The Mex Files

I wasn’t going to post this until tomorrow, but George Friedman’s usual bleak analysis for Stratfor (Mexico: On the Road to a Failed State?) was sent to me a few minutes ago. Friedman, in what you expect from a report meant to sell security services in the United States, at least does see narotics exports as a problem primarily for the United States:

The amount of money accumulated in Mexico derives from smuggling operations in the United States. Drugs go one way, money another. But all the money doesn’t have to return to Mexico or to third-party countries. If Mexico fails, the leading cartels will compete in the United States, and that competition will extend to the source of the money as well. We have already seen cartel violence in the border areas of the United States, but this risk is not limited to that. The same process that we see under way in Mexico could extend to the United States; logic dictates that it would.

The current issue is control of the source of drugs and of the supply chain that delivers drugs to retail customers in the United States. The struggle for control of the source and the supply chain also will involve a struggle for control of markets. The process of intimidation of government and police officials, as well as bribing them, can take place in market towns such as Los Angeles or Chicago, as well as production centers or transshipment points.

I see no evidence that “loyalties are shifting to the cartels.” A lot of thoughtful people are worried by the administration’s response to drug trafficking, but that just means people believe the policy is a failure, not the state. Incidentally, “failed state” — though coined by that old anarchist Noam Chomsky (who says the United States is a “failed state”) — is normally used to justify intervention in the “failed” nation (Haiti, Bosnia, etc.), or to sell military equipment (Colombia) on the pretext that “we” can’t afford to let “them” fail.

Tiny, dirt-poor Guinea-Bissau, is called a “failed state” basically because it has a thriving narcotics transshipment trade… but then, that’s about all Guinea-Bissau has. Mexico has — and will continue to have — oil, gold, silver, lead, agricultural products, fisheries, manufacturing, film, etc. etc. etc. industries. Even if the narcotics trade is — as Friedman claims — responsible for 40 billion dollars a year the U.S. spends overseas, it doesn’t mean all of that money goes to Mexico… nor that the Mexican economy is solely dependent on that money (or that… given about forty years… the source of funding for other Mexican businesses will matter all that much). However, media attention (corporate media attention??? — see the end of my piece) ignores the economic reality in favor of the “failed state” alarmist reports.

My point (which needs to be clarified, and I may revise this later) is that the top-down approach — and military solution — being pursued by the Calderon administration is creating problems. Throwing more military forces at the problem, like the U.S. “surge” in Iraq, is counter-intuitive. Especially when tried and true techniques (like better police work, and rural development programs) — mixed with shutting off the weapons and money spigot from the United States — are likely to be more effective in the long run.

And, besides… everyone expected “drug violence” to include attacks on police officials over the short term. But, unfortunately, we believe what’s in our interest to believe. And, it’s in the interest of Statfor’s clients to invest in military “solutions” rather than resolve the root cause of a national problem.

With the gangsters bumping each other off all over Cuilcán (and one Sinaloa Ministeral Police — i.e., the investigative police — chief here in Mazatlán) the predictable reaction by the Calderon administration is to throw more soldiers at the problem.

Given that the soldiers and federal police are probably a greater danger to us civilians than the gangsters. The gangsters generally hit their targets, anyway. And, seeing they have had to advertise for openings, and aren’t as well armed as you think, maybe going about this the wrong way.

The big hit last week — Chapo Guzmán’s kid — was with a bazooka. You can’t tell me the gangsters have more than one of ‘em. That’s basic “CSI” type work — trace back the weapon to its source, and follow it back. When Edgar Millán Gomez (who was a high-ranking police official, but not “Mexico’s Police Chief” as simplistic foreign press reports called him) was killed, it was old fashioned police work that caught the presumed killers. Mexico City doesn’t have the best cops on the planet, but the tried and true “be on the lookout for…” caught the presumed hitman. Yeah, maybe some “extraordinary rendition” was used to work out who else was involved, but in police killings, these things happen.

My point is that the fight against the drug dealers — if it’s necessary — is NOT analogous to some “Shi’ite v. Sunni” war (as a witty observer in Mazatlán noted), but just the same kind of fight Al Capone and Dutch Shultz had with Eliot Ness. In 1920s Chicago the police (then, as now, notoriously corrupt) took their casualties, and sometimes got their man. The feds — despite Eliot Ness’ later tall tales — mostly stuck to basic things like investigating tax returns and following the money. There was never any thought of sending in the soldiers. The only thing calling out the Army does is put more firepower into the mix. Which may be the point.

All of which makes me think that Lopez Obrador is on to something.

Vicente Fox, being a business executive, saw the drug export trade as a business — a nasty one — but a business nonetheless. You get the feeling he was content to let “market solutions” resolve the worst problems (i.e. let the gangsters kill each other) and tried to correct some abuses at the consumer level — must to the horror of the U.S. press, which had Fox’s very good idea (defining what constituted “personal use” narcotics, and not wasting police resources on small users) completely ass-backwards … reporting it as “legalized drug use”. Fox, alas, was not the Great Communicator… or even a particularly good communicator.

You’d expect Felipe Calderon, with degrees in economics and administration, to recognize the drug export wars as economic and the police problem as basically an administrative one. Which he has. But, like George W. Bush and others, he turns away from the conservative belief in “grassroots solutions” and opts for federalizing and nationalizing “problems” with a single solution.

Lopez Obrador, as a social worker, is looking at the problem from his perspective. I realize that Lopez Obrador’s natural reaction to anything Felipe Calderon does is to start singing the old Groucho Marx song, “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It,” but AMLO does seem to be the only one focused on the issue as a social problem.

Fox was correct in a lot of ways. Cocaine is not Mexico’s problem (coca doesn’t even grow in Mexico), but because it is transshipped through Mexico, dumping surplus cocaine on the Mexican market is a problem. Other than working with users, there isn’t a lot that could be done here, until the U.S. deals with their consumption problem, or with the financial and material support it provides to Mexican shippers. But, that’s not a Mexican problem. If cocaine doesn’t come through Mexico, it will come through somewhere else until something is done about consumer demand.

Mexico’s domestic drug exports — marijuana, methamphetamines and some heroin, are alll rural products. AMLO was correct in suggesting more legitimate resources need to go to the rural regions. While Calderon’s government has had some success in cutting off supplies for meth production, until rural residents have better incomes, they’re going to continue growing what they can sell — including opium poppies. (I wonder if it wouldn’t be more costThe Mex Files › Edit — WordPress effective for the U.S. to simply offer to buy up the harvest at market prices… and maybe throw in a school or a few medical clinics and supermarkets than to spend money building prisons and trying to force Mexico to buy hardware with U.S. money).

If I’m reading AMLO’s suggestions correctly, he’s blaming capitalism and the corporate media for the violence. Socialists are supposed to blame capitalism, so that’s expected. But unless he’s talking about nationalizing the marijuana industry (now there’s a thought!… or I suppose Mexico could find a domestic market use, like Bolivia did with coca), I think he’s referring to the same platform he always has… more development funds for the rural areas (and, I’d suggest spending more on rural police training and salaries, which would cut down on the need for military intervention) and concentrating on domestic market development is going to do more than any fleet of heliocopters.

Blaming the media… well, of course AMLO does that, but he doesn’t seem to mean that they’re glorifying the “drug war” or glamorizing the combatants. And suggesting that “one size fits all” when it comes to resolving the issue. And assuming there is a “war” to be won or lost.

The Mexican Revolution was really three or four revolutions depending on how you define a revolution - but not one of them was a real revolution.

For John Ross, the 1910-20 (plus or minus) Revolution wasn’t “real” because “The class structure remained unaltered”. I’m not sure a change in class structure is the only thing revolutions do, and though the PAN administrations tend to pick leaders from the same old families that were in power before the Revolution (Creels, Terrazas, etc.) in the North, the class structure certainly did change.

It might not have changed the way Zapata or Villa intended (if they had any vision of the future in mind), but Revolutions don’t always work out quite as intended. The French Revolution gave the world Napoleon Bonaparte — which wasn’t exactly what the sans-culottes had in mind when they storned the Bastille, but that’s how Revolutions go… they don’t follow text books (especially text books written after the fact).

And there has been a huge change in “class structure” — Mexico is a middle-class country and it does offer more social mobility than most. Granted, if you’re born poor, you’re likely to stay that way, and — as Malcolm Forbes noted about the United States — the best way to make a large fortune is to inherit one — but families do move from rural poor to lower middle class or from lower to upper middle class quite regularly. Get on the Metro in Mexico City, and you see elderly indigenous grannies being squired by well-dressed (and much taller) grandsons carrying cell phones and the other acourtements of the modern urban middle-class.

The United States has only had one President who wasn’t a wealthy white Protestant (and he was a very wealthy white Catholic) and only a few (Van Buren, the Roosevelts and Eisenhower) who weren’t Anglo-Saxon. I guess the American Revolution never happened either.

How much did Mao’s Revolution really change China? The same bureaucratic elite that have ruled the country (and screwed over the peasants) for the last few millenia still run things, and the bureaucratic elite is doing an even more thorough job of undoing the economic changes brought in by Mao than any worshiper at the altar of NAFTA would envision for Mexico.

First the PRI and now Calderon’s PAN steal one election after another with impunity just like Porfirio Diaz did back in 1910.

SO? It’s a contradiction in terms.  Since when do Revolutions permit the opposition to form parties or win elections?  Even in the United States, you won’t find a political party that doesn’t buy the prevailing corporate capitalist model allowed on most state ballots. And the Mexican Revolution managed to incorporate some contradictory elements (Mexican businessmen seeking to break foreign control of their markets, urban anarchists, middle-class farmers, intellectuals, etc.), but did not “buy” any particular foreign ideology.  If anything, that makes it more authentic a revolution, not less.

Neither the Soviet Union nor the Islamic Republic of Iran have completely fair elections, but I’d be hard pressed to say that the Russian or Iranian Revolutions were “unreal”. And I’m not sure what stolen elections have to do with anything. Although Madero’s 1910 Revolution began with a call for term limits, the electorial process had very little to do with the Revolution. I can’t see where electorial process was necessary to the Revolution — and the term limits were made sacrosanct (the faces change, the parties remain forever). Zapata, for one, never trusted elections (nor do the present-day Zapatistas — that weird amalgamon of Stalinists, Indigenists and reactionaries). I’ve always thought that had Zapata by some fluke been in charge, he would have been the Pol Pot of Mexico — Villa and Zapata’s “celebrated meeting under an Ahuehuete tree on a “chinampa” (floating island) in the southern district of Xochimilco,” may be “… considered the apogee of all the Mexican revolutions.” by Ross, but, c’mon… the purpose of their meeting was to decide who they wanted to eliminate (and they did purge their own ranks).

Pancho Villa was no fan of electorial politics either. If he had any ideology, it was more in line with Leon Trotsky’s call for permanent revolution, using a threat of violence to keep “benign dictators” in line.

I’m a little disappointed in Ross’ article. I think Mexico could have done more, and still should do more — and I have complained about the recent return to “Porfirian” ways. It’s tempting to assume, that because the War of Independence started in 1810 and the Revolution in 1910 that another revolution (one more in line with European and U.S. academic categories) will start in 2010. Sorry, but a series of two does not indicate a trend. It indicates … a series of two.

There is a sizable dissident faction within Mexico, and there could be violent protests (a la Oaxaca 2006… but also a la Bajio 1920, nationwide 1852,1872, 1988…) which says nothing about the 1910 Revolution. And, Mexico’s leadership (those “elites” who are going to come out on top everywhere in the world no matter what — unless, like Haiti or Cambodia, you kill them off) has always worked out a compromise. Sometimes, they’ve been forced to compromise at the point of a gun — as they were between 1910 and 1920 — but that doesn’t mean there weren’t huge changes in Mexican culture and society coming out of the 1910 Revolution.

It was real.

Plan Mexico? Riiiight.

There has been some mention of a Plan Mexico in the Mexican press, but mostly in the form of denials by the government. The conservative Latin American news blog, Bloggings by Boz, tipped me off to this story (from the Houston Chronicle, with a by-line by Pablo Bachelet):

WASHINGTON — Mexican President Felipe Calderon, locked in a bloody confrontation with drug cartels, is negotiating a massive counter-drug aid package with the Bush administration worth hundreds of millions of dollars, several officials say.

Officials on both sides are working out the details of a package that resembles a U.S. aid plan for Colombia. The talks have been taking place quietly for several months and will be a central item on the agenda when President Bush and Calderon are expected to meet in Quebec Aug. 20-21.

Mexican officials have been reluctant to go public with the discussions, mindful of anti-U.S. sentiments harbored by many Mexicans.

But the conservative Calderon believes he has little choice but to enlist U.S. help given the cross-border nature of drug trafficking and the ruthlessness of Mexico’s drug gangs, officials and observers said.

U.S. officials would say little other than to acknowledge the discussions.

…officials view the talks as a bold initiative by Calderon that underscores his resolve to tame drug-related violence — most of it between rival cartels — that has cost the lives of 3,000 Mexicans in the past year alone and forced the intervention of 20,000 federal troops.

“I think the Mexicans realize it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” said Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere and now with the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

“They can’t do this alone, and should not have to do this alone,” Noriega said.

…

People familiar with the talks say Mexico drew up a list of needs that included equipment, training and technology, including Black Hawk helicopters, which are difficult to come by given the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The price tag on the more ambitious aspiration is $1.2 billion, but a more modest proposal has emerged in recent weeks in the area of $700 million, said one person familiar with the talks.

Roger Noriega might ring a bell:

Roger Noriega, the former assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs known for his meddling in the internal affairs of many Latin American and Caribbean nations, now issues proclamations about U.S.-Latin America policy from his perch at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Noriega, who coordinates AEI’s program on Western Hemisphere affairs, is an outspoken proponent of free trade and U.S. hegemony in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In his description of U.S.-Latin American affairs, Noriega strikes an alarmist note. According to Noriega, we are witnessing “a battle for the heart and soul of the Americas”—between those on one side “who treat democracy as an inconvenience and see free markets as a threat” and those on the other side of this hemispheric contest “who see democratic institutions and the rule of law as indispensable to prosperity and liberty.”

Note that for Noriega, “free markets” (i.e., U.S. sales) and democracy are one and the same. Noriega made himself odious in the State Department by screwing up U.S. relations with Haiti and Venezuela (the #3 oil exporter to the U.S.) by objecting to democracy in those countries and subverting their elective governments.

Given that the Mexican “war on drugs” was more smoke than fire, and only a short term rationale for using the military as police, the trend in all of Latin America away from U.S. economic and social control, the Calderón administration’s very old-fashioned “neo-liberalismo” and the questionable activities of U.S. drug agents in Mexico, there is no support for this within the Republic. The only reason I can see this being pushed is to sell military equipment, and to shore up Calderón’s dubiously elected – but pro-U.S. — government .

If I find credible support from other than Noriega, I’ll let you know. I’m looking.