A War that Can’t Be Won: Binational Perspectives on the War on Drugs

5. Organized Crime as the Highest Threat to Mexican National Security and Democracy

149 Introduction During the authoritarian governments of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), from the 1930s to the 1990s, the security agenda and the security decision-making process in Mexico hardly changed. The effects of illegal activities, particularly those of drug trafficking, went largely unnoticed by Mexican society. By the end of the twentieth century, however, organized crime was becoming a serious concern, but not yet a priority in the national political agenda. The first opposition government in seventy years, the Vicente Fox administration (2000–2006), did not fundamentally alter the basic Mexican security framework either, nor did it modify the organizational structure of the two military departments, the Department of National Defense (SEDENA) and the navy (SEMAR).2 Inevitably, however, some changes were afoot. The Fox administration did seek to broaden the concept of national security by adding to it a set of social issues, including immigration. The security agenda during this administration also grew to include the problem of public safety, due to the citizenry’s demand for greater safety in streets and neighborhoods.3 At the same time, the September 11 terrorist attacks parachuted international terrorism onto the Mexican security agenda, a factor that would be the foundation for a new era of unprecedented security cooperation with the United States. Before taking office, in December 2006, Felipe Calderón visited Washington , D.C., and outlined Mexico’s new security “challenge,” the power of organized crime syndicates. He also stated that this threat could not be chapter five Organized Crime as the Highest Threat to Mexican National Security and Democracy1 Raúl Benítez Manaut 150 · Current Strategies and Casualties confronted with the country’s institutional capabilities alone. He called on help from the United States, a call that marked the beginning of a new era of binational cooperation on security issues, particularly against organized crime. What came out of that visit came to be known as the Mérida Initiative , a $1.4 billion pledge from the United States to fight organized crime in both Mexico and Central America.4 The implications were clear; during the Calderón administration, the number-one security priority came to be combating drug cartels. “It will be an all-out war, because the possibility of co-existing with drug trafficking organizations is no longer viable ,” Calderón stated. “There is no turning back. It’s us or them.”5 At the end of the Calderón administration, in 2012, much public discussion in Mexico involved controversies such as whether the government was winning or losing this “war,” as former president Calderón himself had called it; whether the cartels had evolved from drug trafficking organizations into more versatile and sophisticated criminal groups, which could endanger the country’s stability and its democratic consolidation; and whether the new Peña administration should continue this war on drugs. Today, in 2013, these key issues are not yet resolved. The Ascent and Consolidation of Drug Trafficking in Mexico The Mexican cartels originated with the advent of a market for marijuana and heroin in the United States soon after World War II. In Sinaloa state, the main illegal drug producer, drug trafficking, trade, and politics became closely intertwined. In response, from the 1950s to the 1990s, the government’s policy toward the drug business went from tolerance to control . Along that line, since the 1970s, growing but modest binational cooperation with the United States on the issue of drug control began to take place.6 This cooperation had some lows, including the murder of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena in Guadalajara in 19857 and the 1997 arrest of the Mexican general José de Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo on corruption charges. In 2001 an army court convicted General Gutiérrez of illicit enrichment.8 These incidents confirmed the links between law enforcement agencies and the armed forces and criminal organizations—something that fueled American suspicion throughout this cooperation. Mexico, in response, maintained that General Gutiérrez ’s corruption case was an isolated incident and did not signify systemic corruption in Mexican institutions. Organized Crime as the Highest Threat to Mexican Security · 151 Through the 1990s, however, Mexican drug trafficking groups increased their power and influence and came to replace the Colombian Medellín and Calí Cartels in the supply of illegal drugs to the U.S. market, after these were wiped out by U.S.–Colombian efforts through Plan Colombia, an...