The news from Mexico can be exhausting. Much of it is a
tally of extreme violence and death. For those steeled to this barrage, the
blog Menos dias aqui, which you can also follow on Twitter, provides
a relentless accounting of the misery. From that perspective, the situation in
Mexico is a never-ending dark tunnel, with no light in sight.
As well, the death of Miguel Nazar Haro
last week exposed two frustrating truths of modern Mexico: first, how nasty
Mexico’s “dirty war” against civil society and leftist organizations was in the
1960s and 1970s; and second, how impunity is still a serious problem.
The irony is that many in Mexico, particularly supporters of
the Partido
Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for most of the 20th
century, would like to go back to the good old days. They argue that the PRI is
now less corrupt, and that the war on drugs is – and will continue to be – an
abject failure, with the human cost simply too high.
They are right to say that the situation is dire, and that
the ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN)
has embarked on a dangerous and, at times, reckless, war on drugs. Every single
one of Mexico’s institutions was too weak to handle this aggressive transition,
including the military. It was too much, too fast, and the Mexican citizenry
has paid dearly.
But let’s be clear: back in the halcyon days of the 1960s
and 1970s, the PRI was responsible for a dirty war in
which an estimated 1,200 people were “disappeared”, as well as the Tlatelolco massacre,
which saw the death of hundreds, if not thousands, of students and innocent
bystanders. A lattice-like network of corruption sentenced tens of millions to
a life of poverty. They died too early,
and too poor, while the PRI and its cronies lined their pockets.
And, as Mexico rolled into the 1980s, drug trafficking
became a bigger phenomenon, but the PRI was there to profit. The system of
corrupt one-party rule worked as a buffer for the cartels. A political monopoly
made it easier to cut deals, and to ensure the secure and (relatively) peaceful
transport of drugs to the United States.
The first PAN president, Vicente Fox, who took office in
December 2000 after a historic election victory, clearly underestimated the
strength of the cartels. It appears he simply failed to conceive of the depth
of the cartels’ intersection with security forces and local and state
politicians. At that time, the Americans had had considerable success shutting
down the eastern Caribbean routes for trafficking cocaine from Colombia. The
shift to Mexico was an easy one: the Gulf Cartel and the Juárez Cartel had
been active since the 1970s, and the Sinaloa Cartel and Tijuana Cartel were on
the rise.
Organized crime in Mexico has always been violent, and
always had a degree of conflict among cartels jostling for influence. But in
the 1990s the rise of the Sinaloa Cartel changed the game significantly,
because higher value cocaine, heroin, and crystal methedrine were a bigger part
of the mix – marijuana was till important, but less so. With more money at
play, the stakes got higher, and violence increased. The Mexican people were
clearly fed up, as were the Americans.
Enter PAN president Felipe Calderon who, directly after he
assumed office in December, 2006, declared war on the cartels. The results, as
we know, have been depressing, and have been complicated by the fact that Mexico’s
weak institutions and local corruption – along with, some argue, the PAN’s
“pro-business” agenda – have resulted in a failure to provide opportunities for
the poor.
No end in sight?
Instead, the transition resulted in oligarchic capitalism,
and increased competition for markets and power between criminal organizations,
much as we see in Russia. Mexico has the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim,
a telecom giant who runs a near-monopoly and is permitted to charge very
high prices. Mexico also has the richest drug dealer and most wanted man in
the world, Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín ‘el Chapo’ Guzmán. Those are two very
odd statistics for a country that has the world’s 13th largest
economy, and in which, by some
estimates, almost half the population lives at or below the poverty line.
To date, the aggressive targeting of the cartels by Calderon
has resulted in the hydra-like monsters we now confront, including Los Zetas, a gang of
former paramilitaries that some
now consider to be the most powerful cartel. Every time a criminal gets
taken out, there are plenty of poor kids willing to spring up and assume his
position. The jockeying for power is more and more violent, and as the big
cartels are destabilized dozens of smaller street gangs take their place. What
was once a “managed” situation has become anarchic and chaotic.
But the daily news is also an indication of how much Mexico
has, and is, changing. Clearly, the government has not in any way slowed down
its pursuit of criminals. Every other day it seems a high-ranking member of a
cartel is taken out of commission. Significantly, the rash of take-downs of
members of the ultra-violent Los Zetas cartel – most recently exemplified by
the arrest of Los Zetas hit-man Enrique Aurelio Elizondo, as well as the arrest
of seven suspected Los Zetas kidnappers in Monterrey – has been complimented by
some significant successes against the Sinaloa (Pacific) Cartel.
On January 31st we saw the arrest of the Sinaloa
Cartel’s arms runner Ricardo Rosales Ramírez (‘el Nene’), in Mexicali, Baja
California. And only days before, Ramiro Rendón Rivera (‘el Ramy’) and Eduardo
Avila Ojeda (‘el Lalo’) were arrested in Culiacán, Sinaloa.
As well, on January 20, a helicopter-supported operation in
Durango resulted in the detention of eleven suspected members of the Sinaloa
Cartel, and the arrest of a regional leader. A separate operation in Sinaloa
saw the arrest of another leader, Fidel Mancinas Franco.
The surge in arrests of Sinaloa members and leaders seems to
indicate that authorities are deriving good intelligence from their captives,
and that they may be zeroing in on ‘el Chapo’. It also potentially quietens
criticism of the government that it has been soft on the Sinaloa Cartel,
targeting Los Zetas instead.
At this point, there seems to be little choice but to
continue the pressure on the cartels. The United States is not about to stop
producing guns or consuming drugs, and the legalization argument, though
appealing to many, has very little traction on either side of the border.
Law enforcement is not an option, it's a necessity – something
that Mexico is learning the hard way. But this war of attrition will end, and
the Mexican state will not fail. This is not to say that any society, least of
all Mexico’s, will one day be “free of crime”, but any society can evolve to the point where law enforcement is
reliable, and public security a reasonable expectation. Let’s hope Mexico gets there,
too.
Twitter: @TimothyEWilson
Email: lapoliticaeslapolitica [at] gmail [dot] com
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