Although the violence let loose by drug traffickers cannot be denied, the suggestion that Mexico is part of an “axis of upheaval,” as Niall Ferguson claims, or is “wracked by a criminal-capitalist insurgency,” as Sam Quinones (“State of War” March/April 2009) argues, is clearly off the mark.
If one considers Ferguson’s criteria for inclusion in an “axis of upheaval”—political and social turmoil coupled with economic calamity—it is difficult to see how Mexico could possibly be included. We have solid political institutions, no ethnic fissures, a vigorous civil society, and the 12th-largest economy in the world. The so-called “economic calamities” we face are the same ones menacing all countries as a result of the global financial crisis. Mexico is better positioned today than most to confront this crisis, and any talk of empires, in decline or otherwise, has little bearing on my country.
There has indeed been a substantial increase in violence connected to drug syndicates, the focus of Quinones’s article. Although I do not minimize the seriousness of the threat posed by drug-trafficking organizations and the violence they have unleashed in response to President Felipe Calderón’s decision to roll them back, the notion that this violence can be described as a “raging insurgency” is more than simple hyperbole; it is a simplistic mischaracterization.
In short, it is important to beware of one-size-fits-all labels like the ones Ferguson employs here, as well as analyses that both overstate and oversimplify the current situation such as the one Quinones presents.
—Arturo Sarukhan
Ambassador to the United States
Embassy of Mexico
Washington, D.C.
Sam Quinones replies:I agree with Ambassador Sarukhan that there is no need for hysteria or hyperbole with regard to the recent drug violence in Mexico, a country that I love and lived in for many years. Things are bad enough and don’t need exaggeration.
I chose my words with great care. I felt I saw signs of insurgency in what the cartels are attempting. I’m referring to their brazen challenge to authority best evidenced by their use of narcomantas (“drug banners”) to broadcast messages to their rivals and the public, their attacks on reporters and television studios, warning messages left on bodies, the murder of many police officers, attempts to buy or assassinate mayors, orders to police chiefs to resign or face the death of their officers, and so on.
However, I chose the phrase “criminal-capitalist” to modify the insurgency idea because I don’t believe the cartels have a political goal. They are, above all, businessmen. Their one interest, it seems to me, is not toppling the state but being left alone to make their profits through smuggling illegal drugs into the United States.
6 comments:
It's hard to say, though. I keep imagining what it would be like if a drug cartel in the United States used a helicopter to break 50-odd criminals out of prison, and the image is mind-blowing. They're organized, armed, possess a great deal of influence and are in undeclared war against the state. I'm not sure if insurgency is such a bad word or if protests like the one by the ambassador will help other countries take this problem seriously.
Hi Alexis, Thanks for reading.
Are you talking about the Zacatecas jailbreak? I read it was trucks that brought the commando team.
http://www.milenio.com/node/216238
Whatever the case, it is a frightening image, as you point out. I think I agree that semantic choices aren't the most pressing topic for Sarukhan, but I do think they matter. Describing Mexico as suffering from an insurgency or as a failed state carries with it certain policy implications. For instance, a few months ago in Foreign Policy, Christian Brose was musing about the applicability of counter-insurgency tactics to Mexico's crime problem. The Pentagon wrote that report about theoretically having to send the army into Mexico to prevent state collapse. I think such prescriptions are premature, and as a result that it is important to push back against the labels that don't fit.
I also think we have to be clear about how drug gangs are organized. There may be 500,000 Mexicans making there living off of the drug trade, but they do not form a unified bloc of opposition to Calderón, or anything like it. The government says that only 6 percent of victims of drug violence in 2008 were police or military, which (if you accept the numbers) indicates that the government is not the main target of the gangs' firepower. Crime groups are organized to accomplish their ends, but those ends are related to profit, not to defeating the government.
Now I see what you were talking about with the helicopter...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-prison18-2009may18,0,4319828.story
I agree with Patrick and the ambassador, but Alexis has a point, which is that the debate is a semantic one.
Why? Well, the proponents of counterinsurgency are quite clear in likening it more to police work than high-intensity war. Highly armed police work in an environment lacking the standard legal protections, but police work. In Northern Ireland by the early 1990s, "counterinsurgency" really was police work.
Mexico, of course, has an organized crime problem that will need to be solved by a combination of:
(a) intel to root out collaborators inside the government;
(b) disrupting the cartels' means of finance and communication;
and
(c) selective violence, but overwhelming violence, preferably leading to arrests rather than death, when the cartels overstep the line. Like by, you know, using helicopters to break people out of prison.
The above is a far cry from counterinsurgency a la Colombia, but I'm not sure that it's conceptually different. Still, as Patrick said, the goal in Mexico is to make the cartels decide that the most profitable thing to do would be to operate in Mexico the same way they do in the United States. That's different from the political goals of most counterinsurgencies. In addition, there's a lot less need to separate the population from the gunmen. Cartels can create fear, but you don't (yet) have a southern-Italy-like situation in Mexico.
(Although Sinaloa comes close. Man, that state perturbed me a decade ago. No idea what it's like now. But I digress.)
That said, quantity has a quality all its own. Actions that approached the intensity of a typical counterinsurgency program would be superlatively counterproductive in Mexico. So despite the conceptual similarities, "insurgency" and "counterinsurgency" mislead more than they enlighten when used to describe the Mexican cartel wars.
No?
I've never been to Sinaloa, but it definitely has that reputation. Really all of the mountains in Durango and Chihuahua people talk about as if they were inhabited by werewolves or something. Did you ever read God's Middle Finger? Although the people I know from Culiacán don't strike me as different in any way.
Counterinsurgency tactics in Mexico are fine as far as they are applicable, but I think it's important to remember when they stray from relevance. Using some version of clear, hold, and build to establish safe areas and undermine support for the bad guys just doesn't seem applicable to me because there isn't any support for drug gangs in MOST areas (though, as you say, probably not in Sinaloa). Also, I don't think an absence of economic development is at the root of drug violence, although some certainly disagree. But I know very little about counterinsurgency, so it may be more relevant than I realize.
I also wholeheartedly agree with this:
(c) selective violence, but overwhelming violence, preferably leading to arrests rather than death, when the cartels overstep the line.
Once Mexico can get to that point, I think we'll know a corner has been turned.
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