Op-ed Roundup

There have been a handful of interesting columns on the US-Mexico relationship, in regard to the latter's security. Here's Jorge Fernández Menéndez, considering Obama's comparison of Felipe Calderón with Eliot Ness:

...Obama equated Felipe Calderón with Eliot Ness, a figure doubtless known by all Americans. If he wanted it to be understood in terms of the dimension of the challenge of crime in Mexico, using the figure of the leader of the Untouchables is appropriate, although if we look at what are the true challenges that Mexico must face going forward, the distance [between the two men] turns out to be much greater.

Nobody can doubt that it's positive to value the struggle that the state is fighting against organized crime, but it's still worrying that, at moment of profound international changes, when the economic crisis obliges us to redefine the development models and even the mode of operation of the globalizing mechanisms, as will happen these next few days in London during a reunion of the G-20, where President Calderón will participate (he will also coordinate the so-called G-5: Mexico, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, considered the five most important emerging economic powers in the world), the most worrying thing is, we were saying, is that the recognition revolves around a figure like Eliot Ness and not the great reformers of the world.

It took me a while to follow the second part, but after a few minutes I managed to navigate the super-sentence from beginning to end and, yeah, good point. The choice of Ness instead of, say, George Marshall makes me wonder if that was a subtle sign that Obama thinks drug prohibition is analogous to alcohol prohibition.

Alberto Aziz Nassif says that Clinton's recognition of American responsibility in Mexico's drug wars owes to the increase in violence conflating the two nations' interests, but wonders whether that will turn out to be entirely good news:

The change in path is not only a good-faith gesture between neighbors and partners, but a matter of self interest. For the US the problems with its southern neighbor are part of its internal agenda. Drug trafficking and violence that consumption carries with it have increased the violence on the streets of many cities in the US.

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The self-critical discourse that assumes shared responsibility between the two nations is, without a doubt, a breath of fresh air for Calderón's government. The promises of a new diplomacy from the US toward Mexico remains ambivalent: on the one hand, Clinton signaled that her nation will make an effort to reduce drug consumption, detain arms traffic, and track money laundering. At the same time, the head of security in the Obama Administration, Janet Napolitano, established a plan to reinforce security on the border with Mexico, which includes for now more Border Patrol, more immigration agents, greater presence of the DEA. Will all of these steps lead in the near term to a militarization of the border?

Jorge Chabat seems to agree about the confluence of interests, although he expresses it differently:

For decades Mexico has exported all types of products to the United States, from prime materials to manufactured goods, even undocumented workers and illegal goods. Nevertheless, in the last few months there's a new product that Mexico is exporting and that doesn't appear in a official statistics, but is, aside from that, very difficult to quantify but does exist: fear.

Owing to the increase in drug violence, there is a fear that is crossing the United States: the possibility that the murders and kidnappings that now plague Mexico will invade American territory, destroying the daily life of the citizens of our neighbor to the north. What worries Americans isn't the fear of illegal drugs that arrive from or through Mexico, which they've lived with for decades: it's the costs associated with this consumption that has them in a state of total paranoia.

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For that reason it's possible to hope that now the Obama government will take collaboration with Mexico to combat drug violence seriously, and that behind the extremely kind gestures of Hillary Clinton, there will be real support.