U.S. Merida aid initiative angers some in Mexico

[AlphaCentauri]

MEXICO CITY -- Billed as a way to strengthen bilateral ties, a proposed U.S. aid package for Mexican crime-fighting efforts has instead turned into a fresh reminder of the prickly dynamics that often drive the two nations apart.

At issue are human-rights conditions that Congress attached to the so-called Merida initiative, a three-year, $1.4 billion proposal by the Bush administration to equip and train security forces in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean to combat drug trafficking.

Senior Mexican officials have called the provisions a form of U.S. interference and threatened to turn down the first-year installment if the conditions survive in a final version yet to be worked out by the House and Senate.

The two chambers approved different first-year sums for Mexico, $400 million in the House and $350 million in the Senate. But both imposed requirements to guard against human rights abuses and corruption by Mexican officials.

"The legislative initiatives approved in both chambers of the U.S. Congress incorporate some aspects that make them, in their current versions, unacceptable for our country," Juan Camilo Mourino, Mexico's second-highest-ranking official and a proxy for President Felipe Calderon, said this week.

Mexico's public-safety chief, Genaro Garcia Luna, who leads the government's current crackdown on drug-trafficking, said the money wouldn't make or break the effort. That campaign, which includes the use of 45,000 troops and federal police, has come as violence has claimed more than 4,100 lives since Calderon took office in December 2006.

Garcia Luna suggested that the money might do more good on the U.S. side to quell arms-smuggling across the border into Mexico.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-merida5-2008jun05,0,5969683.story

[Judi Lynn]

1. Mexico’s War on Drugs is a Sham

June 6, 2008

Mexico’s War on Drugs is a Sham

By Gardenia Mendoza
La Opinión

Mexico’s strategy against organized crime is failing because it has not attacked the larger financial or political structure behind drug trafficking, writes La Opinión’s Mexico City correspondent.

MEXICO CITY – When he came to office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderón implemented a strategy against organized crime. But the plan is failing because it has focused solely on the seizure of drugs, weapons and traffickers without attacking the larger financial or political structure.

National security and organized crime experts came to this conclusion to explain the escalation of violence, including beheadings, torture, kidnappings and mass killings that have been unleashed during the current administration.

“This is the experience of 107 countries: If you only go after gangsters without attacking the financial structure or political protection, what happens is a paradox: you add more troops, prosecutors and police, and the criminal groups put more money into corruption,” says Edgardo Buscaglia, advisor to the UN and academic at Mexico’s Autonomous Technological Institute (ITAM).

“This creates an escalation of violence because criminals respond by bribing high-level officials in order to protect themselves against the state’s actions,” he adds.

It has happened in Lebanon, Pakistan, Colombia… and now it is happening in Mexico: Organized crime has infiltrated the government in a kind of “feudalization,” buying off officials (governors, mayors and police officers) and influencing them by contributing to their campaigns.

“In order for this car to work it has to have four wheels, four combatants: the gangsters, the armed wing, their finances and their politicians,” notes Buscaglia.

More:
http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/current/Drugs.060608.htm