Mérida Assistance and Mexico’s War on Drugs

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Mérida Assistance and Mexico’s War on Drugs

Solving Mexico’s narco-problems or supporting a further deterioration of

Mexican security?

Supervisor: dr. A.J. Zwitter

30 May 2012

Liza Ten Velde

S1614525

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Abstract

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1. Introduction

In 2006, Mexico’s current president Felipe Calderón joined the United States’ rhetoric on fighting narco-related organized crime by declaring a War on Drugs. He initiated a resolute crackdown on Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), the official purpose of these efforts being to rid the country of the pervasive narco-related violence and drug-trafficking, which for quite a while now have formed a threat to Mexico’s domestic security. In the final decades of the last century, problems with DTOs started to grow with the decline of the one-party rule of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) as Mexico’s move towards a political system of pluralist democracy caused a disruption of the ties that bound together the country’s power holders and criminal organizations, culminating in the PRI’s loss of the presidency to Vicente Fox in 2000. Before that, a sort of patron-client relationship existed between Mexican authorities and DTOs and elaborate networks of corruption ensured that drug traffickers were largely protected by government officials and that drug-related crimes remained uninvestigated by Mexican law enforcement authorities. The rise of a more pluralistic political system meant that continuing these ‘covert’ mutual understandings became considerably more problematic, while at the same time political parties started to focus more on competition for political power amongst themselves instead of on the growing problem of organized crime. Criminal organizations thus succeeded in freeing themselves to a large extent from their subordination to Mexico’s political leaders (O’Neill 2009; Astorga 2005, 2010).

Calderón started the War on Drugs by deploying thousands of military troops and federal police in several Mexican states that were facing severe problems related to narco-crime. The choice for involvement of the military was made as the police forces were deemed to have become largely ineffective due to the widespread corruption among their forces (Chabat 2002). Employing the military to fight organized crime was not an unknown approach; previous Mexican governments at several points in history had already been known to apply this strategy. On those occasions, however, results were generally considered to be unsatisfactory as they only consisted of a very limited amelioration of Mexico’s domestic security and as DTOs were not fundamentally affected (Freeman 2006; Hanson 2008). Nevertheless, Calderón has continued his military strategy to this day, in spite of severe criticism claiming that his approach has aggravated the situation instead of creating a more secure domestic environment for the Mexican population.

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society that allowed the drug trade to flourish in the first place. Nevertheless, when the initiative ended in 2010, cooperation was continued under Beyond Mérida since the reasons for its development were still very much part of Mexico’s and the US’ daily reality (the cooperation framework is currently mainly referred to as simply Mérida). The scope of Mérida cooperation has been broadened to a certain extent in order to meet some of the objections made in the past with regard to its focus being too narrow. The question remains whether criticism aimed at the Mérida Initiative is still valid within the current context of Mérida and Mexico’s War on Drugs. Even though it is clear that at this point Mexican drug cartels have not been defeated, the answer to this question depends on a more nuanced consideration of developments since the start of Mérida.

The urgency of this issue does not pertain to Mexico alone. For years, counternarcotics measures have been a significant focus of US foreign policy regarding Latin America. Several times now, a concentration of such measures in a particular country was followed by a significant increase in narco-violence and -crime in another. After Plan Colombia, cartels moved their activities at least partially to Mexico and currently trafficking routes are being moved to Central America and the Caribbean. In the original Mérida Initiative, some assistance to these two regions was also included in the general cooperation framework, but when this framework expired the separate Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) and the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) were developed. With strategies being repeated throughout the continent – strategies of which the effectiveness is widely debated - the problem is still far from solved. Further insight into these strategies and their effectiveness is required if the region’s narco-related problems are to be solved or, at the very least, to make sure that the situation will not deteriorate further.

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To what extent are Mérida assistance provided by the US to Mexico and Mexico’s empirical reality with regard to the country’s War on Drugs compatible with either Huggins’ theory of Political Policing or Kaplan’s theory of Supremacy by Stealth?

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2. Theoretical Framework

Below, two divergent theories regarding law enforcement assistance that were specifically developed to explain motives and consequences of the US’ foreign policy practices in this regard are presented. We start with Martha Huggins’ theory of Political Policing, which sees mainly negative consequences of US involvement in Latin America, followed by a discussion of Robert Kaplan’s notion of Supremacy by Stealth that explains the same kind of involvement as absolutely necessary in order to safeguard regional – and global – stability.

2.1 Political Policing

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Martha K. Huggins’ theory on Political Policing (1998) specifically deals with US policies of offering foreign police assistance to Latin American countries. According to Huggins, the US assistance programmes carried out in these countries – in the main part of her book she focuses on case studies of US assistance to Brazil – have brought about mainly negative effects. In short, Huggins argues in her book that the US, by means of strategically offering aid in the form of law enforcement assistance, aims at internationalizing its own security concerns. This is achieved through an attempted professionalization of foreign police forces, a goal that in itself seems laudable and difficult to argue with. In practice, however, this professionalization usually consists of centralizing the internal security system of the other state, making it operate in a considerably more authoritarian manner. Furthermore, the distinction between police and military forces in the execution of law enforcement tasks becomes blurred, leading to a militarization of law enforcement operations and of the police, with greater police repression and an increase in state-sanctioned violence as a consequence. This US strategy is applied with the overall objective of gaining control over another country’s internal security system by increasing the dependence of it on the US and by obtaining ever more information about that country’s internal affairs. Hereby, foreign police and militaries are ultimately transformed into “transmission belts” for US security interests, effectively rendering them appendages of US foreign policy and resulting in a relation of dependence comparable to Tilly’s notion of a states’ protection racket on an international scale under the guise of offering foreign assistance.

Strategic Aid

Much of the theory on foreign aid focuses on assistance aimed at supporting the economic development of other countries. Military and law enforcement assistance is not primarily aimed at the economic development of Latin America, making it different from ‘regular’ aid flows. However, looking at the classic motives given for development aid, it is easy to see how these could be considered with respect to other types of foreign assistance as well; moral motives, mutual interests, commercial motives and political and strategic motives can all be discerned (Szirmai 2005: 582-584; Black 1968:13-21), the latter being of particular interest with respect to

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Huggins’ theory of Political Policing, while moral motives and considerations of mutual interests – but also strategic considerations – better fit the ideas of Kaplan that will be discussed in the next section.2

That strategic interests of donor countries are often guiding in the provision of assistance to foreign countries is not a new phenomenon (Alesina & Dollar 2000). Quite some time ago, research into foreign aid already established that the distribution of the main part of US assistance should be subject to a foreign policy interpretation, which is part of the donor interest model according to which aid allocation is determined by foreign policy interests of the donor, as opposed to the recipient need model according to which aid allocation depends on the recipient country’s wants (McKinley & Little 1979). The donor interest model implies that the US uses foreign assistance as a strategic instrument in achieving its foreign policy goals and ingeniously takes advantage of the leverage and possibilities constituted by its dominant position as an aid supplier. Within the donor interest model, several categories of foreign policy interests can be identified, with the category that explains the distribution of foreign assistance by means US security concerns being the most important one in the context of the research at hand. Huntington (1970) has pointed out how the security argument is often explained as the need to provide aid to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries in order to make sure that the latter will not revolt against the former. He goes on to argue that this particular security argument for the provision of foreign aid is rather unconvincing. However, if we instead are to take the transnational organized crime that is the target of the US’ War on Drugs as a framework of reference, this type of securitization of foreign assistance can still be considered very relevant as providing a convincing explanation of US motives behind certain types of foreign assistance.

Internationalizing US Security

This internationalization of US security has a long history, taking the form of a range of different programmes traced back by Huggins to the beginning of the twentieth century. Up until approximately the 1930s, the US strategy was one of direct military intervention and promotion of control over Latin American internal security. During the following decade, more indirect methods were applied in order to influence Latin American law enforcement bodies, while in the period during and directly after the Second World War the US transformed its own internal security system, leading to a context in which even more effective and far-reaching internationalization of US security came to be seen as justified. Later on, in the 1950s and 1960s, economic development programmes became the preferred mechanisms of extending control over the poorer countries in the Americas. From the Second World War until well into the 1990s, the Cold War doctrine of containment of the communist threat was a leading motive in US foreign policy, including in its development aid allocation and police assistance programmes abroad. Involvement with Latin American police forces became a source of information on possible communist influences and other threats to US interests in the region. The powerful and

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widespread discourse on the ‘realness’ of the communist threat created an environment of fear in which US involvement in other countries’ internal security mechanisms could be justified relatively easily and consequently came to be widely regarded as a necessity.

So, for a long time during the Cold War, US security interests were termed in the language of containment of communism, and, in consonance with one of the above mentioned motives for providing foreign assistance as identified by Huggins, analyses of US aid have indeed confirmed that its distribution has been mainly determined by such security concerns. Two different strategies can be employed as part of the donor interest model; aid can be used as a reward for countries that comply with US policy and regulations, or assistance can be withheld from states that fail to act in accordance with US interests (McKinlay & Little 1977; McKinley [sic] & Little 1979; Huntington 1970). The consequences of the annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Reports (INCSR) constitute an example of the latter strategy; every year, the counternarcotics efforts of other countries are investigated and subsequently judged on their compliance with US policy in this field. In cases of non-compliance, the INCSR can result in (partial) suspension of assistance to the disobedient country as well as the imposition of trade sanctions. It is thus that the US aims at an internationalization of its drug policies and succeeds in involving ever more countries in its War on Drugs. This process has been criticised as being a form of “[coercion which is] fundamental to US strategy for international illicit drug control” (Ayling 2005); in its foreign policy, “the Godfather does not easily tolerate disobedience” (Chomsky 2010: 55). This type of coercion through aid and the fact that many countries do not have sufficient means to finance the battle against illicit narcotics within their territories can be seen as resulting in a kind of semi colonial dependency relation between donor and recipient country, making foreign aid policy a fundamentally political matter, no different in this respect from diplomatic or military policy (Morgenthau 1962a).

These regulations and consequent measures have greatly increased US military presence and access to Latin American security systems, a process which has been justified as a necessary element of US anti-narcotic efforts abroad. Interestingly, as Chomsky notes, a reversed situation in which a foreign country would execute military operations to stop US production of, for example, tobacco, is unthinkable, illustrating how deeply rooted Western “imperial mentality” actually is. The obvious discrepancies between official government rhetoric on the necessity of the War on Drugs and widespread knowledge about far more cost-effective methods to combat the spread of illicit narcotics (Chomsky 2010: 57-60) further contribute to the perception that the main goal of the US drug programmes in Latin America first and foremost have to do with increasing the country’s grip on the region.

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America have always been influential factors for governments in the region (Hurell 1998). Pretexts and tactics of US policy in Latin America have thus changed, but not the principles underlying them. Alleged threats have been transmuted regularly, currently having been given the form of dangers related to illicit narcotics to justify the War on Drugs, making it possible that, around 2000, US economic and social foreign aid in the hemisphere was exceeded considerably by US police and military assistance.

In 1973 the US Congress passed an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 abolishing foreign police assistance (US Congress 1973: Sec. 112a). A year later, further amendments were made, stating that

None of the funds made available to carry out this Act [...] shall be used to provide training or advice, or provide any financial support, for police, prisons and other law enforcement forces for any foreign government or any program of internal intelligence or surveillance on behalf of any foreign government within the United States or abroad.

(US Congress 1974: Sec. 660a)

However, the Act goes on to immediately exempt from this provision assistance that is to be used for narcotics control abroad. Interestingly, the funds appropriated for the purchase of equipment for foreign police to use in counternarcotics activities increased nearly fivefold in the subsequent fiscal year. Also, a blurring of the boundaries between military operations and law enforcement allows a continuation of foreign police assistance under the Department of Defense’s military assistance programme as part of the objective of “improving the internal security forces of friendly governments”(GAO 1976). These provisions made it possible that in the early 1990s the execution of no less than 125 such law enforcement assistance programmes could be justified by their falling under rules for exemption from the aforementioned legal provisions. Police assistance programs have the advantage of being relatively low-key (compared to, for example, military intervention) and seemingly benign as they are usually offered in a broader context of professionalization and democratization of a recipient country’s law enforcement bodies. In reality, Huggins states, US foreign police assistance is fundamentally political in nature and its relative unobtrusiveness makes this type of aid particularly suitable as a means of achieving the real US foreign policy goals in Latin America, namely the establishment of control over security and social infrastructures in the recipient country. This way, under the guise of offering much needed police assistance, the US aims at strengthening its influence in the region and maintaining its dominant position in the international realm, effectively realizing an internationalization of US security.

Professionalization and militarization of law enforcement

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available information about other country’s internal affairs, for “those who know more, and can manipulate what others know, have more power” (Herman 1996: 152). Cooperation and assistance in the field of intelligence gathering can be part of this process, but on the other hand, as foreign intelligence is by definition collected against other countries, it also tends to exacerbate the division between ‘them’ and ‘us’ (Herman 1996: 140, 370). In the context of Huggins’ ideas and assistance under Mérida, this division would refer to the US versus Mexico, instead of the US & Mexico versus DTOs. Furthermore, counternarcotics strategies will contribute to an increasingly obscured distinction between intelligence operations and regular law enforcement (Lowenthal 2006: 244), somewhat comparable to a blurring distinction between military and police operations warned against by Huggins.

With greater ‘professionalization’ comes centralization and militarization of the recipient country’s law enforcement institutions. Huggins hypothesizes that growing police repression and state-sanctioned violence are direct effects of these developments. The US aid that is aimed at making foreign law enforcement bodies more professional often consists of providing them with military materiel and training them in “militarized forms of social control”. If evidence from particular cases suggests that this mode of operation has led to more violence and repression, Huggins states, “it would suggest a naïveté of any assumption –and the inauthenticity of any claim- that US training of Latin American police was intended to make those police more neutral in enforcement, humanitarian in goals and outlook, democratic in public behaviour, and responsive to civilian government.” In fact, it has already been shown in some cases that there is a positive correlation between foreign police aid given and brutality and lack of democratic principles guiding law enforcement operations. Rather than creating more effective law enforcement institutions foreign police training increases the efficiency of a foreign states’ security apparatus in the oppression of civil involvement and political dissent. Under the guise of professionalization, which would normally indicate an emancipatory development, the host country is actually subordinated to the training country as the client state has to trust in the expertise and moral authority of the other.

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The School of the Americas –recently renamed The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation due to a growing negative public opinion and campaigns for its closure – located at Fort Benning in Georgia is one of the more notorious training centres for Latin American troops (and the main focus of Gill’s research), but it is part of a far larger network; a total of some hundred thousand foreign soldiers from allied states receive US sponsored training every year. Between 1998 and 2000, ten thousand to fifteen thousand Latin Americans participated in such programmes (Lumpee 2002 in Gill 2004: 8). The number of Latin American troops trained in US programmes subsequently increased by more than 50 percent from 2002 to 2003 while such military training is shifted more to the Pentagon, where it is less subject to human rights and democracy conditionalities than was previously the case under the State Department’s supervision (Chomsky 2010: 57). These training programmes and institutions have long been the subject of widespread controversy, because of the involvement of considerable numbers of its graduates in dictatorships and human rights atrocities in their home countries. Furthermore, apart from manipulating the constitution of foreign security systems, according to Gill (2004:7) “the training and arming of a castelike group of professional soldiers aggravated processes of social and economic differentiation in many Latin American countries.”

Since the end of the Cold War, the relatively clear distinctions between police and military, and between external and internal security - which before were two of the key characteristics of modern nation states – have become increasingly blurred as a response to growing concerns with transnational issues such as organized crime and drug trafficking (Lutterbeck 2004). Growing cooperative relationships between the military and the police in for example drug interdiction at borders and programmes developed to enhance other countries’ internal security, as well as increasingly using a military model in crime control operations, are indicators of a considerable militarization of law enforcement (Kraska 2001a: 4). The US rhetoric used, in documents and statements concerned with crime fighting, is also indicative of this as can be seen in the employment of martial terminology to designate counternarcotics operations as a

War on Drugs (Kraska 2001b: 15). The reliance on military force and resources in policing operations in the US started to evolve in the 1980s as American law enforcement saw itself confronted with increased threats related to drug trafficking and –trade. These issues have fostered considerable collaboration between the army and the police, which caused a partial militarization of the latter (Dunlap Jr. 2001: 31-32). Although a lack of clear boundaries between the police and military is usually associated with more repressive forms of governance (Kraska 2001a: 3), a militarization of the criminal justice system is precisely what, according to the theory of Political Policing, is being promoted through US law enforcement and military training programmes.

2.2 Supremacy by Stealth

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In his article Supremacy by Stealth Kaplan develops ten rules for managing the “American Empire” and for ensuring global stability. His argumentation is to a large extent based on military operations executed by- and specific characteristics and conduct of US troops in the US and

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abroad. His focus is therefore somewhat different from Huggins’ theses as it is not developed with an eye on US involvement in Latin America specifically. However, there are several points on which his views directly contradict those of Huggins and it is on these arguments that this part of the theoretical framework of the research at hand will focus.

Kaplan begins by asking how the US should “operate on a tactical level to manage an unruly world”. He does so motivated by America’s invasion in Iraq, which has subjected the US to enormous risks, international critique, and financial strains. Such a strategy puts too much of a burden on US military capabilities and resources and cannot be afforded by the US if the country is to secure some measure of global stability which requires its presence in many different countries throughout the world. The question, according to Kaplan, is thus not whether the US is required to intervene wherever Western liberal values are threatened; this intervention is simply imperative. The country’s standing as the most powerful actor on the world stage causes it to bear the responsibility of safeguarding its balance. It is unlikely that the US will occupy this position forever as “liberal empires [...] create the conditions for their own demise” because by their very nature they incite dynamic change. For the time being, however, maintaining and increasing American power in an efficient and effective manner is “the highest morality” if regional stability is to be realized. Measures that allow the US to maintain its position as a supreme power, Kaplan notes, are not an end in themselves, but a means benefiting both the US and the world as a whole by recognizing “the imperial reality of America’s global situation.” The imperialist tendencies of US foreign policy are not denied, rather, they are seen as absolutely necessary and in the interest of all.

The above corresponds to the notion of American Exceptionalism, according to which the US is different from other nations in that it has as its purpose the establishment of freedom and equality, not only ‘at home’ but worldwide (Morgenthau 1962b). As Huntington (1993) states: “The maintenance of US primacy matters for the world as well as for the United States” because, first, no other power is able to contribute to the same extent to international order – if the US is not able to bring stability to unstable areas, no country will – and, second, because the US is committed to the values of equality, human rights, markets and democracy more than any other state. In line with this, Kaplan contends that the wide range of interests represented by countless NGOs and all the different countries in the world create a chaos that is best overcome by the “organizing force of a great and self-interested liberal power” as the separate agents by themselves are unable to serve humanities’ interests as a whole.

Economy of force

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assistance increases the successes of foreign leaders and reinforces the image of the US as a natural coalition leader (Nye & Owens 1996). Providing military training to foreign troops and increasing US influence on intelligence agencies abroad are thus important ways to achieve said order as the US is not able to deploy troops in all countries with which it cooperates and therefore has to operate as efficiently as possible. In this regard, Kaplan explicitly refers to US foreign policy concerning Latin America, stating that

economy of force—doing the most with the least—has been an imperative of the U.S. military, diplomatic, and intelligence communities since the beginning of the Cold War. It will become even more important as our resources are stretched. Here we can learn a great deal from the history of U.S. policy in Latin America over the past several decades: although many journalists and intellectuals have regarded this policy as something to be ashamed of, the far more significant, operational truth is that it exemplifies how we should act worldwide in the foreseeable future.

For a long time, the US had to make the most of rather limited resources to increase its influence in Latin America. A strategy of domineering diplomacy, training programmes for local Special Forces and aggressive intelligence operations have so far proven to be successful ways of applying an economy of force, enabling the US to strengthen its grip on the region.

Professionalization and militarization

Assisting foreign militaries has several advantages, both for the United States and the countries that are the recipients of such aid. First, providing training and equipment increases foreign countries’ reliance on continuing help, thereby binding them ever more tightly to the US and its resources. These types of relations allow the American forces to increase their leverage and to call in favours from foreign regimes whenever this might be deemed necessary. Second, recipient countries benefit from US training programmes as it contributes to the professionalization of their forces. This in turn decreases chances of human rights violations at the hands of their troops and it diminishes the likelihood of coups in a given country. With regard to the US training programmes offered at Fort Benning Kaplan argues as follows: foreign mid-level officers often participate in these programmes to teach them about the history and universal importance of protecting human rights. It is important that foreign trainees receive such lessons regarding human rights from other military men and women as they are more likely to listen to them than to civilian lecturers. Protesters arguing in favour of closing this training institute are effectively promoting a strategy of isolation, separating foreign troops from American society and values, which is a dangerous option that most likely will result in a decreasing deference of Latin American armies for human rights. The International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme is another training programme with goals similar to those of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation that has proven to be quite a cost effective way of improving international cooperation and regional stability (Nye & Owens 1996; Bureau of Political-Military Affairs).

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intelligence agent, academic, etc. Where military officers are increasingly operating as diplomats, US diplomats act more and more like generals. Another more concrete example is that the provision of helicopters to Colombia to fight narcoterrorists has in the past fallen under the responsibility of the State Department instead of that of the Pentagon. There are still quite some inhibitions with many professionals in the field with regard to this disappearance of boundaries as they are apprehensive about the possibly conflicting agendas of different authorities. However, if the US is to successfully increase its power and maintain stability, it is necessary to overcome this reluctance and to realize a flexible civilian-military chain of command. In the end, it does not fundamentally matter by what kind of agents certain operations are carried out, as long as the intended results are achieved. Furthermore, many Third World militaries - especially those in Latin America - have played such influential parts as pillars of their societies, that their political relevance still has to be taken into account when, for example, attempting to safeguard democratic transitions in this region. A continuation of military involvement in these countries’ civil affairs can thus not be avoided as the power that their armies hold is still considerable.

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3. Methodology

3.1 Method

In order to find an answer to the main research question, this study will rely on a form of process tracing (Gerring 2007:172-185), a method that is often used to describe a sequence of events leading to a particular end point in an attempt to establish a thorough understanding of developments related to a specific issue over time and to lay bare possibly existing causal relations between such successive events. Often, of course, process diagrams that result from application of this research method can take different forms, all offering plausible descriptions of a certain development. The point is then to determine which process description is the most detailed and comprehensive, and therefore best able to explain how a certain result came about.

In the context of this study, however, process tracing is applied in a slightly different manner. Instead of a process diagram being the result of the research, two such diagrams form its starting point, serving as hypotheses based on different predictions about the influence of US assistance on developments in Mexico’s narco-problems. Using process tracing as the basis for this research is considered appropriate mainly because of the diverse nature of the sub-themes of the topic at hand. It is a method which allows for the inclusion of different types of evidence, making it possible to find out more about the likelihood of any relation existing between US counternarcotics assistance and changes in Mexico’s reality with regard to narco-crime and, with that, to determine which one of the discussed theories can be considered as being more or less correct within the highly specific context of US-Mexican cooperation in the War on Drugs.

3.2 Internal validity

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The point of departure of this research, therefore, is to determine to which extent the results of Mexican strategies that were supported by US Mérida assistance - military operations, law enforcement reform, increasing technical capabilities, etc. – conform to either Kaplan’s or Huggin’s predictions. It is therefore very important to keep in mind that the developments described in the next chapters, first, cannot be said with absolute certainty to be consequences solely of Calderón’s War on Drugs, and, second, should not be seen as caused exclusively by US assistance to Mexico under Mérida. Notwithstanding, it is hoped that the careful scrutiny and the combining of different types of data in the application of the process tracing method leads to an optimization of the chances of identifying reliable correlations.

3.3 External validity

In addition to the above mentioned reservations with regard to the study’s internal validity, it is very important to note that the representativeness of the research at hand is inevitably limited as it consists of a single-case research design built around a topic of which the particulars are very specific to the case in question. This is not to say that the analyses conducted have no external validity whatsoever. It might very well be that lessons drawn from the consequences of US involvement in Mexico’s War on Drugs will benefit countries to which DTOs are currently moving their operations – in fact, we should hope that this is the case. However, Mexico’s history regarding drug trafficking is one that goes well beyond Calderón’s current War on Drugs, while US involvement in this Latin American country covers a time span next to which the brief period covered by the Mérida cooperation framework pales in comparison. Prudence is thus required when attempting to extend conclusions based on evaluations of Mérida assistance for Mexico to other Latin American regions.

3.4 Hypotheses, indicators, and sources

By placing Huggins’ and Kaplan’s ideas in the Context of US-Mexican cooperation in the War on Drugs two hypotheses have been developed, each one taking the same types of Mérida assistance as a starting point, but arriving via a chain of different developments at two divergent outcomes of US policy. One process leads to a decreasing stability in Mexico with enhanced US influence as the outcome of US assistance. The other hypothesis describes a decrease of Mexico’s drug problems with increased regional stability as the end result. Each hypothesis is represented as a diagram depicted at the end of this chapter. Both diagrams show a sequence of different processes, each at least partially being a consequence of the ones preceding it according to the different ideas presented in the theoretical framework.

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enforcement reform covering the militarization of law enforcement of hypothesis one, and the professionalization of the military and growing effectiveness of law enforcement mentioned in hypothesis two; a chapter on the disruption of DTO operations mentioned in both hypotheses; a chapter on Mexico’s human rights record to determine whether this has been negatively or positively affected as predicted by hypotheses one and two, respectively; and finally a section on narco-related violence which is mentioned in both hypotheses as well. Based on all of these processes, hypothesis one predicts a deterioration of Mexican citizen security, while hypothesis two expects an improvement of the same. This broad notion of citizen security will not be examined in a separate chapter, as it is a rather abstract concept and as developments in this field are here regarded to be an ‘overall’ result of all the processes and underlying indicators that forego it. Analysis of all the indicators given for the preceding processes should thus make it possible to determine whether general security has developed positively or negatively. Similarly, the compatibility of the different end-points of the hypotheses with Mexico’s empirical reality will be addressed in the analytical chapter on the basis of all the processes analysed in the chapters following this one. The descriptions of the processes that make up the topics of the separate chapters will be based on different indicators, which together should facilitate analyses of the processes as a whole. To clarify this, we now turn to a chapter by chapter description of which indicators will be used to examine each process, and which sources will be studied to do so.

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determine whether they do indeed seem to provide (one of) the most complete and nuanced pictures available.

The next chapter will start by outlining the specifics of Mérida assistance to Mexico, which is the basis from which both process diagrams flow. The indicators used are financial flows and the way these are divided over different channels, general information on the focus of assistance, as well as specifics on the types of equipment delivered and the extent of training offered by the US. Reference will of course be made to the bill covering the Mérida Initiative, but the most important sources of information for this chapter will be reports from the US Congressional Research Service (CSR), which has provided regular updates on the subject. Also, given the large number of US governmental agencies occupying themselves with Mérida-related projects, the CSR reports are of great value in that they succeed in giving comprehensive overviews of Mérida assistance. Nevertheless, the chapter will of course be supplemented with information from other sources that can give more specifics on certain relevant sub-topics.

As said, the chapter on law enforcement will deal with Huggins’ claim that US assistance leads to a militarization of Mexican law enforcement and in part with Kaplan’s assertions that a professionalization of the Mexican military and more effective law enforcement practices are consequences to be expected. This section will separately treat militarization and police reform as indicators of the developments in Mexican law enforcement in general. While police reform might be seen as a rather ‘uncontroversial’ indicator of this process, militarization is not necessarily so. However, given the broad recognition of the undeniable militarization of Mexican law enforcement over the last few years, militarization is in this case in fact the most essential indicator of developments in Mexican law enforcement. Examination of these indicators will rely on a wide variety of – mostly Latin American and American - scholarly articles and reports of – often non-governmental - international research institutes detailing developments in Mexican law enforcement during recent years. Specific information regarding police reform is difficult to find and reference will be made to several research reports of the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, as these are the most recent and detailed reports to be found. For insight into very recent developments, information from different news sources will be included as well.

Both hypotheses mention disruption of the drug trade as one of the effects of the presumed developments in Mexican law enforcement. Chapter six will outline the extent to which the drug trade has indeed been disrupted by looking into the following indicators: drug seizures, production, eradication, and arrests (it thus also serves as a complementation to the previous chapter’s information on the effectiveness of law enforcement institutions). This information cannot be obtained from Mexican authorities directly, but the US International Control Strategy Reports (INCSR) are very valuable in this regard as they give an annual detailed update on Mexican law enforcement’s achievements in terms of the mentioned indicators of drug-trade disruption. However, as said, in an attempt to avoid an all too one-sided analyses, INCSR reports will be compared with information from the United Nation’s World Drug Report 2011, which in some cases offers more recent or complete details on the matter.

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addressed in chapter seven, which of course also goes into the developments regarding state-sanctioned violence mentioned in hypothesis one. The indicators for this general process of developments in Mexico’s human rights situation consist of the human rights issues that have been influenced the most by the War on Drugs: violations on the part of the military and the police; problems related to Mexico’s criminal justice system; freedom of speech; and the situation for human rights defenders. To create a broadly founded analysis, annual human rights reports on Mexico from Human Rights Watch and Freedom House, two renowned NGOs, are combined with annual updates from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor of the US Department of State. All of these reports, in turn, derive a lot of their information from Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH), hopefully preventing too much of an exclusively outsider’s perspective on the matter. Naturally, the analysis is complemented with information from other sources that do not provide detailed annual reports on Mexico, but which have nevertheless published valuable information on the topic.

Chapter eight will examine the developments in levels of narco-related violence in Mexico, of which hypothesis one predicts an increase as a consequence of developments in law enforcement and the drug trade, while hypothesis two contends the opposite. As is common in reports analyzing Mexican drug-violence, the main indicator for this process will be drug-related homicides for which different annual estimates will be tracked from the start of the current War on Drugs onwards. Rankings of the ‘criminality’ of Mexican regions and levels of other types of crimes will be used as complementary indicators. A research report of the Trans-Border Institute of the University of San Diego will form the main source of information for this section, as it is the most recent and complete source found, but data from Mexican and US authorities, a Mexican NGO, and a Mexican newspaper known to be knowledgeable on the issue will also be consulted. Again, to obtain details on the most recent developments, a variety of news sources will be referred to as well.

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_{-Military and police training}US Assistance - Equipment Militarization law enforcement Increased narco-related violence Increased state-sanctioned violence

Deterioration Mexican security

Increased U.S. control over Mexican security infrastructure Increased dependence on

U.S. assistance Disruption drug trade

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US Assistance -Military and police training

- Equipment

More effective law enforcement institutions

Decreased narco-related violence

Increased regional stability Increased Mexican security

Professionalization Mexican military

Improved human rights situation

Disruption drug trade

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4. The Mérida Cooperation Framework

On his 2007 goodwill tour of Latin America then-US president George W. Bush, together with Mexico’s Felipe Calderón and then-President of Guatemala Oscar Berguer, laid the foundations for a regional security cooperation framework for control of immigration and transnational crime. Parts of this plan were subsequently further developed, resulting in the Mérida Initiative, named after the Mexican city in which the plan was agreed upon; a three-year programme for the provision of US security assistance to Mexico (Astorga & Shirk 2010: 46).4_{In October 2007, the} initiative was announced by the governments of the US and Mexico. Next, in May 2008, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs passed legislation for the Initiative’s funding and the House approved the bill H.R. 6028Mérida Initiative to Combat Illicit Narcotics and Reduce Organized Crime Authorization Act of 2008 with 311 votes in favour and 106 against (Cook, Rush & Ribando Seelke 2008; Ribando Seelke 2009), which was then signed into law on 30 June 2008 (Brands 2009). With the original Mérida Initiative ending in 2010, the leaders of the US and Mexico agreed upon an extension of the cooperation framework. This led to renewed efforts under what is formally called Beyond Mérida, which consists of a continuation of past assistance as well as additional points of focus as will be described below.

4.1 Goals

The general aim of the original Mérida Initiative was to optimize existing efforts against the trafficking of drugs, humans and weapons between Mexico and the US (Cook, Rush & Ribando Seelke 2008). The most important of the manifold purposes of the security and law enforcement assistance covered by the Mérida Initiative as specified in the final Act were: to enhance the ability of the government of Mexico and its law enforcement forces to control DTOs, organized crime, and the production and trafficking of illicit narcotics; to protect the Mexico-US border; to assist the Mexican armed forces in their initial support of the country’s law enforcement agencies; and to reinforce respect for the rule of law and human rights in efforts of stabilizing Mexico’s security situation (US Congress 2008: sec. 111).

The extension of the Mérida Initiative, Beyond Mérida, was presented by the Obama administration in March 2010 and it has since been announced by the State Department that the intention is to extend Mérida assistance beyond 2012, when President Calderón of Mexico has left office. The Department of State (2011a) describes Beyond Mérida as a partnership of accelerated bilateral efforts “to support stronger democratic institutions, especially police, justice systems, and civil society organizations; to expand our border focus beyond interdiction of contraband to include facilitation of legitimate trade and travel; and to build strong and resilient communities able to withstand the pressures of crime and violence.” The US government thus aims at meeting

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the widespread criticism directed at the original partnership for focussing too much on transfers of technology and ‘hard’ security issues. Little support was offered in the field of root-causes of instability in Mexico that in large part allowed the DTOs to flourish in the first place, such as poverty, unemployment, and corruption.

Beyond Mérida assistance is divided over the following four so called Pillars: (1) Disrupt organized criminal groups; (2) Strengthen institutions; (3) Build a 21st_{century border; and (4)} Build strong and resilient communities. Increasingly, the Mexican government is considering DTOs in terms of corporations aiming at making a profit. Under pillar one, this has led to an increased focus on the disruption of the flows of criminal proceeds of DTOs in order to incapacitate the organizations. Under pillar two, the main goals are to fight corruption, extend police reform from the federal to the state and local level, transform the judicial system into an adversary system, and reforming the prison system. Also, the question of how to transfer law enforcement back from the military to the police has to be addressed. The title of pillar three is rather vague, but should generally be understood as enhancing border management through increased information sharing and screenings. Necessarily, this also relates to illegal activities other than the smuggling of narcotics, guns, and money by DTOs. Pillar four constitutes a new focus of US-Mexican cooperation of which the main goal is to increase citizens’ abilities to withstand the pressure to participate in organized crime by developing feelings of communal responsibility and reduce risk factors that result in criminal behaviour. Noteworthy is that funding and implementation of this pillar is mainly the responsibility of the Mexican government itself (Ribando Seelke & Finklea 2011).

4.2 Executive agencies

The general Mérida assistance framework is administered by the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) (INL-US Department of State 2009). The wide variety of concrete programmes and the distribution of different portions of the Mérida funding, however, fall under the responsibility of different agencies.5_{Most of the Mérida funding} has been disbursed through the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Programs’ (INCLE) account, which falls under the INL. Funding is disbursed through INCLE on the basis of letters of agreement between the US and participating governments. Originally, the Bush administration requested that all Mérida funding be disbursed through the INCLE account. Congress, however, decided to divide funding for Mexico among the accounts of INCLE, the Foreign Military Financing programme (FMF) and Economic Support Funds (ESF) (Ribando Seelke 2009). The FMF programme is meant to increase foreign governments’ defence capabilities through the provision of grants (and sometimes loans) to finance the purchase of US military training, equipment and services. Instead of providing cash to recipient governments, these funds are thus provided solely

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to acquire US military goods and services. FMF budgets are allocated to allied governments by the Department of State, but day-to-day management is the responsibility of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) of the Department of Defense (DOD) (DSCA 2011). ESFs are mostly administered by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) (US Department of State 2008). ESFs were established by Congress to increase security and stability in regions that are of strategic importance to the security interests of the US. ESFs generally consist of cash transfers that can be used for a wide variety of purposes. Officially, ESF money is not intended for military expenditure, but recipient governments are allowed under ESF agreements to free up their own money for military programmes so, as money is fungible, funds could indirectly still be used for goals other than those specified in ESF agreements (Lumpe & Donarski 1998).

4.3 Funding

From 2000 until 2007, US counternarcotics assistance to Mexico amounted to approximately $55-60 million a year. With $1.4 billion worth of assistance being promised over three years, the Mérida Initiative thus signified a tremendous increase in this type of assistance (Brands 2009). The actual funding for Fiscal Years (FY) 2008 through 2010, as appropriated to the different accounts, is as follows:

Account FY2008 FY2009 FY2010 FY2011 Account Totals FY2012 request ESF 20.0 15.0 9.0a _18.0 _62.0 _33.3 INCLE 215.5 454.0 365.0 117.0 1,151.5 248.5 FMF 116.5 299.0 5.3 8.0 428.8 n/a Total 352.0 768.0 379.3 143.0 1,648.3 281.8

Mérida Funding for Mexico, $ in millions - Regular and supplemental appropriations for the same fiscal years have been added up. At the time of writing, supplemental appropriations for 2011 and final appropriations for 2012 had not yet been released.

a. Originally, this was $15 million, but $6 million was reprogrammed for global climate change efforts. (Table made by author on the basis of data derived from Ribando Seelke 2011; US Department of State 2011b).

The most important limitation on assistance to Mexico, as specified in the 2008 bill, was the prohibition to provide assistance to “any unit of the armed forces of Mexico or any unit of the law enforcement agencies of Mexico if the Secretary of State determines that there is credible evidence that such unit has committed gross violations of human rights.” This condition did not apply, however, if it was determined by the US Secretary of State that the Mexican Government was taking effective measures to prosecute the people responsible for these violations (US Congress 2008: sec. 114). Mainly because of objections from Mexico that certain conditions would constitute a violation of the country’s sovereignty, the human rights conditions of the Mérida Initiative were eventually softer than originally intended.

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eventually released in 2009 after the State Department issued a “somewhat favourable human rights progress report”. In FY2009, $300 million was appropriated. Of the total funds provided, 15% was again subject to human rights conditions, with assistance for rule of law activities, judicial- and institutional reform being exempted from this measure. The considerable amount of $420 million was then added under the FY2009 supplemental appropriations measure. This amount consisted of $160 million in INCLE funding and $260 million in FMF assistance. Again, Congress determined that 15% of the INCLE assistance was subject to human rights conditions, but this time the supplemental FMF funding was exempted from this stipulation. For FY2010, $210.3 million was allocated for Mérida assistance. Significantly less than the year before but Congress considered the substantial supplemental appropriation of FY2009 as forward funding for FY2010 (Ribando Seelke 2010). The FY2010 supplemental appropriations covered an additional $175 million of INCLE assistance (Ribando Seelke & Finklea 2011). Each year, part of the appropriated funding was allocated specifically for judicial reform, institution building, anticorruption, and rule of law activities. For FY2008 through FY2010, these sums were $73.5 million, $75 million, and $175 million, respectively. Since 2011, funding has decreased, reportedly because budget requests focused more on training and technical assistance instead of on the provision of equipment to Mexico. The latter type of assistance had thus far required significant larger sums of funding than the first (Ribando Seelke 2011). Another noteworthy fact is that as of FY2012, FMF is no longer part of the Mérida cooperation framework. FMF counternarcotics assistance to Mexico is continued however, under the broader designation of FMF assistance to the Western Hemisphere in general. The $33.3 million in requested ESF funds for FY2012 are mainly meant for regional and local assistance to improve Mexico’s human rights situation and to encourage respect for the rule of law. The requested INCLE funds of $248.5 million are meant for all four Pillars of assistance. Apart from programmes at the federal level, the intention is to increasingly target support at the state and local levels, especially at those regions that have most been destabilized by crime (US Department of State 2011b).

The slow disbursement of Mérida funding after the formal approval of appropriations has been a cause of great concern. Delays regarding the provision of actual assistance were caused by the need for negotiations with Mexico on which equipment was needed, US contracting regulations, and the difficulties of gearing the activities of the different agencies involved to one another. For example, the Government Accountability Office (GOA) found that, even though $830 million of the $1.4 billion Mérida aid package had been obligated by the State Department by the end of September 2009, no more than $26 million had at that time been spent on actual training and equipment. Also, well into 2010, most of the programmes accounted for in the appropriations of FY2009 had not yet begun. The State Department, however, took issue with the measures that formed the basis of this conclusion and subsequently announced that $359 million of aid was actively supporting Mérida projects (Ribando Seelke 2010), still not half of the amount appropriated.

4.4 Realized assistance

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and judicial institutions. Felbab-Brown (2009) reports that this is largely in accordance with Mexico’s preferences, since its government - because of concerns regarding encroachments on the country’s sovereignty - is more willing to be supported in the War on Drugs by means of deliveries of hardware than by receiving advice on how to go about institutional reform. This also relates to Mexico’s firm rejection of any plan that would include US military troops operating on Mexican soil as part of Mérida assistance. Undoubtedly, this is to a considerable extent a valid explanation for the particular focus of the original Mérida Initiative, but it can only be considered a partial clarification, since the Mexican state did in fact accept a lot of US training for its military and law enforcement agencies, as well as funding and training courses aimed at institutional reform, as is specified below.

Actual Mérida expenditures are mostly reported on in terms of the value of equipment delivered and training provided as part of capacity-building programmes, instead of just tracking appropriated funds (Felbab-Brown 2009; Ribando Seelke & Finklea 2011). By the end of 2010, training at the value of $85.1 million had been provided under Mérida. Around 6,700 federal police officers had received training through Mérida funded police professionalization programmes. Training programmes for justice sector personnel and prosecutors have been developing slower, with around 3,000 trainees by late 2010 (Ribando Seelke & Finklea 2011). The Department of Defense is the implementing agency that is largely responsible for the purchase and delivery of Mérida funded equipment to Mexico (Ribando Seelke 2010). By December 2010 $276.7 million worth of equipment had been delivered, including $88 million for seven Bell helicopters for the Mexican army and again the same amount for three UH-60 helicopters for the secretariat for public security (Ribando Seelke & Finklea 2011).

There is, furthermore, US-Mexican Mérida cooperation in the field of countering the smuggling of cash and money laundering with over 350 Mexican officials having received training courses on the subject of advanced techniques for the investigation of this type of criminal activity (Ribando Seelke 2010). USAID has used between $20- and $30 million from the ESF funds for judicial system reform programmes at the state level. In 2010, the American organization has also set up several social development programmes in Ciudad Juaréz, including one in which civic organizations can apply for grants to realize their community projects (Ribando Seelke & Finklea 2011). By August 2011, total Mérida expenditures had increased to $473.8 million of which $324 million was spent on equipment and $106.6 million on training (Ribando Seelke 2011).

A fact sheet of the US embassy in Mexico City (2012) reports that $500 million worth of equipment deliveries and training programmes were realized in 2011.6_{Here, we will enter into the} details of this assistance divided over the four pillars forming the basis of current Mérida assistance in order to get a better sense of the focus of the most recent, concrete Mérida assistance. As part of activities under pillar one of Beyond Mérida – disruption of operational capacity of organized

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crime - the Mexican Federal Police received a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter ($20m) - the fourth such aircraft delivered - and support for a technological initiative for more efficient analyses of criminal cases ($9.8m). Three Black Hawk helicopters ($110m) were delivered to the country’s navy, as well as a maritime patrol aircraft ($50m). A license plate recognition system ($1.1m) was installed in toll booths on Mexican highways and linked to Mexico’s central criminal justice system database to increase detection of suspicious vehicles. Furthermore, a secure communication system between ten US and Mexican border sister cities was realized ($13m)

Under pillar two – institutionalizing Mexico’s capacity to sustain the rule of law – biometric equipment ($2.5m) was provided for the penitentiary system, as well as training equipment for the Mexican National Academy for Penitentiary Administration ($2m). The Attorney General’s office received three Integrated Ballistics Identification Systems ($2.1m), several law enforcement agencies were supplied with IT equipment ($3.3m) to support efforts to improve the vetting of law enforcement personnel, and financial support was given for the creation of two units dedicated to tracking gang activities and developing an inmate classification system ($0.7m). Also financed were: training in support of Mexico’s transition to an oral accusatorial judicial system ($2.5m), training for approximately 3,000 employees of the General Attorney’s office in the fields of investigating organized crime and forensic sciences, and support for programmes to improve training for new model police units that are being established throughout Mexico.

The aim of pillar three is to create a 21st_{century border. In this context, Mérida funding} covered the expansion of False Documents Labs ($6m) as well as the delivery of non-intrusive inspection equipment delivered to the Secretariat of Defence, the Federal Police, and the Mexican Customs Agency. Also covered was training in the use of this equipment for 733 personnel of the Mexican Government in the form of joint and cross-training between military institutions and law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, the funding made possible the delivery of over 70 canines trained in the detection of narcotics weapons and currency.

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5. Law Enforcement

5.1Militarization

According to the first hypothesis, based on Huggins’ ideas about US involvement in Latin America, US assistance in the form of training and equipment deliveries will contribute to a considerable militarization of law enforcement that originally is civilian in nature. Kaplan too describes how increased assistance to the army will lead to a blurring of the distinction between military and civilian operations, but he regards this as a positive development in which said assistance will contribute significantly to professionalization of the army and more effective law enforcement institutions, arguing that it ultimately does not matter much which authorities carry out law enforcement as long as the desired results are achieved.

The first question to be asked is whether it can be concluded that Mexico’s domestic law enforcement has indeed militarized over the last few years. Answering this question in the affirmative is hardly a controversial matter given Calderón’s deliberate and overt military counternarcotics strategy. In fact, militarization of domestic security as experienced by Mexico over the past view years in the context of the War on Drugs is most certainly not without historical precedents (e.g. Moloeznik Gruer 2007; Freeman 2006; O’Neil 2010a) that were motivated by problems with the country’s police institutions and by pressure from the US to aggressively counter the narcotics-flows going north (Piñeyro 2004).

One of the few issues on which Huggins and Kaplan thus agree is that US foreign assistance leads to an increased role for the military in domestic law enforcement, but to what extent is this the case in Mexico’s War on Drugs? Estimates vary, but around 20.000 military and federal police forces were deployed in the ten states most affected by narcotrafficking and -related violence in 2007. A year later, this number had risen to approximately 27.000, reaching a new high of around 45.000 troops in 2009 and 2010 (Freedom House 2008, 2009, 2010; Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor-US Dep. of State 2009, 2010, 2011). Precise numbers are hard to come by, but reportedly, between 2006 and 2011, over 50.000 soldiers were deployed to participate in counternarcotics operations (Rawlins 2011) with a reported monthly average (by September 2011) of 48,750 (Bricker 2011).

Whether militarization is a wise choice, however, is the subject of fierce debate with Huggins clearly taking a negative stance on the issue. Based on the above mentioned past experiences, quite a few more warnings have been issued against this course of action. Among them the admonition of Benítez Manaut (2007) who, in the year the Mérida Initiative was signed, warned for a possible “efecto colateral” of an undesirably high level of militarization in the fight against organized crime and increased military control over police institutions that should be civilian in nature. We now turn to some details on the legislative basis of assigning law enforcement tasks to military forces and to what extent possible dangers of this strategy have become part of Mexico’s reality.

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Ministry of the Navy (Dammert & Álvarez Veloso 2008; Díez & Nicholls 2006). Calderón was able to involve the military – both the army and the navy - in his anti-narcotics strategy as Mexican law does not dictate a clear division of military and police forces and responsibilities. Supporting citizens in cases of public need, offering assistance to people and their assets, and maintaining public order are all part of the responsibilities of the Mexican army. In the US, on the other hand, the Posse Comitatus Acts has for a long time ensured that the military is prohibited from participating in domestic law enforcement. To facilitate the country’s counter-drug efforts, a new law was adopted in the 1980s allowing the US army to participate in detection and monitoring activities, but explicitly excluding arrest and seizure from the military domain. Interestingly, longstanding and comprehensive US aid to Latin American countries has promoted an opposite development by actively supporting military involvement in domestic law enforcement operations (Withers, Santos & Isacson 2010).

Several possible dangers of involving the military in crime-fighting can be identified. First, there is the possible politicization of the military. Second, an unclear distinction between police and military roles might lead to a tense overlap of missions and responsibilities. Third, army personnel are first and foremost trained to use overwhelming force in operations where an enemy has to be defeated, making them ill-prepared for non-combat situations that demand continuous contact with civilians and a constant awareness of the need to safeguard human rights. Finally, this strategy brings with it possibly high institutional opportunity costs. The latter problem refers to a situation where insufficient measures are taken to reform and improve the police and return to this body the role of ‘regular’ anti-crime institution. This leads to a cycle in which the military will be called upon again in the future to perform what are actually civilian law enforcement tasks (Withers, Santos & Isacson 2010; Freeman 2006).

Mérida Assistance and Mexico’s War on Drugs