Excélsior's front page today hails Obama's statement that drug runners are the ones that violate human rights, with the implication being that all the hubbub over the military abuses is much ado about just a little. In a sense, Obama's comment (and others like it from Calderón) is indisputable; the drug runners who killed some 6,000 Mexicans last year are greater violators than the army and the police. I personally don't know anyone who voices fear of the army, but I know lots of people whose lives have changed (in some cases, quite drastically) thanks to the rash of kidnappings and murders in Mexico. Obama's argument is useful to keep in mind when people imply that the army and the police are the greatest threat to the population; they aren't.
But that's the wrong way to approach the problem of abuse. Yes, drug gangs are a bigger threat, but abusing suspects (and non-suspects, it would seem) doesn't make Mexico's security agencies more effective. Or, from another point of view, the fact that organized crime is the worst thing in town doesn't make military abuse and a failure to address it any less bad. They are two separate issues. Furthermore, insofar as it would instill discipline in the ranks and inspire confidence among a population who in many places isn't convinced that the government is on their side, dealing with abuse would not be an impediment, but would make attacking organized crime easier.
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4 comments:
Here is a good article that gave me more than second thoughts about the Mexican army
http://www.motherjones.com/print/24652
Hi Paul,
It was definitely good reading, but I actually found that article to be pretty flawed. I wrote about it last month...
http://ganchoblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/bowden-in-mexico.html
Thanks for posting the link to what you wrote earlier. I missed that earlier post.
Your previous post is very good. I can see that the article I read by Charles Bowden which carries you along through its racy and highly readable style does not provide a serious analysis of the situation.
What I find increasingly extraordinary about Mexico is how cases like the reporter who is the subject of the article (and other equally terrible cases of injustice and abuse) exist alongside millions of people going about their daily lives in ordinary human decent ways.
A real analysis of Mexico has to grapple with this paradox.
Yeah that's absolutely right. If Bowden had left it at your conclusion, I think it would have been a much better article.
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