Calderon and the drug cartels: Who's intimidating who?

I'm afraid the Texas Youth Commission has soaked up much of the mental bandwidth with which I was focusing on border security last year, but right now in Mexico some dramatic moves on all sides of the government's anti-cartel initiative will likely shape what happens at the border in the near future, perhaps far more than US policy.

Of immediate concern, consider this week's brazen "daytime killing of two federal officers in a hail of some 250 high-caliber bullets and a couple of grenades in downtown Monterrey." The SA Express News' Beyond the Border blog said the assassination is being investigated by Internal Affairs, and the suspects may be federal police. Also this week, the state police chief in Guerrero was assassinated while eating at a restaurant in San Luis Potosi.

Adding to the chaos, Reuters reports that a terrorist group is responsible for blowing up six Pemex pipelines in the south. Indeed, Mexico's southern states, formerly immune to cartel violence, are getting a taste of the same medicine as Monterrey:

Mexican police found the head of a police officer kidnapped by drug hitmen in the southern state of Guerrero on Thursday, El Universal newspaper said.

More than 1,600 people have been killed in drug-related killings in Mexico so far this year and some 2,000 died in 2006.

By comparison, according to federal data, the United States had less than 600 drug-related homicides in 2005, down from more than 1,400 in 1989. The spectacular beheadings and daylight assassinations of police in Mexico outpace any killing spree by American organized crime since Al Capone's Chicago.

Worse, the playing field isn't even. Anti-drug investigators must round up and prosecute offenders one at a time, but when a police officer is killed it sends an intimidating message to all his compadres - "Plata o plomo?," which means silver or lead? - making other officers easier to buy off for fear of their lives.

When Mexican cartels gain power it's at the expense of the central government and local authorities, which are weak, corrupt and in President Calderon's case distracted by tax reform from sinking the necessary political capital into tackling the cartels. Part of the reason for Calderon's shift in focus may be blowback from his initial anti-drug efforts, which exposed alleged corruption in his own ruling party. Those charges will play out during the pending American prosecution of a Chinese businessman named Ye Gon who is currently being held without bail:

Mexican police raided Ye Gon's mansion in Mexico City in March and discovered a stash of $207 million (€150 million) in cash. Mexican prosecutors allege the money came from trafficking in a chemical used to make drugs. Ye Gon claimed $150 million (€110 million) of the cash belonged to Mexico's ruling party, and that he was forced to hold the money during last year's presidential campaign.

Could this unraveling tale explain why Calderon's focus has shifted from the drug war to taxes and foreign affairs? I'm guessing it might.

On the US side, with the death toll also mounting, President Bush last month offered to pump money into an ill-defined anti-drug plan inside Mexico, one that he said will include no US military presence. I've been waiting ever since for details, and wonder whether that statement may leave open room for hiring private mercenaries like Dyncorp, discussed on Grits here, which operates the US anti-drug programs in South America and Afghanistan? That company has already been shopping their services to replace US Border Patrol agents, so they're clearly thinking about creative money making opportunities in the theater.

In any event, most of the recently publicized captures of cartel personnel, particularly on the US side, have been little fish, while in Mexico recent arrests demonstrate that imprisoned cartel leaders continue to control their organizations while incarcerated. For all the hype about Calderon's decision to bring in the Army, the money stash that implicated his own political party, to date, has been the largest success of the campaign.

Calderon has his nation's support today, but he could squander it easily if violence continues to escalate or if the Army and federal police are seen as too corrupt to combat the cartels. His plans to rein in and tax the "informal economy" (read: the black market) likely cannot succeed without addressing the most lucrative black market product of all - illicit drugs.

Calderon probably has a brief window of time to face the problem before it spirals so far out of control his government ceases to be relevant to the outcome. The same could perhaps be said for President Bush, except that he's probably already missed his window.