Wikileaks on Mexico: Why is this stuff secret?

I've been avoiding the Wikileaks controversy until now because the information released hasn't related to any topics covered on Grits. But yesterday the site (reconstituted here after its hosting service and domain provider dropped them) posted several cables from the US embassy in Mexico relating to concerns over battling the drug cartels. Now they're getting into my wheelhouse.

CNN has a story on the Mexico cables that hits most of the substantive high points: President Felipe Calderon's military intervention in Juarez failed miserably, causing the US to encourage him to bring in the federal police instead, which happened earlier this year. Because soldiers aren't trained to gather evidence, just 2% of arrests under the military occupation resulted in prosecutions.

This cable from last year offered a pessimistic assessment of the Merida Initiative: "[Mexican Undersecretary for Governance Geronimo] Gutierrez Fernandez then turned to the Merida Initiative, saying that in retrospect he and other GOM [Government of Mexico] officials realize that not enough strategic thought went into Merida in the early phase. There was too much emphasis in the initial planning on equipment, which they now know is slow to arrive and even slower to be of direct utility in the fight against the DTOs. Of more immediate importance is building institutions that can effectively use the equipment."
 
"Gutierrez went on to say, however, that he now realizes there is not even time for the institution building to take hold in the remaining years of the Calderon administration. 'We have 18 months,' he said, 'and if we do not produce a tangible success that is recognizable to the Mexican people, it will be difficult to sustain the confrontation into the next administration.'"

FWIW, it was fairly obvious from the get-go that the Merida Initiative focused too much on equipment and not enough on strengthening institutions. That was not something that required 20/20 hindsight to figure out.

Another cable had this interesting assessment of Calderon's political situation:

President Calderon has entered the last three years of his six-year term facing a complicated political and economic environment. His National Action Party (PAN) emerged seriously weakened from a dramatic set-back suffered in the July congressional elections and was unable to recoup any real momentum during the last legislative session. Calderon’s bold plan for ten ambitious areas for reform, announced in September, has yet to translate into politically viable initiatives. His personal popularity numbers have dropped, driven largely by massive economic contraction and a public sense that there is little strategy to create new and sustainable jobs. Overall, Calderon’s approval ratings are still well above 50 percent, sustained largely by his campaign against organized crime. Increasingly, Mexicans realize that combating DTOs is a matter of citizen security, and thus support a tough stance. Yet the failure to reduce violence is also a liability. ...

Indeed, the GOM’s inability to halt the escalating numbers of narco-related homicides in places like Ciudad Juarez and elsewhere - the nationwide total topped 7,700 in 2009 - has become one of Calderon’s principal political liabilities as the general public has grown more concerned about citizen security. Mexican security institutions are often locked in a zero-sum competition in which one agency’s success is viewed as another’s failure, information is closely guarded, and joint operations are all but unheard of. Official corruption is widespread, leading to a compartmentalized siege mentality among “clean” law enforcement leaders and their lieutenants. Prosecution rates for organized crime-related offenses are dismal; two percent of those detained are brought to trail. Only 2 percent of those arrested in Ciudad Juarez have even been charged with a crime.

Also notable was this explanation of why Mexico's military intervention failed:

Military surges that are not coordinated with local city officials and civilian law enforcement, particularly local prosecutors, have not worked. In Ciudad Juarez, a dramatic increase in troop deployments to the city early last year brought a two-month reduction in violence levels before narcotics-related violence spiked again. The DTOs are sophisticated players: they can wait out a military deployment; they have an almost unlimited human resource pool to draw from in the marginalized neighborhoods; and they can fan complaints about human rights violations to undermine any progress the military might make with hearts and minds.

Indeed, says the cable, the issue of human rights abuses by the military remains a key political stumbling block domestically in Mexico. While the military

has moved to address human rights criticisms, its efforts are mechanistic and wrapped in a message that often transmits defensiveness about bringing a hermetically sealed military culture into the twenty-first century. The military justice system (fuero militar) is used not only for a legitimate prosecutorial function, but also to preserve the military’s institutional independence. Even the Mexican Supreme Court will not claim civilian jurisdiction over crimes involving the military, regardless of whether a military mission is involved. Fortunately, the Mexican military is under increasing pressure to change on a number of fronts. A recent Inter-American Human Rights Court ruling found Article 57 of Mexico’s code of military justice, which effectively allows the military to keep all violators within its own justice system, violate Mexico’s constitution and mandated improvements in the way cases involving alleged human rights abuses by the military are handled. A report issued by Amnesty International in December noted that complaints to the National Commission on Human Rights against the military increased from 367 in 2007 to over 2000 from 2008-June 2009.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about these Mexico cables is that items labeled "secret" or "confidential" in fact contained little if anything the government has a legitimate interest in concealing. Much of the information comes from public sources - an Amnesty International report, court decisions, etc. - and one takes away little from the cables that a well-read person couldn't have gleaned from public accounts. These cables - the ones on Mexico, at least - aren't anything the government should be keeping secret in the first place, making me think a) WAAAAAY too much stuff is being labeled secret or confidential by the feds, and b) government officials complaining so bitterly about Wikileaks doth protest too much.

Better border strategies needed for journalist, witness protection, unmasking corruption

The War on Drugs from its inception has been marked by a stubborn futility in the face of overwhelming failure, but these days some of the proposals to combat Mexico's cartels are laughably pointless, like the Dallas News' suggestion last weekend to protect journalists reporting on the drug war. Their editorial last Sunday opened:

As much as we hate to admit this, the leaders of Mexico's drug cartels know what they're doing. By targeting the people who tell the rest of Mexico – and the world, including those of us in North Texas – about their deadly ways, the cartel's honchos know they are silencing the storytellers.

And by silencing them, they decrease the chance that people will know the depth of the cartels' corruption.

Sadly, this is precisely what's happening. The Committee to Protect Journalists in New York reports that 21 journalists have been slain in Mexico since 2000. That includes Armando Rodriguez, killed last month in Ciudad Juárez.

So what is the solution to this problem, according to the Dallas News? Pass another law against it! God knows, that'll solve it - why didn't we think of that before?!

That's why it's so critical that Mexican legislators pass a law before them now to make it a federal crime to curtail an individual's right to self-expression. The proposal also would strengthen the federal office of special prosecutor and give it more clout in investigating cases like Mr. Ortiz's.

Giving the feds more power to protect journalists wouldn't end the violence, but at least the cartels would know that Mexico City values the storytellers. And that must frighten them.

Why in heavens name would the Dallas News think a new law against murdering people would "frighten" the cartels when they're killing cops and rivals with impunity and it's the police who are afraid of them, not the other way around?!

New laws banning already illegal behaviors are just for show. What are needed instead are new strategies and tactics.

Twenty one dead journalists is the best argument I can think of for state and federal intelligence officials (the FBI and CIA at the federal level, DPS' criminal intelligence division for the state) to forego their traditional "security through obscurity" approach and embrace what' I've been calling "open-sourced intelligence," where part of the government's strategy is to publicly unmask cartel members and drive them as far as possible underground. I see no reason for journalists to die for reporting information that, in most cases, is already sitting in some government file somewhere and which is in the public interest to make known.

I've also been trying to think what strategies the US might employ as Mexicos' partner to reduce corruption. IMO the emphasis on buying guns and equipment from Congress' favorite contractors, by itself, is a failed strategy if it doesn't first address the biggest barrier to success in reducing cartel power: Official corruption on both sides of the border.

Here's a suggestion that plays off of America's inherent advantages and strengths - the fact that the rule of law is much stronger here than in Mexico and people in the United States are (relatively) safe from retaliation compared to in Ciudad Juarez or Acuña:

Corruption occurs in Mexico more because of intimidation than some inherent weakness in the national character. Plata o Plomo - Silver or Lead - is the choice facing both local and federal officials, and the threat of a bullet is no joke. It doesn't matter who you are, the government can't protect you.

One of the lessons learned from US debates over witness intimidation and the "stop snitching" slogans popularized in recent years by drug dealers and hip hop moguls is the importance of well-funded witness protection programs to prevent witness intimidation. At the end of the day, sloganeering aside, there's really no substitute if you want people to cooperate by standing up to violent, dangerous thugs.

With that lesson in hand, perhaps the United States, as Mexico's partner, could assist by establishing a robust witness protection program whereby police and others who turn in their cartel handlers or citizens who rat out corrupt cops could actually come live in America with their family, not just until they were required to testify but as long as they continue to be in danger.

Even if America chipped in most of the cost, you'd have to relocate a lot of people before you reached the $1.4 billion-plus total proposed by the Bush Administration for guns and equipment in the Merida initiative.

(H/T: Drug War Rant)

Mexico debates how to stem police corruption; America's hour for not comprehending

The MexFiles clues us in to a public policy debate in Mexico over the structure of police and how best to fight corruption:

There is a legislative battle right now between PAN and the Calderon Administration on one side, and PRI, PRD and the legislative left on the other over police reforms. The Calderonistas are pushing for a single national police force under the control of the Federal Executive and the opposition parties, for varying reasons, agrees that better police coordination is needed, but rejects a consolidated police.

In this case, it’s the leftist parties that are fighting the consolidation, and — if you read the rightist, or pro-PAN publications — is to maintain local government control (read “patronage”) where opposition parties have the upper hand. For the lefties, it’s also a matter of civil liberties. Police answerable only to the Federal Executive could be used to quash legitimate dissent. Of course, local coppers are used to put down dissenting movements now… but when they do, they risk their own electorial advantage if the movement is indeed popular with the locals, and — if they are unable to control the movement — then they need to compromise with the dissenters or open themselves to federal control (and risk removal from office for “inability to govern”). I tend to prefer a few pockets of anarchy and the risk of some violence to a police-state, but that’s a personal thing.

A more conservative argument against federalizing the police is also a basic capitalist one. If I were in the gangster biz, I’d rather only have to bribe one or two key officials, than handle the bribes for local police chiefs, state police inspector generals, federal police commanders — any one of whom might, in a fit of honest pique, undo my dirty work. A unitary police force would make bribery and corruption a much simpler task.

For the honest coppers, and those of us who support them, the less unified the police, the better. If there are corrupt forces, it’s easier to replace, say, the transitos of Fulanatitlan, than to pick out the bad apples buried omewhere in a huge police apparatus “controlling” a country of 120,000,000

See the rest of the post which includes excerpts from a Mexico City newspaper columnist who looks on in wonder at the new "Merida Initiative" money and understandably laments that, "The Americans seem to think, just about every time, that this time is going to be different."

That line not only sums up the last 40 years (at least) of US drug policy toward Mexico, but also reminds me of a these verses from one of my favorite Mexican painter/poets, Alfredo Castañeda, published in his 2005 Book of Hours:

Hour For Not Comprehending

And like the first time, I ran as fast as I could.
And like the first time, I fell at the base of the tree.
And like the first time, I got up uttering horrible blasphemies.
And like the first time, I wept until the sun went down, taking
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxwith it all that bitterness
And like the first time, too, I thought:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxTomorrow I will make it at last.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxTomorrow will be my day

Surely as it regards the drug war and Mexico, this is America's "Hour For Not Comprehending."

Time for new US, Mexican anti-drug strategies

If the 81st Texas Legislature weren't nearly upon us, it'd be easy and timely to devote much more attention on Grits to criminal justice topics south of the border. That issue could take up an entire blog and then some, and Grits just doesn't have time or resources to tackle the story properly. Rather than delve deeply into these subjects, then, I at least wanted to point readers to several important, recent lowlights from law enforcement's battle against multinational drug cartels that significantly affect the Lone Star State.

Ironically, crime in Texas (including our murder rate) has actually declined during a period in Mexico when thousands were slain in battles between competing criminal organizations and the government over access to US consumers. The Los Angeles Times puts the total in Juarez (El Paso's sister city) at 1,300 cartel-related murders in 2008 alone. That's more killings in one city than the entire state of Texas sees in a year - in 2007 Texans reported just 1,172 total murders according to FBI crime stats.

I join the LA Times in their hope that the Obama Administration changes strategies on its Mexico policy because the first installment of President Bush's Plan Mexico anti-drug money takes what I think is exactly the wrong tack - indiscriminately throwing cash at the problem. As I learned from an article in the latest (Sept. - Dec.) issue of Voices of Mexico (an academic publication from the Mexican university, UNAM, not online), a shortage of funds is hardly the biggest challenge facing Mexican law enforcement:

It hardly seems necessary to emphasize that the problem in Mexico is not a matter of limited economic resources allocated for fighting crime. In 2007 public spending programmed for "order, security, and justice" was 60.46 billion pesos. In 2008 this amount was increased to 69.58 billion pesos. This last amount represented an 86.8 percent increase vis-a-vis 2003, when the amount designated was 37.25 billion pesos. Even so, President Felipe Calderon requested a 39 percent nominal increase over the current year in the Federal Spending Bill for2009 presented to Congress. In the last six years, the federal executive has used only approximately 50 percent of the amounts budgeted. Nevertheless, the results do not correspond by far to the [total] amounts spent in this area.

In light of these data, the importance of the so-called "Merida Initiative" seems more political and symbolic than practical. Mexico doesn't need our money, they need to clean up their own law enforcement agencies while America needs to focus on reducing both demand and corruption north of the border.

The VoM piece reinforces my sense that the United States shouldn't be spending so much on helicopters and equipment when many in Mexican (and increasingly US) law enforcement are working as much as agents of drug cartels as police.

That became apparent earlier this year when one of Texas' border Sheriffs who'd received Gov. Perry's multi-million dollar anti-drug grant was arrested for allegedly working as an agent of the Gulf Cartel. As state Rep. Jessica Farrar told the El Paso Times: "We may as well just send it directly to drug dealers ... We've been spending money against our own interests."

Driving home that concern are more recent arrests of corrupt officials on both sides of the border. According to AP:

Mexico's former acting federal police chief was accused Friday of collaborating with a notorious cartel and stealing money from a mansion during a raid to bust a drug trafficking ring.

A judge ordered Gerardo Garay's formal arrest on suspicion of organized crime, robbery and abuse of power, according to a statement from the Attorney General's office. Garay had been under preliminary detention for a month, but authorities had not revealed the allegations against him. He has previously denied any wrongdoing. ...

Some of those arrested had been at the helm of President Felipe Calderon's nationwide offensive to take back territory controlled by drug gangs, a two-year campaign involving the deployment of more than 20,000 soldiers.

In November, Mexico's federal police liaison to Interpol was arrested as an alleged cartel conspirator.

Similarly, on the US side we continue to see episodic bouts of drug-related corruption among both law enforcement and others in officialdom. Just last week we saw another Texas-based Border Patrol agent "indicted for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for escorting narcotic loads."

The Brownsville Herald recently told the story of a paralegal who allegedly sold information she had access to through her employer, a private law firm, to a drug gang who used it to commit a murder. While Grits has focused the problem of police corruption, the Herald reminds us that "A cadre of attorneys, probation officers, paralegals, grand jurors and court staff has access to sensitive intelligence for which groups such as the Texas Syndicate or the Tamaulipas-based Gulf Cartel are willing to pay highly."

Finally, one can't talk about press coverage of the Mexican drug war without doffing one's hat to those journalists who risk their lives to bring us those stories. In particular, I can't help but imagine the horrific holiday season faced by the family of Armando Rodriguez, a crime reporter for El Diario de Juarez in Ciudad Juarez who was fatally gunned down Nov. 13 outside his home as he was taking his daughter to school. Keep them in your prayers and hope that we can find some way to combat drug trafficking that doesn't put reporters at risk.

In particular, I'd like to see the government make much more intelligence information about cartel activities public to take the pressure of journalists like Rodriguez, who are frequently killed for reporting things that law enforcement and courthouse insiders already know. Such "open sourced intelligence" could perhaps pressure the cartels in indirect but meaningful ways that can't be had through roadway interdiction or long-term undercover investigations.

I'm not a great fan of the TV show "America's Most Wanted" - about 5 minutes of the breathless, hyped tone turns me off. But perhaps what's needed to reduce risk to journalists may be some sort of "Mexico's Most Wanted," an official or semi-official source of information to heighten public pressure and awareness.

In 2007, the Texas Legislature gave more than $100 million in grants (distributed through the Governor's office) to Border Sheriffs Association members in a pork-laden plan which grew out of Perry's 2006 re-election platform. This year, the Governor wants to boost that amount and expand the grant program to include police departments in interior cities in addition to along the border.

I think Gov. Perry is making the same mistake as the national government with its recent aid package to Mexico. By failing to prioritize reducing corruption, in the case of Sheriff Guerra Perry's plan put anti-drug money directly in the hands of someone who is now alleged to have been a cartel employee.

Though the issue never made it on the the presidential campaign radar screen, the Obama Administration definitely should move ASAP to set a new course for US drug policy, particularly regarding Mexico and Latin America. Reducing corruption (as opposed to purchasing guns and equipment) must become a more central focus of anti-drug law enforcement on both sides of the border, or else we risk witnessing an outcome that's openly feared in the Voices of Mexico article: "the imminent collapse of the Mexican state."

Bush's proposed Mexican anti-drug aid package needs revision

America has a responsibility to assist in Mexico's hot war between the government and the drug cartels, but nothing obligates us to spend money in ways that make matters worse. The Houston Chronicle recently editorialized that the US should provide military aid to Mexico for combating cartels without attaching strings to ensure the money is not used for human rights violations, declaring that:

At a time when law enforcement cooperation between the United States and Mexico is more important than ever, the two countries are threatening to turn their backs on each other. The U.S. Congress wants to cut President Bush's Merida Initiative, which proposes $500 million to finance Mexico's anti-drug efforts. More annoying to Mexico, Congress wants to attach human rights conditions to the aid, causing some Mexican officials to threaten to turn it down. That would benefit neither country, but would boost Calderon's standing at home.

Because of the corrupting influence of billions of narco-dollars, the battle against traffickers will always be imperfect. But the United States cannot stand by while drug cartels turn much of Mexico into a lawless, bloody empire.

Anyone who thinks the US should ignore human rights concerns when supplying weapons to the Mexican government has got another think coming. The Mexican government has a long history of brutally suppressing political dissent - particularly by indigenous people in the southern part of the country. Congress is right to insist on requirements that the aid they give won't be used that way.

Regular readers know that I'm as concerned as anybody about the increasing levels of lawlessness in Mexico and bloody wars between the government and the drug cartels. But from the beginning I've questioned the package the President put together and think it places the cart before the horse. Buying expensive military hardware for use by corrupt police won't solve anything by itself. The US would be better served by funding anti-corruption initiatives on both sides of the Rio Grande and spending more to stop the flow of guns south into Mexico.

Related Grits posts:

• Briefings on Bush's Mexico drug plan raise more questions than answers
• Bush and Calderon on outs: Merida initiative may not pass Congressional muster

Crime and Punishment in Mexico: The big picture beyond drug cartel violence

While the YFZ Ranch mess out in West Texas has gobbled up much of this blog's routine bandwidth, the hot war in Mexico between the government and major drug cartels, not to mention between the cartels and one another, appears to be spinning wildly out of control. The outcome of this struggle has huge implications for security in Texas, and not just for the border region.

Six police officials were assassinated in a week's time recently, including the head of the federal police, the highest ranking law enforcement officer in Mexico. The main suspects in the federal police chief's murder are other federal police officers with ties to the Sinaloa cartel. Such high-profile police killings have been going on for a while now, but their frequency and boldness has grown exponentially. The Chicago Tribune reports reported that:

Mexican authorities said Monday that Millan Gomez's slaying was an inside job organized by the Sinaloa cartel. The murder has bolstered skeptics from both U.S. political parties who have questioned whether aid from the Merida Initiative could end up in the wrong hands.

I'd wondered previously if President Bush's proposed Mexican aid package wouldn't just wind up training and arming more turncoats like Los Zetas. Perhaps this moment of rethinking will encouage Congress to consider more helpful approaches than just purchasing hardware and paying overtime for Mexican police.

Meanwhile, in Juarez, El Paso's sister city across the Rio Grande, 15 police officers have been assassinated since the beginning of the year, despite the presence of 2,000 federal troops.

For those keeping track at home, the cartels are winning the drug war battle in Mexico, and it's mostly because of corruption, superior tactics, and economics, not a lack of military might.

Fabius Maximus asks point blank the critical question: Is Mexico on the road to a failed state? Two years ago, I did not think so. Today I seriously wonder.

So it's with this recent context that I was interested to see an article in Voices of Mexico (Jan-April 2008) titled "The Direction of Criminal Justice Reform in Mexico" (not online, I happen to subscribe to VOM, which is an English-language arts, politics and culture magazine published out of UNAM, a major university in Mexico City).

Let's just say, the opening lines of the short piece by UNAM law professor Enrique Ochoa Reza and legal researcher Miguel Carbonell, didn't provide particular comfort, declaring "Any analysis of the Mexican criminal justice system must start from a certainty: it is so flawed we can say without fear of exaggeration that it is completely bankrupt."

Okay, let's start there. (!) They continue:

All available statistics lead us to the conclusion that the Mexican criminal process is leaking from every side: a) it is useless for trapping the most dangerous criminals; b) it allows for an extremely high level of impunity and corruption; c) it does not guarantee the fundamental rights of either victims or accused; d) it does not set up incentives for professional criminal investigations; and e) if we take into account its poor performance, it is extremely expensive. ...

Eighty-five percent of victims of crime never even file a complaint; 99 percent of offenders are not convicted; 92 percent of criminal hearings take place in the absence of a judge; 80 percent of Mexicans believe judges can be bribed; 60 percent of arrest warrants are never executed; 40 percent of inmates have not yet been convicted, while 80 percent of detainees have never spoken to the judge who convicted them.

Yikes! I don't know off hand what the line by line comparable stats would be in the United States. For some, like Ds never seeing the judge who convicted them, I'd hope it'd be near 0% instead of 80% in the US. But comparisons aside, on their face those are alarming numbers.

Ochoa Reza and Carbonell also answer, partially, another key question. If the most serious criminals appear immune, and few investigations occur ("Most arrests by police are made when the offender is caught in the act or within the following three hours"), "who does the criminal justice system catch?"

Most of the people sentenced have committed offenses against property, particularly petty thievery, or what in Mexico are classified as crimes against health, above all small-time drug dealing worth an average of US $100 (although half these individuals had drugs in their possession worth less than US $16). Some analysts think these figures show that what the police are doing, more than arresting real drug dealers, is to arrest consumers, probably to try to fulfill arrest quotas demanded by their superiors.

This numbers driven drug enforcement model is a US export. It's essentially similar to the incentives that operate among US drug enforcement officers, particularly at the state and local levels.

Another thing's similar to the United States, ironically. Despite the growing Mexican murder rate (more than double that in the US) and increased influence of major, corporatized drug cartels over the last decade, overall reported crime decreased in Mexico from 1997-2005, both percentage-wise and in real numbers, from 4,084 local crimes reported daily nationwide in 1997, down to 3,864 in 2005, increasing to 3,957 in 2006.

Over the same period though, the authors report, "we find a paradox" in that while the number of crimes declined, the number of people in prison increased. Clearly crime is not down because imprisoning more people "worked" in Mexico. Drug gangs are openly competing with the central government for power! Instead, I'd suggest that Mexico and the United States both appear to have enjoyed organic, overall crime reductions during this period that are a) about the same magnitude and b) occurred in spite of rather than because of state incarceration policies.

The authors added this concern, which in light of Texas' incarceration juggernaut seems almost quaint: "The magnitude of these figures should make us stop and think about the large number of Mexicans who at one time or another and in one circumstance or another are accused of having committed a crime. The number is 2 percent of all the country's inhabitants."

In Texas, by comparison, more than 1 percent of Texas adults are currently in prison, and nearly 1 in 20 Texans are under current control of the criminal justice system: either in prison, jail, on probation or on parole. About one in 11 adults in Texas have been convicted of a felony, several times the percentages in Mexico, FWIW.

In their section identifying possible reforms, Ochoa Reza and Carbonell look to take the best of what appears to work from both the north and the south. From Los Norteños they suggest Mexico " [Set] up a common procedure in which the trial becomes the central stage of the criminal process. In the Mexican system, this presupposes at least two things: 1) eliminating exceptions that allow for non-enjoyment or diminished enjoyment of fundamental procedural rights (that is, the currently existing regime of exceptions applied to organized crime, established both in the Constitution and in the Federal Law Against Organized Crime); 2) giving the stage of the criminal investigation the place and importance it should have, reducing the requirements for subpoenaing a person to testify and making what happens before a judge the central part of the process."

They also support "Strictly separating the public prosecutor's subpoenaing and prosecutorial function from the justice system's decision making functions," and making investigations less formal to encourage more of them (don't quite know what formalities they're talking about).

Finally, declared the authors, following the lead of Argentine reformers Alberto Bovino and Christian Hurtado, he suggests:

Regulating a series of alternatives to the application of common procedures and punishments. It should be emphasized that on this point Bovino and Hurtado refer not only to criminal procedures, but also to the regive of substantive criminal law, which should be made much more rational and contained, avoiding the levying of criminal sentences willy-nilly to punish all kinds of behavior.

I'd not heard before of Bovino and Hurtado, but like what I hear from them on this piece. (Looking for more background on them, I found this recent research paper about legal reformers in Latin America that appears to give more detail on recent trends in Latin American criminal justice reform - perhaps fodder for another Grits post down the line.)

Ochoa Reza and Carbonell's article gives some important context about crime and punishment in Mexico that both re-frames and complicates the near-daily news reports about the nation's Sisyphean battle against the drug cartels. On a day to day basis, Mexico faces many of the same challenges we do - some of them "supersized," and some of them on a much smaller scale - and they're looking both north and south for solutions.

RELATED: From John Ross, Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism.

Bush and Calderon on outs; 'Merida Initiative' may not pass Congressional muster

It sounds like President Bush may already be suffering from buyer's remorse regarding the proposed $1.4 billion anti-drug aid package, according to a Mexican political reporter. In the paper-only English-language magazine Voices of Mexico, published at UNAM, a large university in Mexico City, Proceso correspondent J. Jesus Esquivel gives quite a different view of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's relationship with President Bush and the prospects of the US aid package than I've seen in the American press. Writes Esquivel (Issue 50, p.p.47-49):

President Felipe Calderon has developed a strategy of criticizing and blaming the US government for the violence inflicted on the Mexican people by the drug cartels, saying it is not doing all it can to reduce drug consumption domestically and it is neglecting the fight against drug trafficking. As a result, some members of Bush's cabinet and several federal legislators have responded very negatively and now look at Mexico more cautiously and are less interested in bilateral cooperation.

A US State Department official told Esquivel that Calderon "made a big mistake" by criticizing President Bush, who has apparently taken such populist appeals personally. The Mexican President's "mistake in the bilateral struggle against organized crime," Esquivel writes, "may be criticizing the US openly when it is headed up by the most conservative, vengeful and unilateralist president in recent history."

As a result, an anonymous DEA agent assigned to the Texas Mexico border told Esquivel that:

For now, unfortunately drug traffickers are the only ones capable of stopping or slowing down drug-related violence in Mexico. These criminals control a large part of the state and municipal police forces in northern Mexico and that makes them practically invulnerable to President Calderon's offensive.

We also get from the article a little more insight into why the aid request is so heavily laden on the front end with military hardware. He quotes a Mexican diplomat who says that:

the Mexican military is taking advantage of the fact that Calderon needs it, and not the reverse, to demand that he get sophisticated offensive hardware from the United States. They demand this without realizing that, politically, this requires the intervention of Capitol Hill.

Congressman Tom Lantos questioned the inclusion of millions for new helicopters, and the VOM article sheds more light on that request: The Mexican diplomat criticized "the Mexican army's demands and disregard for the details of their political consequences" for creating a package that may not be politically viable. "Mexico's armed forces dream of US combat helicopters and highly sophisticated weapons to meet head on the country's drug kingpins," writes Esquivel, "who undoubtedly have a better arsenal than our police forces."

But the demand invites a feud with Congress, said Esquivel, because the Pentagon requires US trainers and oversight when giving foreign armies new weapons systems. This creates a conflict, because "the presence of foreign military personnel in Mexico is unthinkable given the nationalist legislation that the Calderon administration subscribes to and Mexico's Congress very jealously defends."

(An aside, flattering a Texas reporter: Esquivel called Dallas News correspondent Albert Corchado "perhaps the US reporter with the greatest knowledge about how Mexican drug traffickers operate." It's true: Corchado routinely may be found on the front lines where other media sources are silent.)

Neither Bush nor Calderon consulted with their respective legislative branches before they came up with the contents of the proposed $1.4 billion aid package. If Bush and Calderon are now really on the outs, and if the "Merida Initiative" as proposed can't pass muster with both the US and Mexican Congresses, it doesn't seem likely that Bush will expend much political capital during his final lame-duck year on behalf of his Mexican counterpart.

A few weeks ago the aid proposal received a lot of attention and appeared to have momentum, then ground to a halt before the holidays. I'd attributed that to winter doldrums, but perhaps some of these dynamics had more to do with the legislation's slow down.

Briefings on Bush's Mexico Drug Plan Raise More Questions than Answers

I was hoping we'd learn more this week from Congressional hearings about the President's "Merida Initiative" to funel $1.5 billion to Mexico over three years to support Mexican drug interdiction, but from the official testimony posted on the House Foreign Affairs Committee website, I find more questions than answers. For now, then, let's run through some of the questions:

Helicopters for what?
A big chunk of them money will go to purchase helicopters and other equipment for Mexico, but as Chairman Tom Lantos in his opening statement questioned:

$208 million of the proposed $500 million package for Mexico is for helicopters. The question remains, what are the mission requirements of these helicopters? How will Mexico use the aircraft? What restrictions do we contemplate putting on the use of the aircraft? How will we monitor the use of the aircraft?

Indeed, Lantos pointed out, we've done this before:

This is not the first attempt to provide helicopters for counter-drug use. Twelve years ago, 73 helicopters were given to Mexico. They were used, and did not work well, and we ended up with the Mexicans giving them back to us. The Mexican military also singularly dislikes end-use monitoring requirements, without which Congress will not approve the measure.

I guess it's true that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Besides helicopters, the Bush administration proposes giving the Mexican government all sorts of additional high-tech equipment and assist creating national criminal databases comparable to in the United States. It seems highly unlikely such grand goals can be completed within budget.

Is there an exit strategy?
Lantos also questioned whether the initiative represents an open ended commitment or a finite one:

The reports in the media are that this is a three-year plan. We are currently in the seventh year of Plan Colombia with no end in sight. Is the Mexico plan equally open-ended? How will we define and how will we measure success? From where will subsequent money come for this plan? Latin American assistance budgets have been steadily declining and a very large portion of the amounts Latin America does get are taken up by Plan Colombia. Will ’09 money for this plan also be taken from existing Latin American funds?

I don't think anyone can credibly say drug importation will have ceased in three years since we've not accomplished that task in the last 82. The $1.5 billion shouldn't be considered the cost of the initiative, IMO - it's more like an ante required to get into a no-limit game.

Will we just be training more Zetas?
Finally, the chairman made a veiled reference to Los Zetas, Mexican paramilitary commandos trained by the US at Fort Benning, GA, who went on to work for the drug cartels, suggesting that the plan does not include sufficient safeguards to prevent that from happening again, declaring:

Training is an important part of this program, and training is a very important element in stemming the flow of drugs. But it is reported that prior counter-drug training resulted in a significant number of individuals, well-trained, becoming members of drug traffickers’ military units – and as a result of our training, using sophisticated military tactics, intelligence-gathering and operational training. Training can be dangerous because it can make corrupt forces more effective.

I'm glad Lantos raised this: How can America be sure we're not training and arming corrupt Mexican police and military personnel? Not only is it precisely the right question to ask, it should be asked first before we start training and arming Mexican police and military who we don't know and can't thoroughly trust.