start toward pushing for more openness, evaluation, and in the end, better outcomes.

Finally, the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center’s annual report shows cocaine prices increased by a third and purity decreased by more than two thirds from 2007 to 2010. This seems to have led to a decline in cocaine use – down by almost a quarter — confirming the findings of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration report included in last week’s reads. Less positive, methamphetamine production (north and south of the border) seems to have reached an all time high, driving prices down, while purity has continued its steady climb.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A man holds a symbol of the Patriot Party during a political rally in Solola (Jorge Lopez/Courtesy Reuters).

Front-runner Otto Pérez Molina won 36% of the vote in first round of Guatemala’s presidential elections on Sunday, and will face off against second place finisher Manuel Baldizón in the second round in November. Though winning the runoff election will not be easy for either candidate (both have to build coalitions to clinch a second-round victory); far trickier will be facing Guatemala’s long list of challenges, topped by insecurity.

Guatemala’s murder rate has more than doubled in the last twenty years, reaching a high in 2009 when nearly 6,500 people were killed – 17 a day — more than in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the past four years the government of Álvaro Colom has been unable to quell the violence or bring its perpetrators to justice. During the campaign the leading presidential candidates advocated a mano dura, or iron fist security policy, with Pérez Molina as its most forceful proponent (his Patriot Party has a clenched fist as its emblem). He even proposed bringing back the notorious military task forces used against guerrillas in the 1980s and 1990s, this time to take on drug traffickers.

It is unlikely this strategy will work. Guatemala’s military today doesn’t have the capacity to ramp up its public safety functions. As a part of the 1996 peace agreements (ending 36 years of civil war) the military agreed to downsize. The current force stands at 17,000 troops (roughly 60 percent less than 1990 levels).  Earlier this year, when the government called a state of siege in the northern province of Alta Verapaz taken hostage by traffickers, the military could only send 600 soldiers in to patrol the area – less than one tenth the size of the Mexican military force sent to fight the La Familia cartel in Michoacán in 2006. After the operation, President Colom himself admitted that the military could not match the drug traffickers’ vast resources, noting “just the weapons seized in Alta Verapaz are more than those of some army brigades.”

But the issue is not just one of capacity. Even if the government found the resources to beef up the military, it shouldn’t be the force to take over the fight against organized crime. If deploying the armed forces in Mexico’s drug war is considered controversial, in Guatemala it is decidedly more complicated. The Guatemalan army enjoys considerably less citizen trust than their Mexican counterparts due to their long and ignominious involvement in the country’s brutal civil conflict. The U.N. truth commission report (whose findings Pérez Molina questions) deemed the war a genocide, and blamed the army for 93 percent of the massacres of innocent civilians that occurred. Breaking the peace accords’ promise to keep the military out of citizen security would be a step backward to a past many would rather not revisit.

Growing evidence too suggests the military itself may well have ties to organized crime. Reports from the UN peacekeeping mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA), and a number of NGOs show that long standing military ties with the criminal groups that today work with Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers.  The Kaibiles, an elite special operations force, trained some of the Mexican soldiers that would later become the Zetas, and many former Kaibiles now work full time for the cartels.

If the army is not the right choice for improving security, the only alternative is the National Civil Police (PNC). Unfortunately, the PNC faces many of these same challenges: a lack of manpower, resources, and public trust. Furthermore, the U.S. and the Guatemalan government have tried a number of times, and on the whole failed to reinvent the PNC in the past.

Still, trying again is the least bad alternative. And there are a few hopeful signs from the past year. With new wiretapping, plea bargaining and seized assets laws in place (in no small part due to the work of CICIG), the police have arrested some high-ranking drug traffickers and suspects in high-profile murders. With human rights leader Helen Mack at the helm of a new police reform initiative, some observers are more optimistic about the chances of finally building a professionalized Guatemalan police force.

As the U.S. and other countries in the region look to begin working with the new administration, security assistance – including Mérida funds — should focus on strengthening the national police (and court systems). Despite the PNC’s past failures, and Guatemala’s weak institutions in general, the issue of security is simply too important to let fall by the wayside, or worse, into the wrong hands.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A general view of Sao Paulo, the biggest Latin American city (Paolo Whitaker/Courtesy Reuters).

A new piece by Eduardo Guerrero in Nexos looks at the growing problem of extortion in Mexico. Differentiating it from drug trafficking, he finds it more brutal and violence, and  argues it is on the rise for three reasons: fragmentation of cartels, displacement of crime rings (and their response to expand into new territories), and finally rampant impunity for such acts.

Drug abuse in the United States is on the uptick overall, though use of “harder drugs” seems to be down, according to a recent study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Marijuana use has increased some 20 percent over the last four years, particularly among young people. Today more than one in five Americans aged 18-25 get high on a regular basis. On the other hand, rates of methamphetamine and cocaine abuse have been steadily declining since 2006.

The World Economic Forum released its Global Competitiveness report this week, which measures competitiveness based on twelve benchmarks that include “basic requirements”, such as institutions, “efficiency enhancers” such as market size, and “innovation and sophistication factors”, such as innovation. Among Latin American countries, Mexico had the biggest boost in the rankings, moving up 8 spots from 66^th to 58^th, and improving on 10 of the 12 categories (its only drop was in macroeconomic environment). Brazil also made gains, up 5 places to 53^rd overall (due largely to the size of its internal market and its sophisticated business environment), and Chile remains at the top of the region and the 31^st most competitive nation worldwide. Central American countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua registered steep declines in their ratings, due to weakening institutions and rising insecurity, while Argentina and Venezuela remained generally unchanged, but near the bottom of the list at 84^th and 124^thoverall, respectively.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Passengers on a bus pass a vehicle painted with a slogan during an anti-drugs campaign to mark International Anti-Drug Day in Jakarta (Dadang Tri/Courtesy Reuters).

The “drug war” strategy of the last four decades revolves primarily around  supply side measures. Whether  eradication, interdiction, or arrests, it fixates on stopping the seemingly endless flow of drugs and cash across U.S. borders. But there is obviously another side to the equation – U.S. demand. The United States is the largest consumer of drugs across the globe (though there are signs that the cocaine and marijuana markets in Europe and the developing world are catching up) with 1 in every 7 Americans having tried an illegal substance. Marijuana accounts for the vast majority of that consumption, followed by prescription drugs and cocaine.

Three basic strategies underlie the traditional approach to dealing with drug abuse at home: prevention, treatment and enforcement. Prevention programs seek to stop substance abuse by educating primarily schoolchildren on the dangers of narcotics. Even with their memorable slogans (such as Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign or Drug Abuse Resistance Education’s “D.A.R.E. to resist drugs and violence”) the results have been  disappointing. A number of studies show these efforts – costing millions of dollars – may slightly slow marijuana experimentation among teens.

Treatment programs, particularly when focused on rehab for heavy drug users, are by far the most cost effective U.S. policy. For every million dollars spent, these programs reduce lifetime cocaine consumption by 100 grams.This may not seem like a lot, but it is more than three times as effective as preventive programs and punitive measures. Investing in treatment also yields impressive returns in terms of public safety, as every dollar spent on substance abuse rehabilitation reduces  the costs of associated crime by an estimated seven dollars. Still, soaring dropout rates – even within mandatory programs — question the long-term benefits of formal treatment for the relatively few drug addicts who choose to participate.

A final major element of demand side in the United States has been enforcement, namely incarceration of those selling and using drugs. From 1972-2002, the number of drug offenders behind bars increased twelve-fold (accounting for about half of the total growth of the federal prison population). This has hit African American communities the hardest, as 1 in every 3 black males goes to prison at some point in his life (1 in 15 black adults are currently behind bars). This is at least in part because the punishments for crack are harsher than those for powder cocaine, leading to longer sentences for black vs. white offenders. This style of stepped up enforcement doesn’t seem to have changed the fundamental drug markets, at least not for the better. Cocaine and heroin prices have hit all-time lows, indicating  greater availability, while purity has increased by more than half in recent years. Methamphetamine rose from near obscurity in the early nineties to become the drug of choice for roughly 1.5 million Americans today.

Latin American officials such as presidents Felipe Calderon of Mexico and Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia are increasingly calling on the United States to do more to reduce consumption, and a recent report co-authored by former President of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso urged a “paradigm shift” in global drug policy to treat “drug addiction as a health issue, reducing drug demand through educational initiatives and legally regulating rather than criminalizing cannabis.” So what should the U.S. government do?

Some experts favor legalizing narcotics, putting an end to drug war once and for all. These advocates maintain that making drugs commercially available will replace illicit markets with formal ones, and thus eliminate the violence of the illegal drug trade. Researchers have found that legalizing marijuana would not necessarily lead to a rise in substance abuse (since those that want to get high today can, at least in many states, do it quite easily), and could slash one fifth of Mexican cartels’ profits. Ending the prohibition on harder drugs may not have the same effect, as legalization could prompt more consumption of cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine (because current enforcement against these drugs is more effective than for marijuana). To appreciate the potential costs of a surge in use, one need only to look at the double-edged consequences of ending the prohibition against alcohol. While the likes of Al Capone are history, Americans today are four times more likely to abuse alcohol than all illicit drugs combined. Alcohol-abusers are also more prone to break the law, as more than half of the current prison population committed their crimes drunk.

Other experts (especially those at RAND corp.) suggest we focus our anti-drug resources on enforcement that prioritizes harm reduction. The idea here is not to lock people up indiscriminately, but to go after the most violent drug traffickers and retail dealers. While this may not alter the availability and price of drugs (current policies haven’t done this either), it would they suggest reduce the effects on the larger community and population – whether here in the United States or in places such as Mexico.

For the past three decades Washington has spent the bulk (an average of two thirds) of anti-drug resources on supply side solutions. Even as the U.S. drug control budget expanded by more than 50 percent in recent years, expenditures for demand side policies remained stagnant, growing less than one percent per year over the past decade. Realizing that there is no easy solution on either side of the border, it is time to rethink these strategies, keeping in mind the brief successes and unfortunate failures of the last four decades.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Argentine President Fernandez waves to supporters after hearing the first results of the nationwide primary election in Buenos Aires (Enrique Maracarian/Courtesy Reuters).

The Pew Research Center released the results of a wide-ranging public opinion poll based on interviews with some 800 Mexicans (the study is part of their larger Global Attitudes Project). It finds strong continued support for military – 83 percent favor their role in the drug war – and for U.S.-Mexico security cooperation, with nearly 3 in 4 Mexicans supporting U.S. training and weapons for national security forces. Calderón, despite an economic recession and ever more bloody drug war, still enjoys the confidence of a majority of Mexicans, with 57% saying they view his political influence in a positive light. While these numbers look bad vis-à-vis past Mexican presidents entering their last term in office, other Western Hemisphere leaders (Barack Obama and Sebastian Piñera, for example) would be quite pleased with such levels of support.

A recent survey of the Guatemalan judiciary, on the other hand, paints rule of law institutions in a much more more troubling light. The Plaza Pública study shows that overall Guatemalans see judges as corrupt, controlled (by vested economic interests and other political elites), and inefficient.

This Cefeidas Group report provides an update on the Argentine elections, where Cristina Fernández de Kirchner looks even more likely to win a second term in the October 23rd election, due in part to the weakness of the opposition.

On a different note, Rolling Stone has an in-depth and well written article about La Barbie, a native Texan who rose to become the top drug kingpin in Acapulco. The behind the scenes narrative of his rise and fall shows why going after kingpins will not, on its own, make Mexico safer.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.