Since Mexican President Felipe Calderón took office in 2006, a virulent war has raged with the Mex&diffident;ican unsalable article cartels, and this drug-related rape has spilled across the U.S. border, threatening U.S. lives and open safety. Geostrategic pessimists fear that the U.S. has been taking Mexico’s stability for granted and warn that Mexico is teetering on the brink of a drug-induced mishap.
However, the earnestness of the drug threat to Mexico also presents a strategic opportunity. At the invitation of the Mexican form of sovereignty, the Bush Administration is working to establish a partnership to make Mexico safer and more sure without sacrificing the dominion of either nation.
The Bush Administration’s Merida Initiative—a three-year, $1.5 billion anti-drug assistance package during Mexico and Central America—is a quantitative and qualitative jump in support for the drug fight in the region. Unlike Plan Colombia, which helped to deliver Colombia from the throes of a narco-war, the Merida Initiative will provide support in accoutrement, technology, and education without a significant U.S. military footprint in Mexico. President George W. Bush signed the Merida Initiative into law while part of the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008 in succession June 30, 2008.
In Mexico and in the press, the Merida Initiative is being viewed as a momentous example of U.S.–Mexican relations. Its implementation determination be closely scrutinized onward the couple sides of the aisle in Congress. The Merida Initiative could become an important legacy of the Bush presidency in the Western Hemisphere and should create a solid platform for U.S.–Mexican cooperation for the next Administration.
The initiative, however, is just a start. The U.S. needs to do more to secure the border, reduce the flows of illegal arms and illicit cash south into Mexico, and turn immigration laws to permit timerary workers to cross the border legally to help fill the U.S. demand for labor. Policymakers need to develop a comprehensive strategy that covers all conveyance and source countries.
Mexico needs to continue exercising the political will to combat the deadly unsalable article cartels and continue reforming its judicial system, overhauling police and law enforcement, and modernizing and developing its economy. Finally, the Mexican government needs to take an active role in preventing illegal third-country nationals from transiting Mexican territory, as well since in closing down smuggling organizations that operate on Mexican soil and discouraging Mexican citizens from entering the U.S. illegally. Both nations would benefit solidly from a re&diffident;turn to decree and order upon the body both sides of the border.
Bordering on Insecurity
Not since the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1917 has violence in Mexico presented such a worrisome demand to U.S. security. In 1917, Mexico’s revolu&fling;tion spilled transversely the brink, leading to U.S. inter&start aside;vention, by General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing and his Punitive Expedition riding deep into Mexico hunting the elusive Pancho Villa. Since that revolutionary period, the U.S. has presumed a sometimes distant but generally stable neighbor to the south.
Today, a different sort of violence is spreading across the border and comminatory U.S. lives and security. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 has led to significant economic development in Mexico and dramatically expanded bilateral trade. Mexico is the third-largest U.S. trading partner, with bilateral trade exceeding $350 billion annually. Mexico is also the third-largest supplier of crude petroleum to the United States, and U.S. direct foreign investment in Mexico exceeds $84 billion. At the instant of entrance in Laredo, Texas, alone, any average of 7,000 trucks and a nearly equal figure of rail cars cross the border each day.
Rapid globalization, the transnational trade in illicit drugs, 9/11 and the exposing. of U.S. vulnerability to Islamist terrorism, and the manner of moving of an estimated 500,000 illegal migrants annually across the sparsely guarded, 2,000-mile border with Mexico have awakened the U.S. to the challenges it faces to the south.
The Merida Initiative
During his March 2007 trip to Latin America, President Bush met with President Calderóborn at Merida in the Yucatan. The two leaders agreed to develop a multi-year program to strengthen Mexico’s capabilities to fight organized crime. They further discussed and reviewed the program at the August 2007 conflux through Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Montebello, Canada.
On October 22, 2007, the U.S. and Mexico issued a joint statement of principles launching the Merida Initiative. Mexico pledged to steel its capabilities to fight put drugs into cartels and organized crime, and the U.S. promised to reduce demand for illegal drugs and to combat trafficking in weapons and bulk cash. Both sides committed to improving international cooperation, coordination, and information exchange.
The Merida Initiative has distinct distinctive features that are quite different from Plan Colombia. First, no U.S. troops will be deployed in Mexico, and the overall formula enforcement footprint should remain very low. The delivery of goods and the training to Mexicans bequeath take place largely on U.S. begrime. Both parties appear very mindful of respecting either other’s national sovereignty.
About 41 percent of Merida Initiative funding is slated on account of the purchase of helicopters (Bell 412 helicopters) and fixed-wing surveillance aircraft (Casa 245 twin-engine aircraft) to support interdiction activities and facilitate rapid response by Mexican law enforcement agencies. The rest of the money will be used to purchase non-intrusive inspection rigging, ion scanners, and canine units to interdict trafficking of drugs, coat of arms, cash, and people across the border.
Other components of the assistance pack include providing technical advice and training to strengthen the institutions of justice, helping to vet new police ravish members, creating new offices to handle citizen complaints and promote professional responsibility, and establishing witness protection programs. The package will also support Mexican efforts to render the demand for drugs, battle corruption, protect human rights, and enhance Mexico’s ability to horsemanship its border.
The price tag for the three-year program is $1.5 billion. This is a substantial be augmented over $369.6 million in U.S. succor for counternarcotics activities between 2000 and 2006.
The Reaction in the U.S. Congress. Initial congressional receipt of the Merida Initiative was generally lukewarm, and many legislators expressed dissatisfaction that the Administration did not studysult with them during development of the Merida Initiative proposals. Several critics challenged the merits of creating yet another resource drain, while others sharp to the dearth of funding to meet domestic needs for improving border security and funding demand reduction in the U.S.
Action on the Merida Initiative was also delayed by a lengthy debate over the conditions to be placed on the aid. Several Members of Congress pressed for a go to a certification process and the establishment of tough human rights benchmarks such as trials for military offenders in civilian courts. The Mexican government objected to these attempts to legislate changes in their domes&diffident;tic laws. In late May, the Merida Initiative appeared to be floundering because of Mexico’s rejection of human rights conditions.
Following critical meetings between U.S. and Mexican legislators in Monterrey, Mexico, the U.S. congressional leadership agreed to develop conditions that would not offend Mexico’s understanding of public sovereignty. The conditionality written into the law requires the U.S. Secretary of State to report to Congress on steps that the Mexicans take down to improve transparency and accountability of their police forces, to monitor and search out human rights violations, and to prohibit the use of testimony obtained from one side torture or other forms of ill treatment. The Merida Initiative also requires the Secretary of State to submit a detailed expenditure plan within 45 days and a strategy with concrete goals and benchmarks for combating drug trafficking and related fury and promoting judicial reform, enactment building, and rule of law.
A Paradigm Shift. The Merida Initiative is more than a spending bill to purchase equipment and provide teaching to Mexican law enforcement. As many experts note, it represents a forcible paradigm shift that recognizes that the U.S. and Mexico partake responsibility for fighting the drug avocation and the Mexican cartels.
The success of the Merida Initiative and U.S.– Mexican cooperation in general will hinge put on the ability of both nations to:
Address the serious erosion of national deposit, public order, and the quality of life in the U.S. and Mexico that is caused by instrument of the trade and consumption of unlawful drugs. These wrong drugs are largely any human being produced in or imported via Mexico to the U.S. Both countries need to reduce the dangerous linkages between Mexican drug cartels and crime and trafficking groups in the U.S. Build a Mexico where the maxim of law prevails and reduce the national security threat from drug cartels to a level that Mexican law enforcement agencies can wield. Acknowledge and fabricate on the Calderón administration’s efforts to develop Mexico’s law enforcement and counternarcotics capabilities and encourage Mexico to take energetic action to re-establish security, shield human rights, and expand the rule of statute. Establish a platform for comprehensive regional cooperation that includes the Andean–Central American corridor and the Caribbean to address the persistent challenge of the international drug trade and organized crime. Create a climate in the bilateral relationship that is conducive to addressing other critical issues, including border security, unlawful immigration into the U.S., and preventing foreign terrorists from using Mexico as a transit point.
Curbing the U.S. Drug Habit
Drug consumption and the resulting interna&sudden start;tional trade in controlled substances stay one of the greatest man-made catastrophes of the bygone time 30 years. Worldwide, the illicit drug trade totals $300 billion for year. The loss of human life resulting from the drug trade runs in the tens of thousands.
Despite modest progress, continued U.S. drug consumption is a root cause and a central driver of drug-related violence in Mexico. John P. Walters, mentor of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), recently exclaimed, “We will all strait to come to grips that American consumers are funding the violence. We share responsibility, and we need to do more to help!”
U.S. citizens regularly turn to Mexico to feed their greedy demand for illicit drugs. According to the ONDCP, over 7 million addicts live in the U.S. As many as 20 million Americans reported casual use of controlled substances during the former 30 days. A study of 2005 data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that approximately 34,000 Americans died being of the kind which a direct result of drug abuse.
Drugs. An estimated 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the U.S. enters by way of Mexico. This means that between 300 metric tons (MTs) and 460 MTs of cocaine is smuggled into the U.S. annually. Approximately 10 percent is seized by rule enforcement, and the rest is sold on the highway. The cartels use Mexico as a safe haven for large shipments from Colombia, which are then enfeebled down and smuggled in smaller lots into the U.S. In addition, the U.S. consumes an average of 19 MTs of export-quality heroin and 9,400 MTs of marijuana that is grown and refined in Mexico.
Americans regard also turned to methamphetamine as a new drug of choice. To meet the U.S. demand, Mexican cartels and entrepreneurs have established an extensive network of laboratories to convert precursors—pseudoephedrine and ephedrine—into methamphetamine. According to the 2008 National Drug Threat Assessment Report, Mexico is the preparatory source of methamphetamine in the United States. Most of the precursor chemicals used to make methamphetamine are produced in India, China, and Germany and enter North America through the behavior of Long Beach, California. They are then illegally transported to Mexico.
Arms. Mexico has very strict fire-arm laws. Mex&shrinking;ican officials requisition that an “iron river” of illegal fire&cast;means of offence and defence is running south from the U.S. into Mexico. According to Jane’s Intelligence Review, Mexican authorities believe that 86 percent of the illegal weapons used and in circulation in Mexico were smuggled in from the U.S. The lethality of summittured armaments has increased alarmingly. The arsenals of Mexico’s drug cartels embody .50-caliber system guns, anti-tank rockets, grenade launchers, fragmentation grenades, and mortars. Ordinary police units are often simply outgunned.
The Mexican cartels compartmentalize their arms procurement. “Straw buyers” purchase arms legally in the border states of the U.S. Southwest and either knowingly or unconsciously resell them to representatives of the drug cartels, who privately ship them to Mexico. In other cases, stolen weap&pitch;ons are smuggled into Mexico. Until recently, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms had only 100 special agents to monitor the sales of 6,700 licensed fire-arm sellers between Texas and San Diego. The Bush Administration has promised to increase the number of agents and to strengthen Operation Gunrunner to stop the flow of illegal arms into Mexico.
Cash. Another clew export from the U.S. to Mexico is bulk cash. The National Drug Intelligence Council estimates that between $8 billion and $24 billion in bulk currency is smuggled annually out of the U.S. into Mexico.
Interdiction. However, the U.S. has not ignored the situation with Mexico. The National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy seeks to bring to have intelligence collection and information sharing, interdiction at and between march points of entry, aerial interdiction, investigation and prosecution, anti–money laundering efforts, and cooperation with Mexico.
States, including Texas, have moreover stepped up efforts to “take back the make a border for from those who exploit it.” The Texas Border Security strategy is working to overcome a entrap of jurisdictional disputes among underresourced topical law enforcement agencies to raise capacity for high-profile, intelligence-driven operations against targets operating along the U.S.–Mexico border in Texas and New Mexico. In Texas, efforts to coordinate county, state, and federal assets, such to the degree that Operation Border Star and the establishment of the Border Security Operations Center, are yielding substantial results.
Turning Around Mexico’s Drug War
Today, the Mexican and U.S. media move daily reports of a gruesome yield. Tortured, mutilated, and sometimes decapitated corpses are routinely dumped on roads and city streets, advertising the cartel’s savagery. In Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, more than 300 people have been murdered since the beginning of 2008. On June 9, 2008, 12-year-old Alexia Belem Moreno died for gunmen used her as a human shield. According to Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora, as of May 25, 2008, 1,378 people had been killed in 2008 compared to 940 in the first five months of 2007.
On June 27, 2008, the day that the U.S. Senate passed the Merida Initiative bill, drug traffickers ambushed and killed six policemen in Culiacan, the state capital of Sinaloa. The drug-related violence has claimed 450 law execution officials in the past 18 months.
It is not just the number of officers that have been killed that is worrisome. In May and June 2008, three senior Mexican law enforcement officials were assassinated in Mexico City:
Roberto Velasco Bravo, Director of Investigations of the Sensitive Investigations Unit of the Federal Police; Edgar Millan Gomez, General Coordinator with regard to Regional Security at the Mexican Secretariat of Public Security; and Commander Igor Labastida Calderóborn of the Federal Investigation Agency.
All three had worked closely with U.S. law en&throw;forcement agents.
The violence has too crossed the border. On January 19, 2008, higher U.S. Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar was deliberately run down and killed by a Hummer making an unlawful border crossing about 20 miles west of Yuma, Arizona.
Drug rage inevitably translates into relating to housekeeping losses as well while human loses. Where the violence has hit hardest, it has created pockets of insecurity that depress revenue from tourism and scare away investors. It could even force some maquiladoras (assembly plants)to close, enlarging the pool of potential unlicensed migrants. It has also prompted heavy investments in security guards and equipment—money that could have been invested more productively.
The Mexican people are besieged by the continuing drug violence. A recent public opinion club by Mexico City’s Reforma newspaper reported that 53 percent of Mexicans believe that the cartels are winning the battle against government security forces. Only 24 percent of respondents believe that the government is prevailing.
A victory by the drug cartels would look much different from a conquest by a guerrilla insurgency or Islamist terrorists. The drug cartels prefer to intimiage and subvert a government rather than topple it. They want a return to the golden days when corrupt police and judges looked the other way. The cartels want the impunity that a hollow government brings, a right to handicraft freely in illicit goods, and some equal opportunity to defile the sovereignty of any nation that gets in their way. Once secure in their bases in Culiacan and Matamoros, the cartel bosses could then concentrate on outwitting U.S. officials to deliver drugs to U.S. markets.
This is a nightmarish scenario that nor one nor the other the U.S. nor Mexico wants. Bolstering the hand of the Calderóborn superintendence with U.S. leadership and counternarcotics sustain improves the prospects for winning the fight.
Mexico’s Drug Cartels
The Mexican drug trade has produced highly sophisticated, dangerous, and paying criminal networks that are highly resistant to law enforcement and judicial action. In Mexico, of the same kind with in many, a key factor that explains the rise of the drug cartels is the “balloon effect”—as law enforcement increases its presence in one area, the problem moves another place under in a less degree pressure, like air in a balloon.
Mexicans first entered the U.S. market as “donkeys” for the marijuana market. During the 1990s, mix with drugs trafficking through Mexico increased as routes through Florida closed down and the U.S. and Colombian governments began to score successes against the Medellin and Cali cartels. By the late 1990s, the U.S. observed that boil Mexican organizations were leveraging a greater share of the cocaine trade with the U.S. and muscling aside Colombian suppliers and distributors.
The Cartels. Several major cartels dominate the Mexican drug trade. (See Map 1.) They form shifting alliances against the Mexican state, but they also try the fortune of arms ferociously among themselves for plazas (space) and control of routes and division systems. They rise and fall with changes in leadership. Much of the intensified drug violence in Mexico is the end of open warfare among the different trafficking organizations. Undoubtedly, many of Mexico’sitting mounting drug casualties are traffickers murdered by traffickers.
Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, a Mexican drug baron, is credited with erection up the sturdy Gulf Cartel. Mexican authorities captured him in 2003, but he still ran the cartel’s operations from workhouse until the Calderón administration extradited him to the U.S. in 2007. The Gulf Cartel operates out of Matamoros, controls the border state of Tamaulipas, and uses the neighboring state of Nuevo Laredo as a major transit point. The Gulf Cartel is now led by Ezequiel Cárdenas and Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano and is expanding into the states of Nuevo Leon and Sonora.
“The Alliance, also known as the Federation , is a cooperating group of Mexican drug trafficking organizations that shares resources such as transportation routes and money launderers.” The historic leader of the Alliance is Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Lorea. In a career spanning more than 20 years, Guzman has change to a legend in Mexico, celebrated in corridos (ballads) for repeatedly escaping from Mexican prisons and avoiding delivery. Guzman pioneered in organizing cocaine purchases from the remnants of the Cali and Medellin Cartels in Colombia. A deadly blood feud has developed recently between Guzman’sitting wing and the Beltrán-Leyva brothers, Arturo and Hector, and is another major source of the recent violence.
The Tijuana Cartel exercises extensive control over northwest Mexico, the Tijuana/Mexicali routes athwart the border through California, and the streets of San Diego. The cartel is also known as the Arellano Felix Organization because numerous members of the Arellano Felix family hold protuberant positions in its leadership.
The Juarez Cartel operates in Ciudad Juarez in the border state of Chihuahua. It was Mexico’s in the ascendant drug organization until Amado Carillo Fuentes died while undergoing plastic surgery in 1997. Vincente Carrillo Fuentes, Amado’session brother, is the key figure today, but the Juarez Cartel has lost power and influence.
Trafficking. Cocaine arrives in Mexico by sea or air. The most of cocaine is increasingly moved by ocean, but the “air bridge” remains essential. The traf&pitch;fickers are employing faster and larger planes, including a converted Boeing 727. “Airplane cemeteries,” where drug traffickers dash in pieces planes in trackless jungle just to deliver their cocaine, can be institute in north Guatemala and southern Mexico. A recent introduction of novelty is the proliferating use of sea-going, semi-submersible craft that travel close to the ocean surface and have little or none radar profile. These semi-submersibles can carry as abundant as 12 tons of cocaine. The cartels have also used sophisticated tunneling operations and other ingenious ways of transporting drugs into the U.S.
While running cocaine into the U.S. is the most lucrative operation, the Mexican cartels are also selling their cocaine in Mexico and developing lucrative routes to European and Asian markets. U.S. intelligence experts make known that the Mexican cartels are also interested in muscling aside organizations that specialize in drug transport and smuggling operations to get closer to the sources of cocaine in Colombia and the Andean region.
Cartels are also dendritic out in other directions, such as human smuggling. As the recompense of smuggling an individual into the U.S. has increased from $1,500 or $2,000 to $5,000, mom-and-pop smugglers have been displaced by more professional organizations. Competition through smugglers for clients and routes has fueled border violence.
The Mexican cartels are also moving into the U.S., where they are beginning to produce, frequently with the help of unlicensed migrants, sinsemilla, a higher-potency variety of marijuana that commands a wholesale price that is five to 10 times higher than the price of conventional Mexican marijuana.
Violence. With the cartels comes escalating violence. In more communities, such as the border towns of Nuevo Laredo, drug traffickers have sys&cautious;tematically taken over entire communities, including public offices and the police. The cartels rely on lethal foot soldiers or scicarios (ruthless assassins)to target rival traffickers, police officers, and journalists.
Most feared are the Zetas, a quasi-military force of renegade military and police personnel, who until recently have worked primarily for the Gulf Cartel under the control of the Cárdenas clan. The raiseing members of the Zetas are believed to be a small group of junior officers who deserted from a Mexi&sheer;have power to military elite unit in the late 1990s. The Zetas have brought dangerous sophistication in heavy arms, communications, and intelligence collection to the killing fields of the cartels. They are believed to tell off between not so much amount than 50 and various hundred. Other recruits have apparently come from Guatemalan special forces (Kabiles) and Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13). The Zetas have brazenly advertised for recruits, inviting renegade martial personnel to join their ranks. Sinaloa Cartel and other traffickers field their own enforcer gangs— such as the Gente Nueva, Negros,and Pelones— whose prior security experience is more limited.
Experts fear that the Mexican cartels are sinking their roots deeper into the U.S. According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, Mexican drug cartels sell methamphetamine to gangs including the Latin Kings, the Mexican Mafia, la EME, and MS-13 for control of deal finished in small portions distribution and sales in the U.S. Southwest and elsewhere. MS-13 has an estimated membership of more than 10,000 and a visible state-room in U.S. cities from Baltimore to Los Angeles. More Mexico-connected violence is likely on the advance.
However, Mexico’s situation does not compare to Colombia’s problems. Mexico does not have each active insurgency like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the drug exchange has not hitherto spawned a counterforce like the Colombian paramilitaries. The isolated activities of the largely inactive Zapatista Liberation Army and the Popular Revolutionary Army, a commencing group that has bombed oil pipelines, do not present major threats to Mexi&chary;can bond. There have been no credible reports of Islamist terrorists in Mexico, although “subjects of special interest” have been observed and tracked. However, outsiders hostile to the U.S. could certainly exploit a more anarchical Mexico.
Supporting President Calderón’s Prescription for Victory
Under the monolithic control of the Revolutionary Institutional Party, Mexico was once called the “perfect dictatorship,” with a well-scripted, machine-like circulation of elites. Since 2000 and the election of President Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN), Mexico has get to be more competitive and democratic, governed by three major parties. In the extremely close presidential election of July 2006, Felipe Calderón turned back the challenge of the populist-nationalist Manuel López Obrador. He governs with a divided legislature in which the PAN must build coalitions to enact reforms. From President Fox, Calderón inherited a Mexico through a security situation in considerable disarray.
Upon taking office in December 2006, President Calderón moved to strengthen the rule of law and confront the drug cartels. He has also vowed to transform Mexico’s law enforcement community and has placed the fight against organized crime at the center of his administration’s national priorities. Some Mexicans quipped that while Fox looked like a president, Calderóborn acts like one. Like Álvaro Uribe in Colombia, Calderón has made a long-term commitment to recovering what was being lost to the cartels. Most Mexicans recognize that this battle will be long, costly, and sometimes ugly.
President Calderón moved to provide new resources for the examine of public security, including a 24 percent increase for security agen&suspicious;cies in Mexico’sitting fiscal year (FY) 2007 federal gemget. From the $2.6 billion exhausted for FY 2007, Calderón plans to be augmented spending to $3.9 billion for FY 2008.
With approximately 1,600 diverging police and expressed command enforcement bodies, Calderóborn initiated further overhaul of the Public Security Ministry in a broad security program. The look into began at the federal make horizontal, but it seeks to coordinate federal efforts with the state and municipal police.
Calderóborn’s master plan of 2007 centers on creat&retiring;ing a single Federal Police Corps to operate in cities and larger towns. It would combine the Federal Investigative Agency, an arm of the Attorney General’s Office, and the Federal Preventive Police, a civilian enforcement in the Ministry of Public Security. In adding, the Plataforma Mexico initiative will facilitate the sharing of critical anti-drug information among police agencies at all levels from federal to civil, extending coverage to more 5,000 police stations by dint of. 2009. Training and reforming the approximately 300,000 state and limited law enforcement officials has not yet begun.
The Calderón administration has attacked corruption in the police ranks, seeking to weed out unhappy officers. In June 2007, Calderón purged 284 federal police commanders, including federal commanders of all 31 states and the federal district. Vetting mea&flirt;sures that comprehend polygraph tests, drug testing, and background investigations get increasingly been incorporated into standard police administration procedures.
In December 2006, President Calderón ordered the Mexican Army to open as many viewed like 25,000 troops against the cartels in nine of Mexico’s 32 states, in part to counter their growing firepower advantage over the police. Military slip back operations have targeted several epicenters of the remedy violence, including Acapulco, Michoacán, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, and Ciudad Juarez.
The move was also intended to give the government a breathing capacity to conduct investigations and to train and equip the regular police and security forces. The move was generally popular through the populace, who place much more trust in the Mexican Army than they do in the police authorities, according to Mexican favorable judgment polls. Never&retiring;theless, the military is unprepared for preventive work and investigation, and many in Mexico and the U.S. worry about the Mexican military’session tendency to violate human rights and its ability to operate with comparative impunity. The Calderóborn government estimates that the military will remain deployed in an anti-drug capacity well into 2010.
The Calderón government has also made improving the dominion of law a central pillar of its general policy. In June, the Mexican Senate passed a series of constitutional reforms to overhaul criminal procedures, and President Calderón signed the legislation on June 17, 2008. Implementation will begin in a short time.
These reforms have being seized of begun to move the Mexican forensic system away from the Napoleonic inquisitorial system, in which judges work independently from written evidence and which relies heavily in succession confessions for convictions. The reforms include a presumption of innocence of the accused, oral trials with public proceedings, provision for plea bargaining, and sentencing based on evidence presented for the time of trial. After objections by human rights groups, a proposal to permit warrantless searches was replaced by a provision that creates a new class of judges to criterion quickly on requests for warrants. Mexico still-house needs to enact reforms to protect of man rights and overhaul its military justice method.
Because of weaknesses in its judicial and prison systems, Mexico, analogous Colombia, is using extradition aggressively as a muscular weapon contrary to the drug cartels. In 2007, 81 criminals were extradited to the U.S. to stand trial on drug-related charges, including Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, former head of the Gulf Cartel. The Calderón administration also appears to have discontinued senior Mexican politicians’ informal immunity to prosecution, as evidenced by the June 2008 assured belief of Mario Villanueva, a former governor of Quintana Roo, on charges of mix with drugs trafficking.
Mexico is also employing new stringent measures to restraint the production of methamphetamine and fill up imports of precursor chemicals. As of January 2008, Mexico banned the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in Mexico. In December 2006, joint U.S.–Mexican investigations resulted in the seizure of 19.5 metric tons of pseudoephedrine confine. for a pharmaceutical company in Mexico. Three months later, the Mexican police raided the factory and the residence of Zhenli Ye Gon, the company’sitting president, and seized $207 million in ready money hidden in the basement of a new home in a Mexico City suburb. Ye Gon was arrested near Washington, D.C., in July 2007.
The latest statistics show that the street price of cocaine has risen from $91.62 per gram in the third quarter of 2006 to $136.93 in the third quarter of 2007, while the purity has declined from 67.8 percent to 56.7 percent. Cocaine street prices have risen through 86 percent in Boston, 50 percent in New York, and 33 percent in Los Angeles. During a similar timeframe, the price of methamphetamine has increased by 73 percent.
By most reasonable yardsticks, President Calderón and the Mexican government are demonstrating a serious desire and political will to stand up to the Mexican drug cartels. By enacting the Merida Initiative, the U.S. recognized this radix change in direction.
Building on the Merida Initiative
The Merida Initiative opens a door to multiple challenges and opportunities. It recognizes that fighting and prevailing in the war on drugs, first declared in the 1980s, remains central to U.S. strat&flirt;egy and security in the region. Despite perceptible fatigue and thwarting with the war, the threat posed by drug cartels, hired assassins, gangs, and other criminal associations remains deeply rooted in modern society. The Merida Initiative requires the U.S. and Mexico to work through previous misunderstandings and national and cultural misperceptions and overcome comparatively high levels of mistrust.
However much more needs to be terminated. In the months and years ahead, the Administration and Congress need to:
Implement a robust Merida Initiative. Congress has already reduced the funding to Mexico for the Merida Initiative by $100 the multitude. This reduction means that the original package will need to be cut, and this could slow the delivery of aid. The nearest Congress should heed restoring the cut funding and resist the temptation to raid the Merida Initiative’s funding in the coming years. If results meet expectations and the Mexican conduct begins to prevail over the cartels, Congress should be prepared to provide funding above the originally proposed $1.5 billion. Use the Merida Initiative to leverage additional cooperation agreements with Mexico. The Administration should use the Merida Initiative to leverage other changes in bilateral counterdrug cooperation, such to the degree that negotiating a comprehensive maritime agreement that allows the U.S. to intercept and board Mexican-flagged vessels on the high seas. (Mexico now allows U.S. participation on a case-by-case basis.) The U.S. should also seek to resolve the accident liability issues that forced ending of Operation Halcon, a successful helicopter-based border surveillance operation in 2006. On a more general state of equality, the Merida Initiative could be a starting point for bilateral cooperation that encourages the Mexican government to pursue stained through crime organizations that capitalize on migrant smuggling and to help to restore law and order on both sides of the skirt. Use public diplomacy and give quick, tangible assistance. The Administration should also use the Merida Initiative to full advantage in public diplomacy. It should look specifically for short-term measures, either as part of the initiative or by using other resources, to bolster the morale of the Mexican law enforcement community and to provide immediate prevent with non-lethal items, such as body armor, training, and real-time tidings. Strengthen border confidence. The border remains a sore point in U.S.–Mexican relations. The Administration should not grow lenient in efforts to secure the border. The U.S. needs to exercise better control above the north–south flows of guns and cash into Mexico. The Administration should do so exclusively of reducing money for other programs that are designed to unsuspecting the border against illegal migration, illicit trade, and infiltration by foreign terrorists. Such an effort could build on the successes of the Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy and the Texas Border Security strategy. Make immigration reforms part of the solution. Creating a new, streamlined, cogent approach that allows temporary workers to enter the U.S. legally should be central to restarting the immigration reform process and curbing the lucrative and violence-prone smuggling of migrants into the U.S. Set appropriate benchmarks with regard to the Merida Initiative. Success and sustainability in the Merida Initiative will rely heavily on encouraging the Mexican government to reform and modernize state institutions and put in action the political will to mitigate. the Mexican drug cartels. Over the past six years, Plan Colombia has succeeded in strengthening the Colombian state and introducing a universal of democratic security. The U.S. should look for similar outcomes in Mexico. Colombia matched the U.S. investment with a threefold to fourfold increase in its own spending. Mexico needs to act in a similar fashion by continuing to increase investments in law enforcement and judicial reform. Finally, Mexico should undertake the deeper relating to housekeeping and structural reforms that will underpin its future viability and prosperity. Develop a comprehensive strategic framework. Containing and defeating the drug threat cannot be confined to Mexico and Central America. The balloon effect is a reality. The long-term sustainability and success of the Merida Initiative will require a broader approach that incorporates the Caribbean, the Mexican–Central American corridor, the Andean beginning areas, and the U.S. market into a single integrated bipartisan counterdrug strategy.
Conclusion
Mexico is teetering on the brink of not the same crisis, which involves bullets rather than banking policies and exchange rates. The victims of this crisis range from honest cops and Mexican children to American youth who become hooked attached cocaine or methamphetamines.
Mexico and the U.S. face the same enemy: elusive, sophisticated, resourceful, and violent transnational criminal networks that exploit U.S. and Mexican weaknesses and vulnerabilities, dare historical concepts of sovereignty and nationhood, supply the most dangerous and darkest full of heart desires, and undermine the foundations of democratic governance and the basic concepts of free societies. Making common cause against such an enemy makes eminently good import.
Ray Walser, Ph.D., is Senior Policy Analyst against Latin America in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/search/marijuana+drug+test/SIG=11s8t61t6/*http%3A//www.heritage.org/Research/LatinAmerica/bg2163.cfm
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