On August 21, Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa held a security summit at the National Palace. In attendance
were the Mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard, and Mexico’s thirty-one state governors. Those in attendance, represented
most of the nation’s political parties, were still able to display a stunning show of relative harmony and cooperation
in the face of dangerously mounting violence brought about by growing street gangs and more violent drug cartels
throughout Mexico. A seventy-five-point package of security measures was unanimously adopted and will be implemented
over the next three years. The package includes initiatives aimed at purging police corruption, constructing several new
maximum-security prisons, and creating a database for mobile phones that the government will use to track down criminals
using them.
Violence Everywhere
The unprecedented level of violence resorted to by Mexico’s drug gangs has reached a fevered pitch. On August 16, masked
gunmen murdered thirteen people in a village in Chihuahua, a state that has witnessed 1,026 deaths so far this year. The
number of gang-related deaths for all of Mexico so far this year stands at 2,682, already surpassing the 2007 total of
2,673. The escalating violence represents an ugly offensive by Mexican drug gangs retaliating against the government’s
increased determination to combat drug trafficking and the drug-related violence that has plagued the country in recent
years. Since 2007, Calderón has ordered 36,000 troops to be deployed against the gangs throughout Mexico’s thirty-one
states, with only modest results.
Complicating the situation, Mexico’s various police forces are saturated with corruption, and its tolerance of violence,
systemic. Various drug cartels have taken advantage of this, bribing the authorities – particularly the intelligence
service – to side with them by waging war on their rivals. According to a congressional Research Service Report,
authorities in Nuevo Laredo municipal officials have been known to kidnap competitors of the Gulf cartel, while members
of the Sinaloa cartel enjoy police protection. According to the same report, in December 2005, the Mexican Attorney
General’s office (PGR) reported that one-fifth of its officials were under investigation for criminal activity. This
culture of corruption was starkly revealed by the Fernando Martí case, where a fourteen-year-old boy was kidnapped last
June 4 by drug gang members masquerading as policemen. His body was found on August 1 in the trunk of an abandoned car.
Subsequent investigation uncovered the involvement of fourteen members of the Federal District Judicial Police in the
killing.
No Respite from the War’s Escalation
The chronic lack of integrity displayed by the police has further weakened Mexicans’ plummeting confidence in their
government’s ability to cope with drug gangs. A poll taken in early June showed that 53 percent of the population
believed that drug gangs were winning their war against federal forces, while a mere 24 percent thought that the
government had the matter under control. Some 3,000 people from Ciudad Juárez - of mostly middle-class families –
crossing illegally into the United States, do so out of fear of violence. Particularly hard hit by gang violence, Ciudad
Juárez has registered 800 homicides so far this year—tripling the 2007 figure—as well as a spurt of bank and car
robberies. The University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute recently reported that there has also been an increase
in acts of extortion and kidnappings that have specifically targeted the business community.
In spite of Calderón’s intensified war against Mexico’s drug barons and the early phase in the implementation of
Washington’s predictably under-funded Merida Initiative, the death toll continues to mount and there is no indication
that the future will be any brighter than the past. This spotlights the inherent problems embedded in the Mexican
government’s strategy, such as unrestrained venality in the police force as well as in the tainted bureaucracies at the
municipal, state, and federal levels. On July 31, the government announced a shake-up in the PGR, with the departure of
Noé Ramírez, the head of Mexico’s secret anti-organized-crime unit, Siedo, and three of the PGR’s deputy attorneys. This
announcement followed a meeting during which the head of the PGR, Eduardo Medina-Mora, and public security minister,
Genaro García Luna, blamed each other for their inability to coordinate and harness their respective
intelligence-gathering units. This manifestation of ineptitude reinforced the need for Calderón’s call for the
government to agree on public security policies and to improve coordination among the federal, state and municipal
administrations in order to advance the nation’s uphill fight against crime.
A united campaign against the drug gangs, this time with Calderón and Ebrard de facto at the helm, has been necessary
for a long time, but may be too much to ask for, especially amid the current escalating levels of violence with its
skyrocketing death tolls reported from many Mexican cities. A coordinated and innovative bipartisan approach on the part
of all government levels, rather than any further militarization, or going easy on the purveyor of crime, may prove to
be the ultimate key to stemming the country’s current surge in violence. Added to this is the population’s flagging
confidence in the bona fides of the country’s security forces. With the August 21 summit, Calderon and his colleagues
may have made an initial move (albeit, a tiny one) in the right direction.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Amy Coonradt
August 26th, 2008
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