Arguing about Control

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair recently mentioned that Mexico suffered from ingovernability in certain regions, which has provoked a sharp backlash from Mexican officials. Fernando Gómez Mont:

There's not one single space in the national territory that escapes the direction of the state. The entirety of the citizenry has access to health services, social security, and education with the support of the state institutions.

Along those lines, First Lady Margarita Zavala was in Juárez yesterday. I've seen no statistics since the army arrived there, but it seems like there's been a sharp downturn in the headlines announcing mayhem in Juárez since the jailhouse riot a couple of weeks ago. It's way to early too start drawing conclusions about what this has to do with the army, but let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that 7,000 troops (instead of 2,000) have made the difference. Why, then, did Calderón wait so long to send them?

More from Gómez Mont:

Our government has an integral strategy to reestablish peace and security, which has included an operation to clean the corruption in the country's security institutions, something that our neighbors to the north should also do, because the corruption phenomenon, like that of drug trafficking, does not recognize borders.

For his part, Calderón was even more confrontational: "Let them tell me where I don't govern."

These tit-for-tat rhetorical controversies, which are mostly meaningless and unproductive sideshows, have been increasing a great deal in recent weeks.