Drug Money

Last week’s Dallas Morning News editorial chastised Congress for authorizing only one year of Mérida Initiative funding.

Buried inside the $162 billion war spending bill recently signed by President Bush was a $465 million counter-narcotics aid package for Mexico and Central America. That's a far cry from the full $1.6 billion that the House and Senate need to approve immediately for the president's Mérida Initiative.

Members of Congress who aren't from border-area districts might need reminding about why this funding is so important. Drug gangs are marauding through Mexican border cities, killing police, kidnapping hundreds of people, shooting up streets and using terror tactics – including beheadings and torture – to instill a sense of fear and submission.

Congress should have gone ahead with all three years of funding, but the editorial assumes that money is the missing link to winning the war on drugs in Mexico, which is incorrect. Weakening the cartels requires, first and foremost, an end to governmental protection of drug traffickers. American money can help, but it’s not going to be the difference-maker. Much more important is the honesty, will, and patience of the Mexican governing class, which doesn't hinge on American aid. I’ll cede the floor here to Mexico’s foremost chronicler of the drug cartels, Jesús Blancornelas, writing in his 2005 book, En Estado de Alerta:

Everyone knows it: kidnapping experts are from Nayarit, and they take refuge in the north. But they collect the ransom in Guadalajara. Hitmen are transported from Sinaloa to Baja California. The same thing happens between Guadalajara and Morelia. El Chapo Guzmán has garrisons in Sinaloa, Tepic, Puebla, and Vercruz. There are kidnappers grabbed in Guerrero. They jump to Oaxaca and Chiapas. They move when they want for one reason: the police protect them.

That’s why confronting delinquency isn’t a question of money…I insist: you combat delinquency with intelligence and loyal men. Not with money.