Dispatch from Monterrey

Poder has a long article from the Wall Street Journal's Mexico correspondents about insecurity Monterrey specifically and Mexico generally. It doesn't include anything croundbreaking (actually it reads as though it was written for an American audience rather than a Mexican one, which it probably was), but a couple of anecdotes stand out:

Analysts and diplomats worry about drug trafficking increasing its political power in Mexico during the congressional elections, planned for July. Junco says that he knows of an potential candidate for the position of governor of the state of Nuevo León who received an offer of $10 million from drug traffickers to finance his political campaign. The aspiring candidate decided to withdraw from the contest in place of accepting the money.

Mauricio Fernández Garza, a member of a prosperous Monterrey family, says that when he was a candidate for government in 2003 he was sought out by members of a cartel who offered to finance his political campaign if he promised to "look the other way" on the issue of drug trafficking. Fernández says that he rejected the offer. Ultimately he lost the elections.

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While violence took over Nuevo Laredo, the business leaders from Monterrey, the chiefs of the police, and government functionaries set a goal: that it didn't happen there. "We have drawn a line in the sand and we have informed the cartel leaders that if they cross that line, it will be at their own risk," said the governor of the state, José Natividad González Parás, in 2006. What he perhaps didn't know was that the relative calm of life in Monterrey was due in large part to an unwritten pact among rival groups of drug traffickers, whose families lived in the tranquil and exclusive enclave of San Pedro, a place where their wealth didn't raise eyebrows, according to local police. But Monterrey is a very big market to be ignored, and shortly thereafter the war began.

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In the street market of the boisterous Reforma avenue, the Zetas sell pirate CD's. They even sell them with their own seal: Los Únicos or The Only Ones, with a logo of a black horse surrounded by four Z's. A vendor working there says that last year some members of that groups approached him and ordered him to sell their discs.

Many residents of Monterrey are convinced that the Zetas even receive, from the hands of corrupt police, a portion of the income from traffic fines. That additional money to finance gangs worsens the equilibrium of power between the government and the traffickers. Drug traffickers generate at least $15 billion annually in income, according to Mexican officials. The annual budget allocation for federal authorities, without including the army, doesn't exceed $1 billion.

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Jorge, with short hair and a contagious smile, has been a police in the state for more than 20 years. He draws a salary of 6,000 pesos --around $450 dollars-- per month. It's well known that the police don't earn enough to resist the temptation to accept bribes or for it be worthwhile to run the risk of confrontation. In fact, corruption extends to every level of the police forces. One high state official said in private that he didn't trust any police commander.

The ex-director of public security resigned in the middle of a scandal that associated him with the Sinaloa cartel. His replacement is an ex-prosecutor named Fasci, who says that the officials are trapped between trying to improve cooperation between the alphabet soup of the diverse security agencies of the country. In the metropolitan area of Monterrey there are 11 different municipal police forces, the state police, three branches of federal police and the army. In the entire state there exist 70 different emergency numbers used to contact the police.