A Primer on Plan Mexico

In February and March of 2008 the International Civil Commission on Human Rights investigated the status of human rights violations in the southern states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Atenco. The commission carried out over 650 interviews with victims of abuses. It concluded: "The CCIODH holds that the cases of Atenco, Oaxaca, and Chiapas exemplify a more widespread situation characterized by a pattern of continued and commonplace behavior on the part of different federal, state, and, in some cases, local authorities. This model of behavior can clearly be understood as the politics of the state."

The argument of groups opposing Plan Mexico is not that, given the deplorable state of its judicial and law enforcement systems, Mexico does not deserve the U.S. aid package, as if this were a type of reward for good behavior. The problem is the type of aid envisioned in Plan Mexico. Empowering (and enriching) corrupt and abusive institutions beforereforming them empowers abusers, and potentially deepens and consolidates corruption.

One of Mexico's foremost human rights groups, the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center states, "The Merida Initiative is characterized by a lack of a human rights perspective, a human security approach that mistakes the security of states for the security of human beings ... It is time for the international community to stop supporting short-sighted policies such as this one."

Mexico is at a critical juncture. Its weak democratic institutions have been shaken and discredited by their inadequate response to electoral polarization and to vast social inequality that destines millions to poverty or out-migration. Human rights abuses still characterize much of law enforcement agencies. The justice system remains bound to powerful interests, and lacks independence from the federal government and state and local governments.

Mexico can either take up the challenge to strengthen democratic institutions, or it can fall back into rule by force and authoritarianism.

At this critical juncture, the Merida Initiative would be a potentially devastating step backwards.

Despite the gravity of Mexico's condition it still lacks a careful diagnosis.

Faced with a real problem-the strength of drug cartels in Mexico and the United States-Plan Mexico proposes solutions that replicate the logic of force and patriarchal control that the drug cartels rely on. Then it applies these solutions not only to a bloody frontal battle with drug traffickers, but to a multitude of complex security threats with roots deep in Mexican society.

Before putting the army in the streets-with all the legal, political, and practical risks that entails-the dramatic increase in drug use should be treated as a health epidemic and addressed at once through education, options for young people, and rehabilitation. Calderon's war on drugs includes construction of treatment centers but focuses on supply and enforcement, and Plan Mexico proposes exclusively enforcement actions. The main result so far has been to unleash violence in most regions of the country. The death, arrest, or extradition of ringleaders has set off battles for succession and renewed turf wars. Meanwhile, it's not clear that the price and availability of illegal drugs have been affected on U.S. or Mexican markets.

Both the United States and Mexico should reject appropriations that place the emphasis on a military solution to their shared drug dependency. Ironically, the one part of Nixon's drug policy that actually worked-expansion of treatment services-is the one part that has been the least emulated. The military-police arm of the "war on drugs" has proved to be not only a failure but a threat to the same social values it claims to defend.

The priority should be to develop national plans and mechanisms of binational coordination that work, and whose side effects-like militarization, human rights abuses, and the sophistication of criminal elements-do not cancel out the benefits. If anything is known about arming conflict, it's that no matter which side you arm-and the guns invariably end up on both sides-it escalates violence.

The sheer scope of the Merida Initiative reflects the Bush administration's military/police focus in international security issues, just when those strategies have hit a low point in popularity within the United States. Any incoming administration should have the freedom to develop new and more effective polices with one of its closest neighbors, instead of being locked into failed and unpopular policies by the outgoing administration.

Major human rights organizations in Mexico and the United States have already come out against the Merida Initiative . It will soon be voted on in the U.S. Congress. To avoid the pitfalls of this policy, a more effective binational plan would address root causes, develop mechanisms of binational coordination, and assume U.S. responsibilities and obligations.

1. Available at http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5118.
2. See Carlsen, Laura "Plan Mexico," FPIF, http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4684.
3. See Laura Carlsen, "Deep Integration: The Anti-Democratic Expansion of NAFTA," http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4276.
4. See http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5178 for an analysis of this meeting.
5. "National Security Strategy Sept. 2002," http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf.
6. Thomas Shannon, Speech to the Council on the Americas, April 3, 2008.
7. Shannon stated this explicitly in the above speech: "Both Canada and Mexico have gone through political transitions and maintained a commitment to the Security and Prosperity Partnership. We are the only country that has not gone through a political transition yet, but we will shortly. The hope of President Bush is that with this meeting in New Orleans, which will be the fourth meeting of the SPP at a leaders' level, that this will effectively institutionalize a U.S. commitment."
8. Rydell & Evering, "Controlling Cocaine, Prepared for the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the United States Army," (Santa Monica, Rand Corporation Study 1994, summary available online at http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Cocaine-Supply-Demand1994.htm.
9. The initiative includes $30 million dollars to the Secretary of Health to establish a central intelligence computer system for national drug treatment centers. None of this money goes to patients or to expand services.
10. Smyth, Frank, "Drug War Blues," 2001: $1.3 billion in military aid that the United States is now providing to Colombia. This latest package has led the Andean nation to surpass El Salvador as the site of the largest U.S.-backed counter-insurgency effort since the Vietnam War.
11. CIP Colombia Program.
12. On-line at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2007/100646.htm.
13. Cited in James Verini.
14. "Detalla la PGR lista de armas decomisadas," Andrea Becerril, La Jornada, Mar. 19, 2008.
15. As reported by Reuters, Feb.5, 2008.
16. Interview with Blanche Petrich, La Jornada, July 30, 2007, http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/07/30/index.php?section=politica&article=005e1pol.
17. Author's interview with General José Francisco Gallardo, April 9. 2008.
18. Cited in a similar position of the Miguel Pro Human Rights Center, http://centroprodh.org.mx/2008/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemid=60.
19. See the recent report by the International Civil Commission on Human Rights at http://cciodh.pangea.org/?q=es/node/207.
20. Laura Carlsen, "Militarizing Mexico: The New War on Drugs," (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, July 12, 2007), http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4373.
21. Andrea Becerril and Víctor Ballinas, "Inconstitucional, cuerpo de elite para tareas policiacas: González Garza," La Jornada, October 5, 2007, http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2007/05/10/inconstitucional-cuerpo-de-elite-para-tareas-policiacas-gonzalez-garza.
22. See the excellent 2004 report by the Latin American Working Group, the Center for International Policy, and the Washington Office on Latin America, "Blurring the Lines: Trends in U.S. Military Programs in Latin America," http://ciponline.org/facts/0410btl.pdf.
23. The author Laura Carlsen formed part of the Sixth Visit of the International Civil Commission on Human rights in Mexico. The preliminary conclusions in English are available online at http://cciodh.pangea.org/?q=es/taxonomy_menu/3/116.
24. CPJ, online at http://www.cpj.org/impunityindex/index.html.
25. Note the following clauses (italics by author): Group 1:1: "These aircraft [2 Cessna Citation, cost: $2,800,000 with training, upgrades, and monitoring] are mission-critical to Mexico's interception of aerial trafficking and to reducing the flows of drugs, arms or other illicit cargo across our shared border" (immigrants are clearly identified as illicit cargo in the initiative); * $104,000,000 for 8 Bell helicopters, with training, maintenance, parts, and night vision equipment, "will improve SEDENA's ability to quickly deploy rapid reaction forces, which is essential for the successful interdiction of drugs arms and persons." * $91,757,0000 to Mexican Migration Institute (INAMI) for IT equipment "to track all persons entering and exiting Mexico as well as internal INAMI checkpoints ... It will also be used to track the entries and exits of repatriated Central Americans." It also provides for biometrically-based temporary working documents for Guatemalans in Southern Mexico; * $20,200,000 for Army Mobile Gamma Ray Non-Intrusive Inspection Equipment "to detect and intercept flows of illicit goods and persons."
26. Joint Statement on the Merida Initiative: A New Paradigm for Security Cooperation, Oct. 22, 2007, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/oct/93817.htm.
27. See Kent Paterson, "Juarez Mothers Demand Justice for their Murdered Daughters," www.americaspolicy.org.
28. See Drug Policy Alliance, http://www.drugpolicy.org/communities/race/.
29. Andrea Becerril and José Antonio Román, "Proteger del terrorismo" a EU, otro fin de la Iniciativa Mérida," La Jornada, Oct. 25, 2007, http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/10/25/index.php?section=politica&article=003n1pol.
30. Eric Schmitt and David Rohde, "Reports Assail State Department on Iraq Security," New York Times, Oct. 23, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/washington/23contractor.html?_r=4&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin.
31. Thomas Donnelley, "Homeland Defense and the U.S. Military," Nov. 1, 2004, http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.21484/pub_detail.asp.
32. Stephen Johnson, "New Security Challenges in the Western Hemisphere," Oct. 16, 2007.
33. At http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5118.
34. CCIODH report http://cciodh.pangea.org.
35. Two youth were killed and dozens beaten by state and federal police. Women rounded up in paddy wagons were abused, raped, and tortured en route to prison. Their horror stories are documented and corroborated by medical examiners and human rights organizations including Amnesty International. Instead of prosecuting the security forces responsible for the acts, the government sentenced two leaders and the lawyer of the grassroots movement to 67 years in prison.
36. On-line at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2007/100646.htm.