The PRD in 2012

According to Mitofsky, two-thirds of perredistas prefer AMLO to Ebrard with regard to the 2012 presidential race, with barely a quarter leaning toward Ebrard. However, AMLO is the candidate with the largest negative spread among any of the hopefuls in any party, and Ebrard scores better among the population at large. Both of them, therefore, have a legitimate claim to being better positioned for 2012, the amorphous status that is supposed to determine which of the two will step aside and which will run. Assuming the poll is legit, I can't conceive of any scenario in which AMLO steps aside with two-thirds of the party's support (nor can you blame him), which, absent a sea change (which seems unlikely given that both Ebrard and AMLO are such known quantities) in leftist sympathies, means that either the Ebrard jumps off or the left is divided. Either way, it is very hard to envision a victorious left in 2012.

Seeds of Future Problems

Almost 1,700 hundred elite soldiers have deserted in Mexico in the past ten years. Problematically, Sedena has no method of tracking these people, who have a very marketable set of skills for criminal groups. Although, as I think about it, the "elite" tag is worrying, but I'm not sure how much it matters. Most of the killing in Mexico isn't of the elite military variety. If you look at the Zetas, they are more of a danger today, staffed largely by kids from the street, than they were when it was just Arturo Guzmán and a small bunch of commandos taking orders from Osiel Cárdenas. That's not to say it doesn't matter, I'm just not sure holding on to the elite while still losing hundreds of thousands of rank-and-file infantrymen to desertion is much better than the status quo.

Pushing a Non-panista Once Again

For the second time in a couple of months, Calderón spoke positively of the possibility of a non-panista "citizen candidate" representing his party in the race for the presidency in 2012 while at a meeting of the PAN's National Executive Council. Both Gustavo Madero and Santiago Creel, whose ambitions would necessarily be thwarted by such a candidate, echoed the comments.

Ebrard Sets a Date

Marcelo Ebrard will be leaving office to pursue the presidency in January of 2012, should he be "better positioned electorally than Andrés Manuel López Obrador", he said yesterday. He said he would begin to campaign for the PRD's nomination during the last three months of 2011. Ebrard also reiterated his support for the Mexico State alliances, but said that a unified campaign with the PAN in 2012 would be "against nature", using the same odd formulation that lots of others have as well.

More on Calderón's Visit

Malcolm Beith has a long and interesting post on Calderón's anger at the US and other related topics:

On Thursday during an interview with the Washington Post, Calderon cited a U.S. cable that said that Mexican military officials had "risk-averse habits," suggesting that it had caused turmoil on his national security team.

"It's difficult if suddenly you are seeing the courage of the army [questioned]. For instance, they have lost probably 300 soldiers ... and suddenly somebody in the American embassy, they [say] the Mexican soldiers aren't brave enough," Calderon said during an hour-long meeting with The Post editorial board and reporters. "Or you decide to play the game that they are not coordinated enough, and suddenly start to bring information to one agency and not to the other and try to get them to compete."

Well, sorry Mr President, but your soldiers are indeed risk averse – perhaps rightly so. I've spent plenty of time with them in the past three years. Most of them are lonely and scared, and will put aside their machismo to readily admit that. They hate being stuck out in the middle of the sierra, spending the night camped out in tents, worrying that at any point, a group of AK-47-wielding narcos might gun them down. They spend most of their days pulling up and burning down marijuana plants, and then are asked to conduct raids against what are effectively well-armed paramilitaries during their off-hours? They aren't allowed off the base on weekends because they'll be killed or kidnapped? They have to wear masks 24 hours a day, some even wear them inside the military compounds because they don't trust each other! They are formidable when it comes to hurricane rescues and the like, but combat against these thugs is a different story. Put the pride aside, and admit it, Mr Calderon. Your army is fine, but it could do with some help.

The whole thing is well worth reading.

Anti-Corruption Bill

Felipe Calderón launched a new proposal this week:

Punishment of the businesses that bribe public officials or that act in a fraudulent manner in bidding, in addition to paid reward to those who reveal illegal acts that damage the national patrimony, are part of the strategy launched yesterday by President Felipe Calderón to combat corruption in public administration.

"Whoever offers cash or benefits is as guilty as he who receives money", the president said upon announcing the Federal Anti-Corruption Law in Public Contracting. "We must punish not only those who are corrupted, but also those who corrupt", he added.

The plan would penalize those caught with paying kickbacks on proposals with fines worth 30 percent of the contract. In the course of the announcement ceremony, Civil Functions Secretary Salvador Vega said that 1,778 were charged with acts of corruption, an all-time record.

Mike Tyson on Mexican Security

The youngest heavyweight champion in history on Mexico's security challenges:

What can you do? We have that here too. What can you do when a newspaper, the people that are supposed to take our mind toward the truth, you tell us that "this is a corrupt country", that such-and-such country is corrupt, that the problems are based on criminal gangs in Mexico, when this is the only thing that you hear about a country in the rest of the world? How can we expect any type of relief for anyone? That's the stigma that there is with Mexico right now. I don't think it's like that, but that's the stigma...[he looks around] Right people? Does Mexico really seem like a lost cause? [Silence] Everything is supposed to be corrupt, right? [More silence] That's the message that gets to us and it could be wrong. I don't think it's true.

This was actually pretty nuanced and perceptive from Iron Mike. It's also interesting that upon scoring an interview with Mike Tyson, a former boxer in the news today because of his new show about pigeons, the Milenio correspondent would think to even ask him about rising violence in Mexico.

COIN for Mexico?

I make the case against it at Small Wars Journal:

It has grown fashionable in recent years to argue that the solution to Mexico’s public security difficulties lies in treating organized crime within the context of counterinsurgency theory. Many have made this argument, one of the most recent being Robert Culp here at Small Wars Journal. This is an unfortunate misreading of the security problems that are plaguing Mexico. While COIN theory offers a handful of sensible ideas, as an overarching philosophical guide, it is an imperfect fit for Mexico.

The first thing that bares mentioning when considering whether COIN as the answer for Mexico is that, problematically enough, Mexico in not suffering from an insurgency. Hillary Clinton and other American officials have indicated that it is, but they are incorrect. An insurgency seeks either concessions from the state or its overthrow, and it uses attacks on the state or on civilians as a means to achieve that. Mexican gangs are seeking profits, and their attacks are overwhelmingly directed at competitors, not at government officials or innocents.

Moreira Arrives, Schettino Opines

In honor of Humberto Moreira's formal ascension to the PRI throne, Macario Schettino writes:

The PRI, which today has a birthday and is changing its leader, a party created from the state, that swallowed practically all the ideological options imaginable, maintained that internal diversity, despite the hegemony that the group of Carlos Salinas achieved for a few years.

The definitive defeat of the regime in 1997 ended the presidency as we had known it, and i tleft the PRI without a referee that allowed it to maintain that great internal diversity under control. A party that aspires to contain so much diversity is compatible with democracy, and, as a consequence, the PRI transformed into an alliance of modernizers and traditionalists unable to win the presidency.

He goes on to call for a tripartite liberal coalition as the path toward needed structural reforms, which sounds like a tricky proposition, although he writes with an optimism you don't often seen in the opinion pages:

As was mentioned here a few weeks ago, we are almost at the point of achieving the change in direction for the country: labor, competition, fiscal and political reforms are decreasingly imaginary. The interim, that period in which the past and the future mixed in a confused manner, is arriving at its end.

I hope he's right.

Scenes from Sonora: Angry at the Army

Milenio reports from Sonora:

"Get the army out of Navojoa", "Enough of the abuse", said the posters held by mothers who refused to give their names for reasons of security.

One of the women said that they are not against the army fighting drug-dealing gangs, but nevertheless she said that the soldiers go to far and commit violations against the innocent civilian population.

[Break]

We must put a stop to the abuses because the situation has gone out of control, with the pretext that they are searching for narcos, the soldiers arrest innocents, beat them up and once they prove that they are innocent, they free them, the interviewee said.

These kinds of demonstrations are relatively rare (and some of them have been set up by criminal groups), so I don't think we are facing an imminent erosion of army prestige. However, the longer the army is on the streets doing police work, the more frequent you'd expect these protests to be. All the more reason for the army to be more aggressive about addressing this sort of thing aggressively and transparently.

Calderón in DC

Fred Hiatt has the story from Calderón's visit to the Post:

Mexican President Felipe Calderon spoke mostly in excellent English during a visit to The Post on Thursday, but for one particular word he looked to his interpreter for help.

Since what he was looking for was "coherence" or "consistency" in U.S. policy, it's no wonder he was momentarily stumped. An hour-long conversation with the president, as polite as he was, brought home how badly that quality is missing from U.S. policy on drugs, guns, trade and democracy promotion, when viewed from south of the border.

Calderon was passionate when talking about the de facto legalization of marijuana that seems to be taking place in some states, such as California and Colorado, under the guise of medical treatment, with no federal interference.

"For me, it's very difficult to prosecute a very poor farmer in Mexico growing marijuana," he said, when "industrial"-scale agriculture is flourishing north of the border. "How can I console our widows" - Mexico has lost more than 2,000 police and federal agents the past four years fighting the drug cartels - "and at the same time students in universities can smoke pot with no problems?"

[Break]

Either prosecute or "have the honesty" to legalize. "But what you cannot do is have this incoherent policy, because it causes terrible damage."

Many US policies are indeed lacking in congruencia (see previous post), and Calderón is certainly right to call them on it, but I think he's overstating the impact of this specific hypocrisy (as opposed to say, the broader insanity of marijuana prohibition, when I could drink myself to death with a bottle or two of whiskey in the next couple of hours without breaking the law). How exactly the prosecution of 19-year-olds for marijuana possession would make Mexico safer is completely lost to me.

A Blind Eye for Straw Buyers

This won't make Calderón very happy:

Hoping to score a major prosecution of Mexican drug lords, federal prosecutors and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives permitted hundreds of guns to be purchased and retained by suspected straw buyers with the expectation they might cross the border and even be used in crimes while the case was being built, according to documents and interviews.

The decision — part of a Phoenix-based operation code named “Fast and Furious” — was met by strong objections from some front-line agents who feared they were allowing weapons like AK-47s to “walk” into the hands of drug lords and gun runners, internal agency memos show. Indeed, scores of the weapons came back quickly traced to criminal activity.

One of those front-line agents who objected, John Dodson, 39, told the Center for Public Integrity that these guns “are going to be turning up in crimes on both sides of the border for decades.” Dodson said in an interview that “with the number of guns we let walk, we’ll never know how many people were killed, raped, robbed … there is nothing we can do to round up those guns. They are gone.”

To a certain degree, this approach by the ATF speaks to the screwy incentive structure. Catching a big capo makes a career, but is his continued existence worse than thousands of gun sales to straw buyers in terms of public security? Probably not. Yet tamping down on gun sales doesn't eliminate a longstanding menace, it just helps prevent one from emerging to a certain degree, which isn't as heroic a feat, even if it is a more important one.

Also, the Center for Public Integrity has done great work on gunrunning in recent weeks.

Today in Arizona Law Enforcement

From the New York Times:

Jack Harris, the public safety manager in Phoenix, has been stripped of day-to-day control of the Police Department while an audit is being conducted to determine whether he inflated kidnapping statistics to win federal grant money, officials said on Thursday. The police reported more than 350 kidnappings in 2008 and said that almost all of them were linked to border violence, prompting some to label Phoenix the kidnapping capital of the United States. The actual number might have been closer to 250, officials said.

Two hundred fifty is still a big number, but that's pretty shameless.

Immigration Dropping

The number of Mexicans leaving the country for the US or other foreign countries has dropped precipitously, according to Inegi's Eduardo Sojo, who was reporting a bunch of data from the 2010 census. From 2000 to 2005, 450,000 Mexicans emigrated annually, while today, that number has dropped to just 140,000 today.

Another interesting piece of info: the median age in Mexico is 26, up from 22 in 2000, and 19 in 1990.

The Week's Security Stories

We mentioned recently that corrupt political officials have largely not been targeted since the Michoacanazo. However, earlier this week, the former mayor of Tlalmanalco in Mexico State was arrested for allegedly collaborating with a kidnapping gang. We'll see if this marks a broader shift toward dirty pols, though I suspect not; it seems as though authorities stumbled into it thanks to the confession of an ex-underling.

Not entirely unlike the treatment of politicians, military officials have also been largely immune to anti-corruption activities over the duration of Calderón's presidency, and one has a hard time believing that it's because none of them are colluding with organized crime. However, eight soldiers were caught with a ton of cocaine, worth $20 or $30 million, in Tijuana today, so maybe that's changing, too.

Also, we've mentioned the rise of the La Resistencia in Guadalajara a number of times in recent weeks. Earlier this week, their alleged leader was arrested in Uruapan.

Cliffs Notes on the Left's Dispute

Roughly ten million articles in the past month cut down into ten bullet points; thanks Aguachile:

* After Alejandro Encinas made it clear he would follow AMLO on his "leave of absence," from the PRD, AMLO made it clear that "these are times of definitions, and the same applies to Encinas."

* AMLO said if Encinas will not join his "movement" lead a PT-Convergencia candidacy, another candidate will replace him.

* Encinas has declared that it would be up to the party organs to decide who the candidate will be. Will that also include respecting the outcome of the upcoming citizen poll on the alliances?

* Twenty-eight out 32 state branches of the PRD rallied around national party president Jesús Ortega, demanding respect for the decisions of its national council.

* Many state branches openly criticized AMLO's complete lack of respect for the decisions of said organs; the Oaxacan PRD went as far as to call AMLO a "traitor and a defamer" for his recent actions.

* The IDN faction, led by the infamous Bejarano-Padierna couple, said it would take the PRD to the TEPJF electoral tribunal for breaking the party statutes - quite ironic given that if there is any corriente within the PRD which does exactly as it pleases and ignores votes it loses, its the IDN.

* IDN, which like AMLO always seem to know what "the people" want, said it would not participate in the planned vote over the possible PAN-PRD alliance. Why bother actually asking the people?

* Jesús Ortega, PRD leader, asked, "Do you remember the famous Juanito of Iztapalapa? You can't treat Alejandro Encinas this way. Or anyone.... this is symptomatic of authoritarian behavior. You cannot say that, 'I am the State,' 'I am the party,' 'I am the truth' - it is not like that in politics. He should calm down."

* And finally, perhaps the most newsworthy item: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas declared, during the presentation-promotion of his recent book (more on that later), that AMLO should "take charge of the party, of the designation of a candidate for the governorship of Mexico State, and of designating a presidential candidate for 2012," in order to avoid a party rupture. The proposal is so unrealistic it that for now I'll leave it without comments.

* Asked about 2012, Cárdenas responded, "I don't know what I will do in 2012."

Turning Point

For the first time in Calderón's presidency, security problems weigh more heavily on the mind of Mexicans than do economic problems according to the most recent Mitofsky poll, by a tally of 50 to 47 percent. Just one year ago, the same poll went 69-25 in favor of economic worries.

A Critical Take on Calderón's Visit

John Ackerman is capable of impressive insight, and I really like what I've read of the Mexican Law Review, but too often when Mexico is enjoying a sudden burst of American media attention, he marks the occasion through an op-ed composed of a series of misleading arguments and outlandish claims, adding up to I can't quite tell what policy prescriptions, aside to an end of the war on drugs. To wit, here he is obliquely comparing Calderón to Hitler, here he is explicitly comparing him to Nixon, here he is charging Calderón with using the swine flu scare to "consolidate his power", and here he is saying that Hillary Clinton's visit to Monterrey amounted to a cold shoulder to Mexico's non-industrial titan population.

In the most recent iteration of this series, he says that Calderón popularity is in a free-fall, which is demonstrably untrue even in the poll to which he links, as he has lost three points in six months, and just 1.3 since February 2010; that "Mexico is one of the most “anti-American” countries in the world", despite the fact that just two Middle Eastern countries appeared among the 28 total nations on the list; and that the "violence in Libya pales in comparison with the thousands of civilians who have fallen in Mexico", which may be true if you are looking at the number of murders over a four-year period rather than, say, government gunships firing on crowds on the president's orders, but then, by that standard, the same negative comparison with Libya holds for the US as well. And then there's the piece's second sentence, which seems to forecast a new Mexican Revolution:

The Mexican people are getting increasingly frustrated with the failure of President Felipe Calderón to win the “drug war” and resolve their basic needs. They could soon take matters into their own hands.

So much of this is lacking in basic common sense.

Clear-Eyed, Hard-Nosed Future-Predictors?

This came into my inbox this morning under the subject heading "Spring break in Mexico: Is it safe?":

Many visitors to Mexican resort areas believe cartels have no intention of hurting tourists...This is not a complete assessment.

—Travel and Security Risks in Mexico, a STRATFOR Special Report

Brochures in your travel agent's office may show a Mexico of sun, surf and R&R, but an escalating landscape of cartel violence would make any traveler stop and reconsider spring break plans. There were more than 15,000 cartel-related deaths in Mexico in 2010. That's a seven-fold increase in just 4 years. In other words - your biggest concerns are no longer SPF count and jellyfish.

For all the spring breakers and international travelers out there, we're offering our Safe Travels package this week. Get 2 books on personal security and protective intelligence FREE when you subscribe today. It's not an armed security detail, but these books contain helpful guidance on how you can enhance your safety and that of your family--abroad or at home.

Subscribe now at our introductory rate of $129 for 1 year, and receive How to Look for Trouble and How to Live in a Dangerous World . In addition to the free books, you'll access our Special Report outlining crime levels and cartel activities in various tourist areas in Mexico, including Cancun, Acapulco and Mazatlan. Know where to go and how to stay safe as a STRATFOR subscriber.

Like marketing 101: create demand by trumping up an unmet need, and then step forward to meet the demand (and for the bargain price of $129!). However, I'm not sure the gambit squares very well with unbiased geopolitical analysis.

The Big Gangs Are in Mexico City

The Federal Police says that, contrary to local government declarations, Mexico's biggest syndicates operate in the capital. Included among the groups are the Zetas, La Familia, Sinaloa, Juárez, the Gulf, the Pacific South, and what's left of La Barbie's group. It's odd that the response to "No cartels operate in Mexico City" was essentially, "All of them do". It would be hard to contradict someone more overwhelmingly, and you get the feeling that the Federal Police statement was a middle finger to the capital city government. In any event, that's interesting in as far as it goes, but as I said here, I think they are chasing the answers to the wrong questions with this debate.

Punishing Wrongful Accusers

There's a bill floating around the Chamber of Deputies that would make slander in political campaigns publishable by jail. That's an overreaction, but the idea that baseless accusations, especially regarding candidates' connections to organized crime, made during election seasons should be discouraged is a valid one. Too often in the past, allegations that are supported by no evidence have become indistinguishable from those that should keep someone out of public office (i.e. Jorge Hank Rhon), and neither are taken particularly seriously once the campaign ends. Such accusations, it seems, are chalked up to political game-playing, even when they have substance. The overall effect --hurling accusations is incentivized and guilty politicians receive cover from all the allegations-- is unfortunate. Ideally, instead of jail, I'd prefer scorn for the accuser, and, if that isn't a strong enough deterrent, then fines against the parties.

A Vital Event of Immense Insignificance

Calderón's visits to Washington --and, I can only imagine, pretty much any head of state's visit to Washington-- always seems to provoke comments either along the lines of, This is a big chance to address some critical issues and bury the hatchet, or, less frequently, This is a chance to celebrate the relationship and enjoy the dividends of years of cooperation. I've probably written similar stuff for visits past, though I'd prefer not to go back and reexamine. This time, however, my reaction is kind of like George Orwell's old line about what an honest book reviewer should write 90 percent of the time: the visit provokes no reaction in me whatsoever. I don't think any big change will be announced, and I also think that the relationship is safe enough that nothing that's happened in the past few months (WikiLeaks, Zapata's death, Calderón's candid interview with El Universal, et cetera) will sink it.

But even assuming that a genuine and prolonged spat is possible, it's worth considering what that would really mean. After the Fox-Bush dust-up over Iraq, how did things change? There were fewer official visits for a while, but the fundamentals tying the two nations together --the border, NAFTA and trade, the millions of Mexicans in the US and the million or so Americans living in Mexico, et cetera-- were completely unaffected. It's hard to imagine a counterfactual in which Fox supports the invasion, the cooling never happens, and the relationship is markedly different today. The reason is that in contrast to, say, the US relationship with Israel, which is basically government support by choice that could theoretically disappear because of official differences, the US would basically the Mexican relationship with the US is not channeled through the relations among the leaders. Somewhat understandably, those of us whose writing about Mexico focuses on the leaders tend to forget that.

Drop in Murders? In Fact, No

My excitement about what appeared to be a significant drop in the murder rate in Mexico a couple of weeks ago was a bit premature; the first two months this year witnessed more murders than any January and February in recent history, with more than 2,000. (Last year there were just 1,703.) Although, if you are looking for silver linings (and I usually am), the murder rate is down slightly from the second part of last year, and the present pace would fall short of last year's total of more than 15,000 murders.