On a recent trip to Mexico, I asked a family friend -- a professor at the National University -- whether she thought the government was collapsing
under the weight of the drug war, which has claimed close to 9,000 lives in the past two years, turned border cities into no-go zones and elicited
comparisons between Mexico and Pakistan. "Collapsing?" she said. "It's finally picking itself up."
Her point: Mexico's "drug problem" is of very long standing. The rest of the world is only noticing it now because President Felipe Calderón has
decided to break with his predecessors' policy of malign neglect of, if not actual complicity in, the drug trade.
The Wall Street Journal has been writing about drug trafficking in Mexico for decades. In 1967, an intrepid young reporter named Peter Kann -- later
CEO of Dow Jones -- hoofed his way through the high sierra of Sinaloa, on the trail of poppy growers and heroin smugglers. The story he filed then
could just as easily have run 40 years later:
"In cases where the big traffickers operate with [Mexican] political protection," he wrote, "U.S. agents content themselves with breeding hostility
between rival traffickers. 'We'll put the heat on one dealer and then let the word out that his competition is feeding us information about him. It
can stir up a little violence,' says one smiling agent."
Now fast forward to 1985. In February of that year a DEA agent named Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was abducted outside the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara,
horrifically tortured and murdered. His kidnapper was marijuana kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, who was able to flee Mexico to Costa Rica with the help
of officers in Mexico's version of the FBI.
Anyone who lived in Mexico in the 1980s, as I did, could just as easily name other drug lords and the politicians who protected and profited from
them. It's an old story. At bottom, the problem isn't the drug cartels per se. Much less is it -- and here I can sense the collective blood pressure
of the Cato Institute rising -- America's drug laws.
The problem is Mexico's record of corrupt, weak and incompetent governance, which has created the environment in which the cartels have hitherto
operated with impunity. The same might be said about other countries in Latin America: These states did not become basket cases on account of the drug
trade. It is the fact that they were basket cases to begin with that allowed the drug trade to flourish.
In a recent op-ed in this newspaper, former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia called the war on drugs a failure and warned that the "alarming
power of the drug cartels is leading to a criminalization of politics and a politicization of crime." They also called for the decriminalization of
cannabis and greater emphasis on education and treatment programs.
A beguiling argument, wrong on every point. Huge sums already go to drug education and treatment. Decriminalizing pot would do nothing to stem the
violence from the illegal traffic of hard drugs. (Decriminalizing hard drugs would also send addiction rates skyrocketing, as the British experience
of the 1970s shows, with criminal consequences of its own.) As for the argument about the "criminalization of politics," that story is as old as Latin
America itself.
All this aside, the plain political fact is that drug legalization in the U.S. is not going to happen as long as a powerful moral and social consensus
opposes it. To make the case for it now while Mexico bleeds is an exercise in fecklessness. What Mexico urgently needs are stronger institutions of
state, beginning with its army but also including the judiciary and the police.
In 2007, the Bush administration agreed to the Merida Initiative (derisively called "Plan Mexico" by its critics, who seem not to have noticed that
"Plan Colombia" actually helped Colombia) with the governments of Mexico and Central America. The administration offered to spend about $1.5 billion
over three years on counternarcotics efforts. So far only about $300 million has actually been released.
To put the numbers in context, an estimated $15 billion flows annually into the coffers of Mexican drug cartels. The Calderón government has vastly
increased military and police budgets, but remains vastly outspent by the cartels. Clearly more needs to be done, and if the Obama administration had
its foreign priorities straight, the $300 million it now plans to spend to relieve Hamas of its obligations in Gaza would go to our Mexican partners
instead.
Still, Mexico's achievements have not been negligible. The government has managed to spark power struggles within and among cartels, and the vast
majority of Mexico's murder victims are themselves involved in the drug trade. More important, Mr. Calderón has sent the signal that his government
will not repeat the patterns of complacency and collusion that typified Mexico for decades. Whatever else might be said about his government, it's a
serious one.
This does not mean Mr. Calderón will win this war. But for those of us who know Mexico well, it is an astonishing turn, deserving neither of pity nor
sagacious snickering, but of respect.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
[Edited on 3-3-2009 by tripledigitken]DENNIS - 3-3-2009 at 04:41 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by tripledigitken
This does not mean Mr. Calderón will win this war. But for those of us who know Mexico well, it is an astonishing turn, deserving neither of pity nor
sagacious snickering, but of respect.
And he'll keep fighting the good fight....well....right after he visits the Tiger Woods Golf Complex for the uber-rich tomorrow in Punta Banda.
OH....excuse me.....Punta Brava.Pescador - 3-3-2009 at 04:48 PM
You know some day our politicians will decide that we should take responsibility for our own shortcomings and problems. The United States should
really be willing to accept responsibility for creating the drug problem in the first place. Since some significat portion of the population has
decided that they have an unlimited hunger for marijuana, cocaine, and other drugs, Mexico and other southern neighbors were responding to the great
market that has been created. Now we spend untold millions of dollars on trying to shut down this industry and the only thing that has happened is
the demand is increasing almost daily. Law enforcement has gotten to the point where they know that they cannot put any kind of lid on the problem so
they have started turning their heads the other direction and it is not uncommon to walk down the streets in any major city in American and watch
people trading or smoking marijuana pretty much uninhibited and oftentimes in the sight of police officers.
So, to me, this looks pretty much like the days of prohibition where it became the "in thing" to do where everyone went to speakeasys and after
hours clubs to buy illegal alcohol. Whole industries developed for the manufacture and distribution of alcohol.
I do not condone nor use any of the drugs forementioned but I am a realist and have become increasingly aware that we do have a great vacuum that
seems unable to fill itself up with drugs. As long as that market of consumers is active, the market of suppliers will find some way to fill the
pipeline.
So, Calderon is trying to shut this organized, well funded, and well established force with a group of military kids that are short of training and
skill and using a police force that is constantly being caught with corruption and graft, and an infastructure that is aged and not very effective,
and fund it all with diminishing pesos. I suspect that the only honorable thing we could actually do is to take a deep responsibility for the problem
and go about solving it. Some have suggested that legalization would change things, others argue that it is too big a step, but the reality is that
we can no longer afford to sweep this thing under the carpet as the cost has become too great for the systems of law enforcement, judicial, penal,
social, as well as the very structure of the family as we know it. This is not an issue that can be done with intermittent reinforcement of some half
baked laws and we are but fooling ourselves if we think that things are going to get better.Woooosh - 3-3-2009 at 04:49 PM
Threre's too much money for anything to change in Mexico. Only the players will change- not the situation. Calderon wasn't elected for life, after
all.CaboRon - 3-4-2009 at 05:41 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by Woooosh
Threre's too much money for anything to change in Mexico. Only the players will change- not the situation. Calderon wasn't elected for life, after
all.
Well put.BajaDave - 3-9-2009 at 11:37 PM
Pescador, I admire your realism and your ability to make the point so eloquently. I think that more and more Americans are coming around to this
viewpoint, and if that's the case there may yet be a chance that the current course could be changed in the (hopefully) not so distant future.
How long shall we continue the current course of action, perhaps even escalate it??? And at what cost?JESSE - 3-10-2009 at 12:21 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by Woooosh
Threre's too much money for anything to change in Mexico. Only the players will change- not the situation. Calderon wasn't elected for life, after
all.
Just 8 years ago this nation had its 1st democratic and fair elections ever! what are you talking about?Woooosh - 3-10-2009 at 10:31 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by JESSE
Quote:
Originally posted by Woooosh
Threre's too much money for anything to change in Mexico. Only the players will change- not the situation. Calderon wasn't elected for life, after
all.
Just 8 years ago this nation had its 1st democratic and fair elections ever! what are you talking about?
It the whack-a-mole syndrome. The narcos are ultra-violent businessmen whose current tool is moving drugs. They aren't drug addicts- they are cash
flow specialists. If you stopped the drugs or even decriminalized them stateside- the narcos would switch to arms smuggling, more kidnappings, and
more extortions to make up the income difference. Much of the narco money that returns to latin ameircan filters down to the everyday people- it is a
major indirect employer in latin american. The people of mexico came very very close to choosing Obrador last election- if their daily lives aren't
safe and propserous by the next election they will change course entirely IMHO. Look at the model Chavez is pushing forward.
