Forum:
3rd General Assembly
Issue:
The question of the Mexican Drug War
Student Officer: Momo Komatsu
Position:
Deputy-Chair
Introduction
More than 60,000 people have been killed from 2006 to 2012 due to drug-related violence
and 26,121 people have gone missing in Mexico. Despite the efforts of Mexico itself and the
help of other countries, the Mexican Drug War has arguably become an international example
of policy failure.
In December 2006, Felipe Calderón, the newly elected President of Mexico, launched
the Operation Michoacán. He sent 6,500 federal troops to the state of Michoacán to end drug
violence there. Under this strategy, the military has made several high-profile arrests and
killings of cartel leaders. However, in the offensive against the cartels, Mexican security
officials violated human rights through killings, torture, and forced disappearances.
In December 2012, the new President Enrique Peña Nieto pledged to refocus the
government’s priorities on curbing kidnappings, extortion and other forms of violence affection
Mexican civilians on a daily basis. Analysts say his strategy improved coordination between
intelligence and operations agencies. But even though statistics show that the overall
homicide rate has dropped during Peña Nieto’s first year, InSight Crime, an organization
specialized in organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, notes that extortion and
kidnapping have risen.
As a result of the violence linked to drugs, Mexico’s modern civilian militia movement
began, known locally as the autodefensas, in many parts of the country. Made up largely of
farmers in rural areas, these self-defense groups have attempted to fight drug traffickers and
restore order to towns, filling in where local police have failed. The autodefensas rose up in
arms against Michoacán’s drug gangs, but some are now accused of behaving in some ways
like organized crime. These groups have presented a dilemma for Mexican officials. While
vigilante groups are illegal, they have provided an effective short-term means of combating
the cartels where the police have been unsuccessful. Despite the concerns about some
groups’ unregulated security actions, in Michoacán state the government signed an
agreement with them in April 2014 stipulating that the members of the groups would register
their weapons and incorporate into local security forces.
Government corruption
Drug cartels in Mexico advance their operations, in part, by corrupting or intimidating law
enforcement officials. Mexican municipal, state, and federal government officials, along with
the police forces, often work together with the cartels in an organized network of corruption.
A Pax Mafioso, is a specific example of corruption which guarantees a politician votes and a
following in exchange for turning a ‘blind eye’ towards a particular cartel. Although the central
government of Mexico has made concerted efforts to reduce corruption in recent years, it
remains a serious problem. Some agents of the Federal Investigations Agency (AFI) are
believed to work as enforcers for various cartels.
Human Rights Violations
Upon taking office in December 2012, Peña Nieto acknowledged that the “war on drugs”
launched by his predecessor had led to serious abuses by the security forces. Yet the
government has made little progress in prosecuting widespread killings, enforced
disappearances, and torture committed by soldiers and police in the course of efforts to
combat organized crime. Other ongoing problems include restrictions to press freedoms,
sexual violence against women and girls, and limits on access to reproductive rights and
health care.
Enforced Disappearances
Mexico’s security forces have participated in widespread enforced disappearances since the
“war on drugs” by the former President Calderón and continued to carry these out during the
Peña Nieto administration, in some cases, collaborating directly with criminal groups. In
August 2014, the government acknowledged that the whereabouts of over 22,000 people who
had gone missing since 2006 remained unknown, but failed to disclose corroborating
evidence, or information on how many of these cases are alleged enforced disappearances.
According to official information, no one had been convicted for an enforced disappearance
committed after 2006. Prosecutors and police routinely fail to carry out basic investigative
steps to identify those responsible for disappearances, often blaming victims, and telling their
families to investigate. Families of the disappeared may lose access to basic social services
that are tied to the victim’s employment, such as childcare.
Military Abuses and Impunity
Mexico has relied heavily on the military to fight drug-related violence and organized crime,
leading to widespread human rights violations. Since 2006, Mexico’s National Human Rights
Commission (CNDH) received approximately 9,000 complaints of abuse by the army, and
issued reports in over 100 cases in which it found that army personnel had committed serious
human rights violations. They sometimes randomly open fire on public places and execute
civilians extra-judicially. Torture is also widely practiced to obtain forced confessions and
extract information. It is most frequently applied when the victims are held incommunicado at
military bases or other illegal detention sites. Common tactics include beatings, waterboarding,
electric shocks and sexual torture. The torture is practiced to force the victims to confess to
say that the military was not responsible for the killings. Many judges, despite the
constitutional prohibition of such evidence, continue to accept these confessions.
The problem is that abuses committed by members of the military against civilians
are handled by the military justice system, which lacks independence and transparency. In
April, the Congress reformed the Code of Military Justice to place these abuses under the
ordinary criminal justice system, but while this reform is being carried out, the soldiers remain
subject to the military justice system. Even though some military personnel has already been
judged by the criminal justice system, it routinely failed to provide justice to victims of violent
crimes because of corruption, inadequate training and resources, and the complicity of
prosecutors and public defenders.
Abuse against Migrants
Hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants, including unaccompanied children and
families, pass through Mexico each year and many are subjected to grave abuses en route at
the hands of organized crime, migration authorities, and security forces.
The drug cartels engage in kidnapping, ransom, murder, robbery and extortion of
migrants traveling from Central America through Mexico on their way to the United States and
Canada. Sometimes the cartels force migrants to join their organization and work for them.
Mass graves have also been discovered in Mexico containing bodies of migrants. There are
also documented links between the drug cartels and human trafficking for forced labor, forced
prostitution, and rape. Such targeting is especially deleterious because members of these
vulnerable, marginalized communities often lack the resources and social and political capital
to vindicate their rights.
Authorities have not taken adequate steps to protect migrants, or to investigate and
prosecute those who abuse them. The government has also failed to implement protective
measures granted by national and international human rights bodies in favor of migrant
shelter’s staff, who face threats and harassment from criminal group and officials.
Key Terms
Drug cartel
A drug cartel is any criminal organization developed with the primary purpose of promoting
and controlling drug trafficking operations. They range from loosely managed agreements
among various drug traffickers to formalized commercial enterprises. In Mexico, these
organizations, usually rival to each other, are involved in the Mexican Drug War.
Major Parties Involved
Mexico
Under weak judicial and police institutions, Mexico has made itself one of the world’s most
sophisticated drug networks. In the late 1980s, when the Colombia’s drug cartels were
successfully dismantled, the Mexican drug organizations began to gain power. As the
Colombian route was disrupted, Mexican gangs shifted from being couriers for Colombia to
being wholesalers. Analysts estimate that the earnings from illicit drug sales range from $13.6
billion to $49.4 billion annually. Because of the many influential drug cartels and the
government corruption, Mexico is not likely to solve the question of the Mexican Drug War
itself. Mexican officials point out that the illicit drug trade is shared problem in need of a
shared solution, and remark that most of the financing for the Mexican traffickers comes from
American drug consumers.
United States of America
As the Mexican drug cartels controlled 90% of the cocaine entering the United States, the
United States government is being cooperative to combat drug trafficking. The Mexican drug
cartels are also the greatest organized crime threat to the United States according to the US
Justice Department. Currently, the Mexican drug cartels already have a presence in most
major US cities.
The United States has allocated over $2 billion in aid to Mexico through the Merida
Initiative, an aid package agreed upon in 2007 without a year cap, to help Mexico combat
organized crime. The US government sent unarmed drones to collect intelligence on
traffickers, and has also sent CIA operatives and retired military personnel to a Mexican
military base, while training Mexican federal police agents to assist in wiretaps, interrogations,
and running informants.15% of the $2 billion can only be disbursed after the US secretary of
state reports that the Mexican government is meeting human rights requirements. However,
the impact of these requirements has been undermined by the fact that the US State
Department has repeatedly reported to the US Congress that they are being met, despite the
overwhelming evidence to the contrary, often citing vague and incomplete progress towards
meeting the requirements, leading Congress to release the funds.
Guatemala
The Operation Michoacán has driven some cartels to seek a safer location across the border
in Guatemala, attracted by corruption, weak policing and its position on the overland
smuggling route. The smugglers pick up drug from small planes that land at private airstrips
hidden in the Guatemalan jungle. The cargo is then moved up through Mexico to the US
border. Guatemala has arrested dozens of drug suspects and torched huge cannabis and
poppy fields. According to the US government, Los Zetas, a drug cartel also operating in
Mexico, control 75% of Guatemala through violence, political corruption and infiltration in the
country’s institutions.
Previous Solutions
The Mexican government has arrested many leaders of drug cartels, but there are not many
examples of solutions to deal with the fundamental parts of this problem.
In December 2006, the newly elected president Felipe Calderón launched Operation
Michoacán to eliminate drug plantations and to combat drug trafficking. The Secretary of
Public Safety, Attorney General of Mexico (PGR), Secretary of the Interior, Mexican Navy and
Mexican Army supervised this operation. On some occasions state and municipal police have
participated despite not being part of it.
However, in July 2012, a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee report concludes
that this assault against drug cartels has been largely ineffective and in some instances
counterproductive to reducing violence. The report recommends the focal point of Mexico’s
anti-drug cooperation should be training and institution building in police forces and judiciary.
In July 2011, the US federal government announced a plan to require gun dealers in
four Southwest border states, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, to report the sales
of high-power rifles under certain conditions in an effort to stem the flow of guns to the
Mexican drug cartels. Under this new policy, gun dealers in the four states will have the same
reporting requirements for certain long guns that gun dealers nationwide currently have for
guns. They are required to give purchaser information to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is someone purchases two or more semi-automatic rifles in a
five-day period, but only if the guns are greater than .22 caliber and have the ability to accept
a detachable magazine.
Upon taking office in December 2012, president Enrique Peña Nieto has prioritized
the reduction of violence rather than attacking Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations head on,
making a departure from the strategy of the past six years during Felipe Calderón’s
administration. Peña Nieto has set up a number of conceptual and organizational changes
from the past regime policy, and one of the biggest contrasts if the focus on lowering murder
rates, kidnappings, and extortions, as opposed to arresting or killing the country’s mostwanted drug lords and intercepting their drug shipments. Peña Nieto proposed on centralizing
the sub-federal police forces under one command. Despite all his efforts, critics say that Peña
Nieto has offered “little sense” in exactly how he will reduce the violence.
Possible Solutions
There are a few policy recommendations to be made concerning the question of the Mexican
Drug War. There have to be made long-term state-building efforts, as poverty is also a major
problem in Mexico, rather than short-term military actions against drug trafficking
organizations. A coherent strategy to deal with those organizations and autodefensas is one
of the important aspects. Moreover, security sector reform, as well as addressing failures of
the justice system is an absolute priority. Contributing to ongoing international debates about
drug policies in the Organization of American, and in 2016 the Special Drug Policy Session of
the UN General Assembly will also be significant to solving this problem, as international
cooperation is highly needed in this situation. All these efforts have to be made in order to
provide citizens security and to restore their trust in all arms of government.
Bibliography
1. Wikipedia – Mexican Drug War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War
2. Human Rights Watch – World Report 2015: Mexico
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/mexico
3. Council on Foreign Relations – Mexico’s Drug War
http://www.cfr.org/mexico/mexicos-drug-war/p13689
4. Vice News – Where Mexico’s Drug War Was Born: A Timeline of the Security Crisis in
Michoacan
https://news.vice.com/article/where-mexicos-drug-war-was-born-a-timeline-of-thesecurity-crisis-in-michoacan
5. CNN – Mexico Drug War Fast Facts
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/02/world/americas/mexico-drug-war-fast-facts/
6. E-International Relations – How to End Mexico’s Drug War
http://www.e-ir.info/2014/01/21/how-to-end-mexicos-drug-war/