Mexico

In August 2008, an article in the New Yorker described a number of outbreaks of highly resistant infections caused by “superbugs—those bacteria that have developed immunity to a wide number of antibiotics.” Although the author of the article, Jerome Groopman, was referring to the harmful inhabitants of the human body, he could have been describing corruption at the heart of key law-enforcement agencies in Mexico. Indeed, corruption in Mexico, just like a sophisticated and resistant infection, has proven to be very difficult to remove from the government. In the latest corruption scandal, the Mexican government announced that the former head of the Unit of Specialized Investigations on Organized Crime (SIEDO), a pillar of the Attorney General’s Office, had been providing strategic information to a violent and powerful drug cartel. This event was preceded by the arrest in late October 2008 of several high-ranking officials at SIEDO. The head of Interpol in Mexico was also arrested.

The administration of Felipe Calderón has placed a strong emphasis on law-enforcement and the fight against drugs. It has been suggested that, as a result of these aggressive policies, the country has witnessed some of the most violent times since the Mexican Revolution. The casualties of the current spike in violence now include thousands of cartel loyalists, police officers, and high-ranking officials.

While the armed forces function as the main pillars of the fight against drugs, civilian security agencies have almost been placed in quarantine while they go through a severe re-structuring process. Part of this process includes the identification of corrupt officials that have survived previous clean-up initiatives. Although the Mexican government deserves to be congratulated on its temporary success, it is unfortunate that it took almost 10 years to identify some of the officials that have been passing information to drug cartels. As it was suggested in this blog before, this is a responsibility of the entire government, and particularly of the Civil Service Department and the agencies involved.

How entrenched are the drug cartels in the government? The answer to this question is only known by a handful of people . The problem resides on whether some of these persons are actually in government and what kind of responsibilities they have. If they are in charge of further cleaning government agencies, then any progress made so far will be superficial at best. Although patients die from infections, governments cannot perish due to corruption. Unfortunately, corrupt agencies also survive on taxes.

Historically, the Interior Minister in Mexico has been the second most important politician in the country. Last week, Juan Camilo Mourino, the Interior Minister and a close ally of President Calderón, died in a plane crash. He has been replaced by Fernando Francisco Gomez Mont Urueta, an influential lawyer and high-ranking member of the ruling National Action Party (PAN).

The appointment has taken place during unexpected circumstances, and given the importance of the Interior Ministry, it was imperative to name a new minister in Bucareli. In spite of this, President Calderón carefully appointed a man who will be constructing bridges between important sectors within the increasingly fractionalized PAN. His background as a prestigious lawyer will also help him to reach across the aisle and build consensus between political parties. This is an important task and Gomez Mont is likely to succeed at it. However, key government agencies like the National Security Agency (CISEN) are part of the Ministry. This places the Interior Minister at the center of the national security apparatus and Gomez Mont is not particularly famous for his experience in national security matters. Clearly, President Calderon is relying on some other ministries to protect the country.

Indeed, national security efforts seem fractionalized. In order to solve this problem, the current administration has been working on a new law that will allow the Ministry of Public Security to place several federal police units under a central command. This will require Congressional approval and Gomez Mont will be a key actor during the negotiations.

Felipe Calderón has been in office for less than two years, which means that Gomez Mont will have plenty of time to make things happen. However, this is also enough time to make plenty of mistakes. Hopefully, the balance will favor the implementation of good policy (if there is such a thing) in Bucareli. This will help the PAN to win future elections in a context where the PRI is increasing its political capital across the country.

During the past two weeks my mid-term exams at Georgetown University have consumed nearly all my time.  After several papers, I’ve nearly finished my mid-terms with only one more to go in Economics for Latin American Studies…  That said, I should be back on track writing frequently for the Mexico blog, along with Alejandro.

In this time I’ve had the opportunity to meet two heads of state that spoke about issues that can be applied to Mexico.  First, President Jose Maria Aznar of Spain (pictured) spoke about common bonds between countries with Christian heritages and democratic values.  In Spain, this centered primarily around immigration of African migrants.  In the US, this would apply to Mexican migrants as well.

Second, newly elected President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay (below) spoke about cleaning up corruption and bringing honest reform to government.  Lugo’s case is particularly interesting, since he resigned as archbishop in one of Paraguay’s poorest districts to run for President and clean up the country which is currently ranked #138 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception index.  Mexico ranks 72 on this list.

As you’ve gathered, a lot is going on in the world of Mexico and more broadly Latin American Studies in Washington, DC these days.  For example, one of my professors at the School of Foreign Service who teaches Latin American States and Societies, John Bailey, was interviewed in two major Mexican newspapers this week, Excelsior and El Universal.  The first article in El Universal discussed how the Tec higher education system in Mexico is a reflection of “social warming”, that is, global interconnectedness and also the need to expand access to higher education within Mexico. The second article in Excelsior (featured in print, unfortunately not online) addressed the fact that narcoterrorism is now entering the media when describing the situation of organized crime and drugs, resembling an Aghanistan.  Professor Bailey also touched on the need to create a political consensus to fight organized crime in Mexico, and that either President-elect in the US will support this initiative.

Mentioning the American Presidential campaign, I find intriguing that the issue of immigration reform has been put on the back burner for what I believe is more than a month.  Surely this will be one of the pressing issues the next President faces, and I would have liked to see substantive discussion during the Presidential debates.

However, the two issues which are now dominating in Mexico are the financial crisis and organized crime.  With the financial crisis pulling down markets worldwide, Mexico is surely to be affected.  However, the degree to which the economy will suffer is difficult to determine at this point, and I believe very unlikely that it would approach crises seen in 1994 and 1997-8. So far the Mexican Central Bank (Banxico) believes the effects will be mixed.  See commentary with the bank chief Elizondo Almaguer in Spanish here. Feel free to post a comment to see my further thoughts.
Organized crime continues to dominate the headlines in Mexico.  Alejandro’s last post noted that drug cartels have infiltrated senior levels of the government, and the gap between action and rhetoric seems to be widening.  In connection with the scandal, the top Federal Police Commissioner, Victor Gerardo Garay, resigned.  This week policemen were gunned down in Michoacan.  Next Wednesday the Mexican Ambassador to the US will be coming to my department for a roundtable, and I am eager to hear his take.

Until then, we’ll wait for tomorrow’s exciting US election news!

Surprise, surprise! One of Mexico’s key anti-drug units has been infiltrated by a drug cartel. This suggests not only that Mexico’s best anti-drug units are still at risk of losing even more credibility (government agencies can always lose more credibility), but also that the Mexican government should start to hire more historians. Indeed, this is not the first time that drug cartels gain access to specialized anti-drug units in Mexico. In February 1997, General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, a regional commander and one of the most prestigious generals at the time, was arrested for protecting a powerful drug cartel. At the time of the arrest, General Gutierrez Rebollo was head of Mexico’s anti-drug agency.

Eleven years after Mexico’s drug czar was arrested, the government has disclosed that high-ranking officials at the Unit of Specialized Investigations on Organized Crime (SIEDO) , a pillar of the Attorney General’s Office, had been providing strategic information to a violent and powerful drug cartel since 1997. The reports argue that the culprits have been receiving up to $450,000 dollars a month.

These events only contribute to the declining credibility of Mexican law enforcement agencies. These agencies also include the Civil Service Department and its Secretary, who is in fact part of the cabinet. Not even the highest-ranking public officials make $450,000 dollars a month. The Civil Service Department was precisely created to track the wealth of public officials in order to identify cases of corruption. So it is not only the Attorney General’s Office that failed to identify informers within its ranks.

Today, Mexico’s government seems like a robbing bandit: taxing the citizens and terrifying them at the same time. A few months ago, a teenager was kidnapped and murdered. One of the organizers of the kidnapping was a member of Mexico City’s police forces. The failure of the Mexican government to fight drugs and crime in general, and even harbor informers is just another one of these cases.

The violence in Mexico is becoming one of the highest rates worldwide, with more kidnappings this year than in Colombia or Iraq.   Increasingly, the environment of violence is penetrating Mexican society.  In part this process began with the arrival of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa in 2006.

In the Mexican system, the President has six years to govern.  Most commonly, the first two years focus on installing a new series of administration officials.  Afterwards, the majority of reforms occur during the third and fourth years of an administration.  The extraordinary aspect of President Calderón is his quick reform soon after being elected, deploying thousands of federal troops to combat drug violence.  As such, a great battle has formed that is consuming the Mexican nation.  The drug interests form a real part of the government, and the perception of corruption is very high and directly related to even senior government officials.  A “critical mass” has now arrived.  Last week, millions of people throughout Mexico marched against violence and demanded government action.

Against this backdrop occurred a horrible attack.  In the city of Morelia–birthplace of the Mexican President– in the state of Michoacán, a crowd was celebrating Independence Day when someone threw a grenade into the crowd.  This killed at least eight people, and left nearly 100 wounded. This attack occurred just after massive protests against violence, and appears to be a symbol to the nation and President that little will stand in their way. It is still unknown who committed the attack, and the government is looking for the perpetrators.  The worrying aspect is this marks a direct attack against innocent civilians and a line has been crossed.

Last week Mexico’s finance minister, Augustin Carstens, estimated the damage of crime on the country’s economy to be so bad that it reduces GDP growth by 1% annually.  This high cost comes from lost investment in Mexico and businesses spending 10% more on average to provide for increased security.

As suggested by James Surowiecki in the Financial Page of the New Yorker (July 7, 2008): “When bad things happen, it’s always nice to have a scapegoat”. Since it is not possible to ask for the resignation of the economy or the media (at least not in democratic countries), Presidents and Prime Ministers have become quite good at the art of dismissing public officials when things do not go as planned. Mexican Presidents are no exception.

In the last few months, there have been important changes at the Attorney General’s Office. Indeed, several high-ranking officials, including the Deputy Attorney General in charge of Special Investigations on Organized Crime (SIEDO), resigned to their positions due to cooperation problems at the hearth of the cabinet, or to poor results in the fight against crime. As the demands for security increase in number and intensity, it is possible that Mexico will observe more of these resignations/dismissals in the next few months. At the top of the list is Interior Minister Juan Camilo Murino, as well as some other cabinet members in charge of protecting Mexican citizens.

In the meantime, we can expect to see many more references to the implementation of the “National Security, Justice and Legality Agreement“, as well as to who is in charge of overseeing it and who is responsible for its success or failure. This might sound familiar to students of international organizations, as the latter usually spend more time discussing the existence of a problem than actually solving it. Unfortunately, people die while other people agree on what kind of help they need.

With the Mexican state failing to provide for the basic security of its citizens, violence is at an all-time high.  Since the beginning of 2008, the BBC reports that more than 2,700 people have been killed in drug-related violence.  The kidnapping rate in Mexico has now surpassed that of both Iraq and Colombia, with more than 300 people abducted so far this year.

It appears that Mexicans have had enough.  On Friday August 30, anti-violence demonstrations were held in all of Mexico’s 32 states.  In Mexico City, more than 150,000 citizens flooded the Zocalo to demand an end to violence and government inaction.  A video clip of the demonstration is available here.

With the citizenry reaching a critical mass, Mexican authorities need to enact more far-reaching reforms.  President Felipe Calderón has deployed more than 20,000 soldiers in hot beds of drug activity, and the fight appears to only be getting worse.  In conjunction with a military approach, real judicial reforms need to take place in Congress.  Since the system of organized crime has until fairly recently enjoyed relative immunity from state prosecution - and indeed has been linked to the state - the latest crackdown has provoked the wave of violence from those that gain the most by exploiting Mexicans.

The Mexican State has failed, again, in providing security for its citizens. The years of tranquility experienced during the economic recovery of the late 1990s, suggest that, indeed, better economic conditions, and not the government’s anti-crime initiatives, reduced crime in the country. Now that economic conditions are not as promising, Mexican society is living in fear again.

This fear is produced by a recent wave of kidnappings. In the most recent case, a teenager was kidnapped and murdered by a highly organized band that is likely to have connection to police forces. As a response to the trends in crime, sectors of society have organized a march against insecurity that will take place in August 30th. As an anticipated response, different branches of government, but at the federal and local levels, have signed a “National Security, Justice and Legality Agreement.”

The agreement is not particularly surprising or promising. First, it is unfortunate that such agreement takes place only after society legitimately demands protection and an efficient administration of justice. This initiative indeed comes too late for many families and friends that have lost a loved one. Second, the superficial agreement does not tackle the causes of insecurity, but instead aims at appeasing the demands that have emerged in the last few weeks.

In short, Mexico is traveling back in time to the mid 1990s when horrendous crimes, marches against insecurity, and shallow government initiatives were the order of the day. Nothing structurally changed then and things are not likely to change now. These are regrettable news for a society that pays taxes and yet lives in a state of fear. The only actors that are likely to benefit from this situation are private security companies.