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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Mexico becoming a second Colombia |
| 2005-02-14 |
| Mexico has been shaken by the arrest of a senior member of President Vicente Fox's staff on suspicion of leaking information to drugs traffickers. It has not been proven, but the suspicion is that the tip-offs - about the president's movements - were designed to help hitmen assassinate him. The conclusion being drawn is that organised crime has infiltrated the inner circle of the president, who has repeatedly declared all-out war on the cartels. Observers have been jolted into asking whether Mexico is losing the war on the drug-related corruption, and whether it is in danger of descending into a Colombia-style chaos of narcopolitics. But Bruce Bagley, professor of International Studies at the University of Miami, points out that corruption and the contraband economy are nothing new in Mexico - what is new is Mr Fox's attempt to eradicate them. In the 1920s, Mexico's PRI party began a 71-year uninterrupted stretch in power, allowing corruption to become embedded within the system, he says. "The election of President Fox in 2000 in effect broke those traditional linkages," Mr Bagley told the BBC News website. "In co-operation with the US, President's Fox's PAN party went after the largest cartels. "This in turn unleashed an internecine warfare among the cartels, as they sought to protect themselves, to recover and fight off the cartelitos" - the forest of smaller drugs organisations which sprang up as the government decapitated the big cartels. Mr Bagley argues that the cartels' apparent attempt to infiltrate the presidential palace - with the suspected, though unproven ambition to target the president himself - is in fact a sign of their weakness. "There's huge paranoia - they're fighting for their economic and political survival, and it's entirely possible they blame President Fox personally for their situation," he says. Diane Davis, a sociologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied the Mexican police, accepts that Mr Fox "has had some high-level successes" against the big cartels but adds that he is in a Catch 22 situation. In order to tackle the cartels, the president must be able to rely on a loyal police force. However, at the same time he is trying to restructure the police force to stamp out "pervasive, endemic" corruption, which turns officers against him. "These are two very hard battles to fight at the same time," she says. "It's a constant revolving door of reform." Some of the problems Mexico faces are similar to Colombia's. Authorities in both countries have found that they faced down the big cartels - Medellin and Cali in Colombia, Tijuana in Mexico - only to find they created openings for new "mini-cartels". Events in one country can also influence events in the other. In the 1970s, a strong US-backed policy against the cultivation of marijuana in Mexico served to encourage both cultivation and cartel activity in Colombia, they say. Then in the 1990s, tough measures against cocaine traffickers in Colombia appeared to give new life to cartels in Mexico. But analysts caution that comparisons between the two countries should not be made lightly. Colombia's internal conflict involving Marxist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and the state has a highly ideological slant, they point out. This is absent in Mexico, where oddly - says Peter Andreas, associate professor of political studies at Brown University - the Zapatista rebel movement has failed to become deeply entangled with the drugs trade. And, he adds, there is a "dramatic difference in the level of violence". |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #7 Sorry Mark E., but people get killed over alcohol all the time. Between drunk driving and general idiocy around drunks the casualty rate is quite high . . . but your point is probably that Busch is not ordering hits on Coors; Makers Mark not attempting to eliminate the board of Wild Turkey; etc, etc. |
| Posted by: Jame Retief 2005-02-14 10:47:48 PM |
| #6 You beat me to it, tu. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2005-02-14 9:50:52 PM |
| #5 Legalize it.... When was the last time someone was killed over liquor in the US? The day before prohibition ended? Coincidence? The largest influence it'll have then is distributors (cf. large liquor distributors in the US) making illegal campaign contributions. Also reduce or eliminate the international trade/law enforcement issue. |
| Posted by: Mark E. 2005-02-14 7:48:24 PM |
| #4 Illegal drugs are as cheap as ever. What makes anyone think cartels aren't well established here in the good ole USA. Anyone who doesn't think so has been listening/reading the usual suspects in the MSM too long. |
| Posted by: mexican mafia 2005-02-14 5:43:25 PM |
| #3 Vincente goes down, he becomes a martyr. |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2005-02-14 11:34:11 AM |
| #2 Ditto Tu. |
| Posted by: Floting Shang5398 2005-02-14 10:07:14 AM |
| #1 Becoming? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2005-02-14 9:41:23 AM |