First, the government still maintains control over its territory and has not ceded ground to narcotraffickers at any time. Second, although the fight against the cartels has resulted in higher rates of violence, the hostility remains largely contained in a few states and among narcotraffickers vying for improved positions within the cartels or between them. Third, Mexico's drug trafficking violence on a per capital basis remains significantly lower than Colombia's. Even after years of President Alvaro Uribe's successful hard-line security policy against Colombia's narcotraffickers, violence in this country remains quite high: There were a total of 16,000 reported homicides in 2008 in a country of 45 million people. In Mexico, in contrast, narcotrafficking related violence is expected to cause about 6,000 casualties in 2009, in a country of more than 100 million. Fourth, Mexico's narcotraffickers have not targeted civilians in order to support a campaign of fear against the government, even if they do continue to target public officials specifically involved in the fight against them.They conclude with the following:
In Colombia, in contrast, the nation's narcotraffickers embarked on a public fear campaign that targeted civilians and political elites, even if they had little to do with narcotrafficking or the fight against it. Finally, and most important, Mexico's narcotraffickers have no unifying political agenda.
As long as President Calderon stays firm in his stance against organized crime, investors will continue to base their judgments about Mexico on the government's capacity to push through badly needed fiscal and economic reforms rather than the level of narcotrafficking violence.
I agree that Mexico is not Colombia, nor it it likely to descend into Colombian levels of violence in the near future. However, other than the first, none of the reasons that supposedly differentiate Mexico from Colombia would seem to be directly dependent on "Calderón stay[ing] firm in his stance in organized crime". Indeed, whether or not you are in favor of Calderón's crime policies (and I tend to think that Mexico eventually was going to need someone more aggressive than past presidents), it's hard to argue that they are investor-friendly, which seems to be the gist of the piece.
Take the second point, about violence being limited to a couple of states, which contradicts the final conclusion more than it supports it. First of all, it's based on a dubious assumption; yes, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Durango, and Baja California are the primary hot zones, but there is a long list of cities and regions where organized crime used to have a limited influence, but is now a major problem: Monterrey, Torreón, Veracruz, Guanajuato, the southern Pacific coast, Zacatecas, et cetera. The increased violence and vulnerability of these regions is attributed, correctly in my opinion, to the so-called cockroach effect: as federal troops have disrupted organized crime groups in their traditional nests (at Calderón's behest), gangs high-tailed it to new cities. Similarly, gangs have expanded into other criminal realms primarily because of Calderón's aggressive posture: they have had to replace declining smuggling income, and they have done so with activities far more disruptive to a free society than drug-running, such as kidnapping and extortion.
The article implies that precisely because of Calderón's anti-crime strategy, Mexico will retain a friendly climate for investors. In a lot of ways, the opposite is true; Calderón's policies have turned out to be bitter pills for businesses. That doesn't necessarily make Calderón wrong, but the president's supporters do themselves a disservice when they overstate or misunderstand the impact of his presidency.
2 comments:
More potential investors in Mexico means more potential customers for Eurasia Group (which I think usually generates fairly spot-on analysis), and the importance of fiscal and labor reforms for the Eurasia Group class goes pretty much without saying.
As I've said before I also totally disagree with the Mexico-as-Colombia thesis, but there are other debatable points aside from the ones you rightly point out. First of all, no territorial control is questionable. While there aren't checkpoints and other features that traditionally define such control, there are certainly large swaths in the north and northwest where nothing happens without the gangs being aware of it and making a decision about whether to react or withdraw. Also, no campaign of fear? Tell that to the people who died in Morelia last year. It's fortunately not as widespread as it was in Colombia, but a) Colombia's "extraditable" debate presented a unique situation for political unity among traffickers that isn't present in Mexico and b) it's still early in the Mexican battle.
The main thing that distinguishes Mexico from Colombia is the absence (by and large) of social and political grievances mixed in with the drug conflict. That combo is what has made Colombia so combustible. But it's important not to go too far and understate Mexico's problems too.
And yeah, "Stay firm, Felipe" is crappily reductionist advice reminiscent of Yglesias' Green Lantern theory regarding the power of sheer will.
Right, I think more and more it looks a lot of the important distinctions between the two nations are morphing into differences in degree more than anything. The degrees are huge, but it's getting harder and harder to say simply, there is no loss of territory, period. I also agree that the lack of social grievances is an ingredient that is thankfully absent. I don't know Colombian history that well, but I also wonder if the years wit hthe PRI, in which so many different levels of society were coopted by and connected to the federal government has had an impact that is absent in Colombia, in that entire towns and regions are less likely to have developed wholly separate from the powers that be in the capital. You could see a possible connection between that and the Mexican government doing a better job holding onto its territory than Colombia.
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