NAFTA Expands as Drug War Explodes
From FNS News
August 8, 2009
"As Blackhawk helicopters buzz the Jalisco sky and Mexican soldiers scour the streets of Guadalajara in anticipation of tomorrow’s North American
leaders’ summit, Mexico’s drug war drags on with no end in sight. In a sampling of incidents between August 6 and 8, soldiers killed four gunmen in
Sinaloa, 13 people were slain in guerrilla-style assaults and running gun battles in the states of Hidalgo and Guanajuato, and at least 17 victims
were reported murdered in Ciudad Juarez. In an attack compared to an old Western movie, assassins stormed the Far West saloon in Chihuahua City and
gunned down four customers.
The drug war, terrorism and border security will likely dominate the policy discussions in Guadalajara beginning Sunday, August 9, when US President
Barack Obama, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper initiate a two-day meeting.
The summit comes at a critical moment in the Mexican drug war. Despite record drug seizures and incessant proclamations in Washington and Mexico City
about tactical successes, the situation on the ground tells a different story. In certain regions of Mexico, violence continues worsening even as
drugs keep on flowing.
Weariness of the drug war strategy, currently centered on the deployment of the Mexican army, is growing in Mexico. Waning support for the policy was
evident last month when Mexican voters handed President Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN) a crushing defeat in mid-term elections. The PAN
heavily based its campaign on a US-style get-tough-on-crime message, blasting the airwaves with spots in support of the President’s drug war. Some
post-election polls showed that Mexican voters, battered by rising unemployment and soaring prices for basic commodities, considered the tanking
economy the most important issue.
Criticism of the drug war is picking up steam in legislative circles in both the United States and Mexico.
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Appropriations foreign operations sub-committee, recently rejected a report from the US
Department of State that declared Mexico’s armed forces respect human rights in the anti-drug campaign. The conclusion reached by the department
headed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton contradicted an avalanche of reports from Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, independent Mexican
human rights groups and international rights activists and observers.
Respecting human rights is a necessary precondition for Mexico to receive 15 percent of US funds earmarked for the binational, anti-drug Merida
Initiative, but according to Senator Leahy, “those requirements have not been fulfilled” by the Calderon administration.
“I continue supporting the objectives of the Merida Initiative,” the Democratic senator said, “but it is just that the military strategy is not the
solution in the long run and it is not clear what could be gained in the short-run.”
For his part, a leading Mexican critic of the drug war declared the government’s Joint Operation Chihuahua not only was an outright failure but a
threat to the institutional integrity of the Mexican armed forces as
well.
“The Mexican army is being defeated in Chihuahua,” wrote Chihuahua state legislator Victor Quintana, who represents the opposition PRD party. “Not
only is it being defeated by organized crime, but also by itself.”
Sixteen months after the Mexican army launched its operation, Quintana added, “people ask why the soldiers are here if crime has shot up in all
respects, and many officers and soldiers systematically violate human rights.”
According to Quintana, the military commander of Joint Operation Chihuahua has not responded to a request from the Chihuahua State Legislature to
testify in front of lawmakers about the campaign.
Whether any changes in the drug war strategy will emanate from Guadalajara remain to be seen.
What is increasingly clear, however, is that the economic agreement underpinning the relationship among the NAFTA nations will not be touched by the
current leaders of the three member states.
On Friday, August 7, US President Barack Obama was quoted in Washington as saying that now is not the time to revisit NAFTA. The US leader pointed to
adverse global economic conditions as well as Mexico’s problems with swine flu and sagging tourism as among reasons not to tinker with the treaty.
“We are in the middle of a very difficult economic situation,” President Obama said.
If anything, recent developments indicate NAFTA will only get bigger. In addition to a new flurry of border port of entry expansion plans, some of
which are being carried out with US stimulus spending, pressure is building for the United States to open up its highways to Mexican trucks as
stipulated by the free trade accord. In the run-up to Guadalajara, Mexican trucking associations repeated demands for multi-billion dollar
compensations to remedy US violations of the cross-border transportation provision of NAFTA.
A spokesman for the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico (Amcham) said momentum was building against US refusal to allow Mexican trucks north of
border, a prohibition long favored by the Teamsters Union that backed President Obama in his election campaign last year.
“My assessment of the struggle between the groups is that it is much more balanced,” said David Hurtado, president of Amcham’s policy committee.
Other issues expected to be on the agenda in Guadalajara include the swine flu outbreak, environmental matters and the Honduran coup. Noticeably
missing from the main agenda outlined by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the immigration question. However, Canada’s new policy requiring
visas of Mexican visitors could add a new sore spot to the meet.
In the lead-up to the summit, a few dozen activists associated with Greenpeace Mexico occupied an important landmark in Guadalajara. The
environmentalists demanded that North American leaders pay more attentionto an issue which has been subordinated to the economic crisis and drug war:
global climate change. “Real Leaders back clean energy,” read a banner unfurled by the group."
Sources: Lapolaka.com, August 8, 2009. El Diario de Juarez, August 8,
2009. El Universal, August 7 and 8, 2009. Articles by Xochitl Alvarez,
Dinorath Mota, Manuel Lombera, David Aguilar, Jaime Hernandez, Mae Lopez
Aranda, and Silvia Otero. La Jornada, August 7 and 8, 2009. Articles by
Georgina Saldierna, Blance Petrich, Victor Quintana, and the Reuters news
agency. El Sur/Agencia Proceso, August 6, 2009. Article by Jesus Esquivel.
Deming Headlight, August 6, 2009. Article by Kevin Buey. Washington Post,
August 5, 2009. Article by William Booth and Steve Fainaru.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico
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