Commentary

Mexico: Reminiscent of the '50s? Or more sinister times?

By Denise Tessier 05/23/2008

A visitor to interior Mexico might find it strongly reminiscent of America in the 1950s.

Coca Cola comes in returnable bottles and tastes like it did in the '50s (made with real sugar). Mexicans of all ages in equal numbers are visible in the town squares and streets; even at night, children are out walking, playing, riding bikes. Attendants pump your gas and wash your windshield.

The flip side of the '50s is apparent as well: DWI campaigns are not yet in force to condemn drunk drivers, farmers use pesticides banned in the U.S., a litter campaign is badly needed and everywhere people are burning their weeds.

Like 1950s America, it's a country on the upswing. Productivity is up. Education is valued. The peso is actually gaining on the dollar.

But a leading geopolitical publication sees Mexico dangerously mirroring aspects of another America era -- the 1920s, when Al Capone terrorized Chicago and wars were waged on the streets.

The recent murders of top-ranking government police officials in Mexico City along with high-up Sinaloa cartel operatives in the state of Sinaloa mark a change toward an intensifying warfare that could push Mexico toward becoming a "failed state", states a commentary by George Friedman, CEO of Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.).

Stratfor offers commentary, mostly by paid subscription, focusing on the geopolitical implications of worldwide events and has long covered the Mexican drug cartels. Friedman's recent posting, Mexico: On the Road to a Failed State?, posits that the recent killings "pose a strategic problem for the Mexican government":

The bulk of its effective troops are deployed along the U.S. border, attempting to suppress violence and smuggling among the grunts along the border, as well as the well-known smuggling routes elsewhere in the country. The attacks in Mexico raise the question of whether forces should be shifted from these assignments to Mexico City to protect officials and break up the infrastructure of the Sinaloa and other cartels there. The government also faces the secondary task of suppressing violence between cartels.

Throughout all this, Mexico is vulnerable to further intensification of the drug problem through both a "brain drain" -- the murder of those trained in dealing with the drug cartels -- and the unavoidable criminal influence of billions of dollars in drug money.

There comes a moment when the imbalance in resources reverses the relationship between government and cartels. Government officials, seeing the futility of resistance, effectively become tools of the cartels. Since there are multiple cartels, the area of competition ceases to be solely the border towns, shifting to the corridors of power in Mexico City. Government officials begin giving their primary loyalty not to the government but to one of the cartels. The government thus becomes both an arena for competition among the cartels and an instrument used by one cartel against another. That is the prescription for what is called a "failed state" -- a state that no longer can function as a state.

Friedman compares the situation to Chicago in the 1920s.

Smuggling alcohol created huge pools of money on the U.S. side of the border, controlled by criminals both by definition (bootlegging was illegal) and by inclination (people who engage in one sort of illegality are prepared to be criminals, more broadly understood). The smuggling laws gave these criminals huge amounts of power, which they used to intimidate and effectively absorb the city government. Facing a choice between being killed or being enriched, city officials chose the latter. City government shifted from controlling the criminals to being an arm of criminal power. In the meantime, various criminal gangs competed with each other for power.

He then draws a parallel to what might have happened had the wars moved to Washington, D.C., as they have moved to Mexico's capital city:

Ultimately, Washington deployed resources in Chicago and destroyed one of the main gangs. But if Al Capone had been able to carry out the same operation in Washington as he did in Chicago, the United States could have become a failed state.

The commentary makes it clear that the United States cannot afford to see such a scenario played out in Mexico.

Mexico’s potential failure is important for three reasons. First, Mexico is a huge country, with a population of more than 100 million. Second, it has a large economy -- the 14th-largest in the world. And third, it shares an extended border with the world’s only global power, one that has assumed for most of the 20th century that its domination of North America and control of its borders is a foregone conclusion. If Mexico fails, there are serious geopolitical repercussions. This is not simply a criminal matter.

In a recent constituent newsletter, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., addressed the danger these drug wars pose to New Mexico as a border state:

New Mexicans and Mexicans alike have found the recent spike in violence along the U.S.-Mexico border disturbing. In the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which shares a border with New Mexico, there have been over 200 murders since the beginning of 2008, an increase of about 100 percent over the previous year.

In an attempt to crack down on drug smuggling in the region, Bingaman has worked on several countermeasures:

Even before the violence in Mexico spiked this year, I had been working to crack down on drug smuggling in the region. Over the past few years I have secured more than $8 million for the New Mexico National Guard’s counterdrug initiative, which assists U.S. Customs and Border Protection with anti-drug efforts. This year, I also was able to set aside $223,250 to help several border law enforcement agencies in southern New Mexico purchase equipment necessary to address human smuggling, drug trafficking, and other border-related criminal activity.

Recognizing that most of the weapons found in Mexico, including those used in drug war assassinations, come from the United States, Bingaman has also introduced legislation to reduce the trafficking of weapons into Mexico. The bill would also increase the training and support of Mexican law enforcement in investigating firearms trafficking cases. As Bingaman states:

... just as it is important to take steps to stop the northbound flow of drugs into the United States, it is also essential that the United States do everything it can to prevent the southbound shipment of illegal weapons into Mexico. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), about 90 percent of the weapons recovered in Mexico originate from sources within the United States. Violent drug organizations use these smuggled weapons to assassinate military and police officials, murder members of rival gangs, and kill innocent civilians.

Bingaman tells constituents it is paramount that "federal, state, and local law enforcement have the resources necessary" to adequately address drug-related violence in the border region, and promises, "I will continue to work to ensure that these resources are made available."

In the Stratfor piece, Friedman notes that the cure for the terror of the 1920s was the repeal of Prohibition. Similarly, legalizing drugs would lower the price of drugs "and vastly reduce the money to be made in smuggling them" into the United States. Despite its "War on Drugs," the U.S. has not been able to reduce the demand.

But Friedman acknowledges there is no quantifiable move afoot to use legalization or even decriminalization as a tool in this fight.

Nothing hurt the American cartels more than the repeal of Prohibition, and nothing helped them more than Prohibition itself. Nevertheless, from an objective point of view, drug legalization isn’t going to happen. There is no visible political coalition of substantial size advocating this solution. Therefore, U.S. drug policy will continue to raise the price of drugs artificially, effective interdiction will be impossible, and the Mexican cartels will prosper and make war on each other and on the Mexican state.

Drug use is not only a health issue, but a criminal issue -- and a diplomatic one.

It could be said that America's drug policy is one of appeasement -- a "buzz word" in the news of late. Policy makers appease the massive complex that has grown from the "War on Drugs," rather than conduct productive talks among themselves, among law enforcement representatives and among state governments. The Drug War is a job-maker embedded in every U.S. community, dependent on maintenance of current drug laws.

In shying away from even discussing those laws, as Stratfor points out, a potential tool for crippling the cartels is completely missing from the discussion table.

(Excerpts from the Stratfor commentary, "Mexico: On the Road to a Failed State?", were used with permission.)