The UN vs. Mexico

Two different UN-related stories paint Mexico in a less-than-beautiful light today. The first comes from a conference about Mexico's mistreatment of Central American immigrants, the second from a UN-rep's opinions about the use of the army in the fight against the drug cartels.

On the first point, special rapporteur Jorge Bustamante said, "We see Central American migrants as inferior to us; that's racism Mexican-style, a cancer about which we do nothing." This bold statement speaks to Mexicans' nebulous relationship with race, which I always find fascinating. Mexicans are certainly less color-conscious than Americans, which is refreshing to anyone tired of the identity politics and racial political correctness that prevails in the US. Race isn't a barrier to a collective sense of identity in Mexico, and the idea that someone would be disliked strictly for their skin color is laughable. At the same time, Mexicans do not always own up to racism as a society, and clearly it does exist, though not in the hateful form people from the US might expect.

The second story deals with Amerigo Incalcaterra's impression of the Mexican army's anti-drug operations. Incalcaterra, the Mexico representative to the UN's High Commissioner on Human Rights, said explicitly that he was not in favor of the army leaving the streets, but was instead promoting enhanced training and greater safeguards against abuses. I'm glad he made that distinction. The more common message--using the army against drug cartels is bad--is missing a great deal of context. Mexico's police forces, at every level, are rife with dysfunction and criminality, ranging from daily extortion to murder. Fixing this cannot be the chore of one president, or one director of public security, or even one administration. It is a society-wide problem, and one that will take a generation to fix. The police simply cannot effectively combat the drug cartels, and won't be able to for years. Given that, in the near term, the army is the only other viable option. But if the army is the best of a bunch of bad options, it can be made less bad, as Incalcaterra points out. I hope people in Calderón's administration will be open to his critiques.