The Security and Prosperity Partnership “understands North America as a shared economic space and that as a shared economic space we need to protect it, and that we need to understand that we don’t protect this economic space only at our frontiers, that it has to be protected more broadly throughout North America. And as we have worked through the Security and Prosperity Partnership to improve our commercial and trading relationship, we have also worked to improve our security cooperation. To a certain extent, we’re armoring NAFTA.” 

-Thomas Shannon, Sub-Secretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs for the State Department in a speech on April 8, about the Security and Prosperity Partnership.

In Mexico and the United States, drug-related violence is very real. In the past year and a half alone, over 4,000 Mexicans have been murdered in drug trafficking-related crimes. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration has done little to stop the flow of weapons into Mexico, refusing to renew the ban on assault weapons. An estimated 2,000 illegal firearms enter Mexico every day from the United States. And in the US, the Bush Administration recently cutfunds for drug treatment and prevention programs. The Bush Administration’s actions clearly demonstrate a disinterest in putting an end to drug-related violence on the streets of the US and Mexico. 

Nevertheless, the countless tons of cocaine that flow to US drug users continue to provide a good excuse for the Bush Administration to pursue its economic and security agendas. Whether it’s the “War on Terror”, the “War against Communism,” or the “War on Drugs,” Washington will use whatever rhetoric is most fitting to package its pursuits abroad. In the case of Mexico, it is the “War on Drugs.”

Plan Mexico- officially the Merida Initiative- takes its name from Plan Colombia, a similar US military aid package passed with the same “War on Drugs” rhetoric. In 2000, the United States launched Plan Colombia and began funneling over $6 billion in US tax dollars to the Colombian government. Since then, Colombia has remained the primary source of cocaine in the US, while the purity of the drug has risen and the price has gone done.  It is with the same “War on Drugs” rhetoric that the Bush Administration presented its new plan- Plan Mexico- as an effort to fight drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico.

On June 30, President Bush signed Plan Mexico, a $1.4 billion, three-year package. The 2008 appropriations for Mexico consist of $400 million, about 70% of which will go to the Mexican military and police forces. All of the programs which form part of Plan Mexico are supposedly directed to the goals of supply interdiction, enforcement, and surveillance.

Plan Mexico includes funding for espionage systems directed at national citizenry and surveillance equipment. Reforms will oblige Mexico to adopt emergency counter-terrorism measures including domestic surveillance, phone tapping, warrantless searches—the “Gestapo law” (that’s what the Mexican news media calls it) proposed by the Calderon government that was defeated by popular outcry—, and the redefinition of social protest as a criminal activity.

In addition to the 40% that will be spent on the military helicopters and surveillance planes, most of the remaining budget goes to defense contractors and Information Technology (IT) firms in the form of outlays for intelligence equipment, software and hardware and training. A huge part of this budget goes directly to US private sector defense and IT companies. One security source says Blackwater will be likely be the major beneficiary, despite its dirty reputation following the shooting of Iraqi civilians.

Although the Bush Administration presented Plan Mexico under the guise of the “War on Drugs,” the true aim of Plan Mexico can be found in negotiations which began in Waco, Texas in March of 2005. There, the leaders of the United States, Canada, and Mexico met to extend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into the military realm. They formed the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), beginning secretive negotiations between their governments and large corporations to facilitate trade and create a North American security perimeter.

Plan Mexico is the first large-scale initiative of the Security and Prosperity Partnership. Through the SPP, the Bush Administration seeks to encompass Mexico and Canada within the military borders of the United States. In violation of their national sovereignty, the US government aims to impose its security priorities on its partner nations, while promoting and protecting neoliberal trade policies and strengthening US control in Latin America. 

By strengthening the Mexican security forces with Plan Mexico, the Bush Administration is attempting to cultivate an ally in Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Along with Colombia, Mexico is one of only two far-right wing governments among the major Latin American countries. Colombia has already received billions of dollars in US military aid, and now Washington is attempting to secure Mexico as an ally in much the same way.

Stephen Johnson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs in the Defense Department, recently made the connection between Plan Mexico and Washington’s bid to recover its influence in Latin America. “While a groundswell seems to exist for greater engagement with the United States, there are challenge states such as Venezuela, Cuba, and to some extent Bolivia and Ecuador. For now, Venezuela and Cuba are clearly hostile to the United States, western-style democracy, markets, and are actively trying to counter our influence. Our challenge is not to confront them directly, but instead do a better job working with our democratic allies and friendly neighbors.”

Washington views the rise of center-left governments in Latin America- Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Paraguay- as a threat to its strategic interests. It considers these governments’ moves to modify international neoliberal policies, increase state involvement in redistribution of wealth and public control of natural resources and basic services, and pass constitutional reforms to recognize rights of indigenous peoples as counter to US interests. Plan Mexico is seen as an historic opportunity for the United States to gain military influence in Mexico and use it as a platform in the ideological battle with Venezuela, Cuba, and other leftist Latin American governments. 

It is Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s obvious interest to strengthen the power of the executive branch, subtracting power from other levels of government and restricting citizen rights. This is exactly what the “War on Drugs” model aims to do.

After taking office Calderon rapidly built an image of strength in arms. He dispatched over 24,000 army troops to Mexican cities and villages, and created an elite corps of special forces under his direct supervision. Since being dispatched to wage the war on drugs, the Mexican Army has accumulated an alarming number of complaints of violations of human rights, including several incidents of fatal shootings at checkpoints, rapes, and brutality.

The 2007 Mexico Human Rights Report of the US State Departmentnotes reports of security forces involvement in “unlawful killings by security forces; kidnappings, including by police; physical abuse; poor and overcrowded prison conditions; arbitrary arrests and detention; corruption, inefficiency, and lack of transparency in the judicial system; confessions coerced through physical abuse permitted as evidence in trials; . . . corruption at all levels of government; . . . violence, including killings, against women…”

The 2008 investigation of the International Civil Commission on Human Rights on the status of human rights violations in Chiapas, Oaxaca and San Salvador Atenco concluded, “The CCIODH holds that the cases of Atenco, Oaxaca and Chiapas exemplify a more widespread situation characterised by a pattern of continued and commonplace behaviour on the part of different federal, state and, in some cases, local authorities. This model of behaviour can clearly be understood as the politics of the State.”

US military aid to Latin American governments has a notorious history of building up armies to repress internal political opponents, such as activists, journalists, labor organizers, and opposition political-party leaders. It is likely that Plan Mexico will have much the same impact- supporting the Mexican security forces to repressing Mexican organizers and political opponents of the Calderon regime.

When General José Francisco Gallardo- the major proponent of human rights guarantees within the Mexican Army and a Constitutional scholar who was imprisoned for his efforts- was asked if the Calderon strategy of militarizing the drug war could lead to a return to the “dirty war” of the seventies, he replied, “We are already experiencing a return to the dirty war.” He cited the widespread practice of torture and arbitrary detentions as proof of systematic human rights violations in contemporary Mexico.

Persecution of dissidents has been well-documented for many periods of Mexican history including present day. The International Civil Commission on Human Rights writes in its preliminary conclusions from a fact-finding tour in February 2008: “there have been widespread arbitrary arrests of members of social movements and, on occasion, of members of their families merely for being related to them. It is normal for those who are arrested to be submitted to torture and physical abuse. To justify the arrests false evidence is used…”  

Ranking members of Mexican security forces on local and national levels maintain close links to drug traffickers, working for them directly in many parts of the country. Even the US State Department recognizes the intrinsic corruption of the Mexican security forces and their strong ties to drug traffickers. Its 2007 report on human rights in Mexico notes, “Corruption continued to be a problem, as many police were involved in kidnapping, extortion, or providing protection for, or acting directly on behalf of organized crime and drug traffickers. Impunity was pervasive to an extent that victims often refused to file complaints.” Many armed forces deserters who have received counter-narcotics training pass it along to high-paying drug cartels.

Military equipment also ends up in the hands of the cartels. The U.S. Office of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reports that 90% of arms decommissioned from organized crime in Mexico came from the United States, many registered to the US Army. The black market in arms is booming. The likelihood that U.S. military equipment will end up in the wrong hands is more like inevitability.

At the same time as Plan Mexico furthers the Bush Administration’s security agenda, we can be nearly certain that Plan Mexico will serve to escalate drug-related violence in Mexico, rather than decreasing the flow of drugs to US consumers. 

 

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