Decriminalize, Crush, or Appease: You Choose
Last week, Mexico’s Department of Defense estimated that, of the half million Mexicans involved in narco-trafficking in Mexico, at least one third are ex-military officers. While these new figures are shocking, the trend (soldiers deserting the military and joining the cartels) is not new. In the 1990s, the U.S. helped to train an elite force of Mexican soldiers to take on the cartels. Not long afterward, the cartels offered to hike their salaries, and most defected. They became Los Zetas, one of the most formidable mafia organizations in the country.
Violence in Mexico has metastasized, affecting people and places that were once largely immune. For example, the media has increasingly become a target. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, twenty four reporters have been killed in Mexico in the last eight years. Not all journalists attacked by the cartels are squeaky clean. Some are targeted because they are on the cartel payroll, but do not follow their instructions. While it is easy to condemn journalists who are paid off by the cartels, the drug lords often threaten journalists or their families, leaving reporters feeling that they have no choice but to cooperate.
So what is to be done? To be sure, the Mexican government is not standing idly by. The Senate passed a constitutional amendment last week which will allow for improved national coordination in investigating and punishing organized crime. A national registry of cell phones will also be created to help investigate “express kidnappings” carried out by phone. The government recently received the first installment of in-kind support from the U.S. government under the Merida Initiative to upgrade Mexico’s security forces. There is talk of possibly introducing the death penalty in Mexico for certain crimes, although doing so would be very controversial and has been attacked by the country’s top human rights commissioner. Attempts are being made to clean up local police forces and purge corrupt elements.
Will any of this matter? At the margins, each of these things may reduce the level of crime, impunity, or both. But it is hard to believe that they will fundamentally alter the nature of the conflict. It would appear at this point that there are only a handful of realistic options for dealing with Mexico’s cartels, none of which are particularly attractive. The first would be decriminalization. Decriminalizing drug use would transform the nature of the drug trade overnight, but it is sure to meet determined opposition from the United States, and possibly also from Mexico. An alternative would be the complete militarization of Mexican society, including a draft to increase the size of the army, and support from the United States for aggressive military assaults on the cartels. By this, I mean something much bigger than the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative, and which would potentially involve American troops on the ground. This option is probably the least attractive of all, as it would likely result in substantial civilian casualties and human rights abuses, and there is no guarantee that it would be successful.
The final option is to negotiate with the cartels, just as the U.S. has considered negotiating with the Taliban. Negotiating a “live and let live” accord with the drug lords would allow the cartels access to what they want (secure drug routes) and reduce the need for violent confrontation. The government would, however, be in the unenviable position of possibly having to defend one cartel from another, and explicitly acknowledging its inability to enforce its own laws.
Making peace with drug lords sounds awful. But the cartels are not going anywhere, and there is no reason to think that American-supported bluster will be any more effective now than it was in the 1990s. The ebb and flow of conflict all around the world with despicable, violent organizations is driven by how accommodating societies are of illegal activity at different points in time. When they are more accommodating, there is less violence. When they get fed up, there is more.
Right now, the Mexican government is trying to play hard ball. If the government cannot defeat the drug lords, however, it will find a convenient moment to strike a private deal, declare victory, and let things return to the status quo ante: an uneasy accommodation. The result will essentially be a less transparent version of what I am suggesting here. However ignoble, it will resemble successful pacts around the world. As Spencer Ackerman notes in a piece about the conflict in Afghanistan, “insurgencies rarely end with complete victory by one or the other side. They end by co-optation, integration and — yes — appeasement. Give your enemy a positive reason to stop fighting you that meets his core needs and you can probably get him to, you know, stop.”
It’s not a pretty picture. But neither is continuing to lose an endless war.
No wonder Mexicans immigrate to the United States! Violence in Mexico has affected many people and places. There is almost half a million Mexicans involved in narco-trafficking. It’s sad to realize there is no one in Mexico you can really trust, almost everyone is corrupted. To be honest I feel like its never going to change, the mafia has taken over. No matter what they the president tries to do because the officers in charged of preventing these corrupted people are just part of it too. All this corruption affect the economy, the violence in Mexico.
Comment by Anallely — December 14, 2008 @ 9:41 pm
Is this piece in Harvard the school based in Massachusetts where there are very smart people?
The Merida Initiative is an outright projection of US military presence and collaboration tat would radically transform relations with Mexico for decades to come. Also, the government is already funding and taking sides with one “cartel” or another. See reports from narconews.com; wherever there is a surge in military presence there is hundreds fold extrajudicial deaths.
Like USAID resources in other countries, like Bolivia, it is meant to destabilize and or repress social movements. The lethal weaponry and mercenary forces (like Blackwater) that could be funded by further rounds of Merida Initiative funding are to be used against labor, indigenous and human rights activists fighting against the wholesale privatization of Pemex and everything else in Mexico.
Why would the US send over a billion dollars of aid when as you noted so many reporters are killed, with no accountability? When 27 people were murdered in the state of Oaxaca, during the teacher’s strike, and ot a single case is being investigated? When a US journalist, Brad Will, was murdered, on tape, and the government arrested the activists he was reporting on who testified on events that day, and not the government officials filmed shooting into crowds?
Let’s stop funding impunity at any cost. Contact Congress today and tell them to stop the Merida Initiative.
(side note, apparently the Merida is not released yet, the current Administration is trying to create a sense of inevitability with it, and instead they just announced it as if it happened, that’s what on the hill human rights groups are saying…)
This piece is a small draft, please do more on this important issue. Plan Colombia started small too, and now look!
Comment by Jennifer — December 15, 2008 @ 1:27 am
The drug war failed for the same reason National Prohibition failed in the 1920s. Rather than targeting PROBLEM use they both targeted ALL use. Worse yet, both ignored the law of supply and demand and tried to do that by constricting supply. As the 1920s unfolded, my grandparents’ generation finally learned the lesson that driving a popular drug underground makes it dangerous and, the longer and harder it is driven, the more dangerous it becomes.
If you want to hurt the drug mafia, do what we did to the bootleggers: Take the profit out of the trade by legalizing everything. It will cause an increase in drug prevalance in the U.S., but mostly as casual use, not problem use. Then use part of the tax revenue to offer addicts free needles, counseling, and drug maintenance, as the Swiss have been doing for 14 years.
Comment by John Chase — December 15, 2008 @ 2:03 am
@ Anallely ,,, get a grip
half a million means that 0.5% of the population are involved in drug trafficking.
If people north of the border didn’t consume drugs there would be NO drug trafficking in Mexico.
“… The first would be decriminalization. Decriminalizing drug use would transform the nature of the drug trade overnight …”
Mexicans do not consume a lot of drugs all the Mexican Govt. has to do is legalise the transportation of narcotics. Selling and consuming can remain illegal.
The narcos make their money in the USA. I suggest that Mexico let the USA deal with it’s own problems. Why should Mexico fight the USA’s war on drugs?
Comment by Esteban — December 17, 2008 @ 11:26 pm