Random Security Stats

The CNDH says that 100 innocent bystanders have died in the last year and a half in shootings involving Mexican authorities.

Only 32 percent of a recent batch of aspirants to state anti-kidnapping bureaus were seemed suitable, though if this is a bad thing (i.e. only the misfits want to join the cops) or a good thing (it's so competitive that only a third can get in). The article implies that it's the former case, but I suspect that many in the Mexican media would write it that way regardless.

A local university study found that in Juárez, there are almost 33,000 empty houses as a result of an insecurity-induced exodus. In the southeast region of the city, more than half the houses are unoccupied; in the northwest, the figure is 33 percent.

The PGR says that the number of protected witnesses has tripled from 80 in 2006 to more than 267 today. That conflicts with this report that said the jump was from 99 in 2002 to more than 400 today, but in any event, I think we can agree that the number is rising. I also think that we can agree that in a nation where there somewhere from 500,000 to 1 million earning their living in the drug trade, and with a total pie of $25 billion or so, even 400 is a pretty small number.

Five Years of Rumors To Be Consummated?

Guillermo Ochoa is training with Fulham, which is also home to Carlos Salcido. The rumors of his imminent transfer to Europe have been raging essentially since before he was even born (I exaggerate, but only slightly), and seem to be cresting despite Aguirre wrongfully benching him at the World Cup.

La Tuta to Remain on the SEP Teacher List

Michoacán says that Servando Gómez, one of the five most notorious criminals in Mexico, cannot be removed from the teacher's rolls because he is no longer collecting a salary, as he had been from 1995 until earlier this year. The only way they could take him off the list, SEP authorities say, is if he is brought into custody. So that's another reason to hope that he's caught.

Shifting directions, everyone needs to start preparing their jokes about how the best preparation for leading a mafia is standing at the head of a classroom.

Two Illustrations of the Perpetual Scandal That Is Mexico's Educational System

One: La Tuta, the Familia Michoacana's most recognizable big shot, has been drawing a public school teacher's salary for the past 15 years. The first quarter of this year, for instance, he was paid roughly $4,000. For the record, the article says that he does not have a professional background in education.

Less spectacularly, Mexican 15-year-olds averaged a score of 425 on the most recent PISA exams, which are used to measure different nations' kids against one another. This represents an improvement over previous tests in 2003 and 2006, but it is well below the OECD average of 493.

Not Everything Can Be Explained in Terms of Efficiency

In a post that is almost a parody of the emotionless, nerdy, borderline non-human economist, Dennis Coates sets out to explain why we should be happy that Qatar will host the 2022, but really he just succeeds in demonstrating the limits of economics as an explainer of real-life satisfaction. His reasoning:

Economists and public policy analysts have studied the economic impact of large international sporting events like the World Cup and the Olympics, and national events like the Super Bowl, and the evidence shows that there is very little in the way of economic benefit from hosting these events. Incomes don’t grow faster, more jobs aren’t created, governments don’t rake in significant hauls of new tax revenues. In other words, the best evidence produced by disinterested researchers is that the economic value of hosting the World Cup or Olympics is not especially large.

[Break]

So, congratulations to Russia and Qatar. I wish you well as you organize the World Cups in 2018 and 2022. I hope for your sakes that the victory you have today time does not reveal to be Pyrrhic. At the same time, I celebrate that the U.S. avoided the curse of winning the bid.

My reasoning: I'd like to watch a world-class soccer match without flying to another continent. Virtually no one celebrating after the World Cup bids are handed out is doing so thinking, Wow, South Africa/Brazil/Russia/Qatar is going to make lots of money off this, and incomes are going rise and there's going to be a bundle of cash. They are thinking, There's going to be a hell of a party right around the corner, and I just might be able to see Lio Messi net a golazo from a few hundred feet away. Or in economicese, the utility derived from the event far outweighs my share of whatever gain the US has scored by losing out to Qatar.

México Greenísimo

More stories on Mexico becoming greener: Felipe Calderón has announced that over the next four years, Mexico will phase out incandescent light bulbs, resulting in their total elimination from the market starting in 2014; and Ernesto Cordero promised in Cancún to reduce Mexican emissions by 50 percent by 2050 and to do more to attract private investment in green technologies. He also said that the government had set aside $4.5 billion for "actions of mitigation".

I'm not sure either of these promises will come off, nor do the $4.5 billion really convince me that there is a legitimate green spending push in the offing (exactly what programs are being funded with that?), so all this amounts to is an aesthetic adjustment. Still, aesthetics do matter, and the belief that environmentally beneficial programs should matter could later lead to them actually being given more significant and sustained attention. It will also hopefully lead to modified behavior from Mexicans themselves, such as greater purchases of hybrid cars and more recycling, which is very rare in Mexico despite being common practice for two decades in the US. Furthermore, lodging the idea of Mexico as a green paradise in minds of the international media will probably generate some stories in the future, and help to counter the prevailing image of Mexico as little more than a capo killing field. (This supposition is based on the steadfast belief that media narratives describing Mexico are quite superficial.)

Happy Marcelo

A little more international recognition for Marcelo Ebrard: fresh off hosting scores of counterparts from around the globe in a climate change summit late last month, Ebrard has now been named world's top mayor in 2010 by something called the World Mayor Project. Good for him; now, if only all that attention could help untie the AMLO knot before 2012.

Earning Plaudits

A positive English-media story about Mexico, much less one that never mentions security, doesn't come across the wires every day. In lieu of a day off and a national celebration, I'll just pass along the first few graphs of this Reuters piece:

Mexico's deft hosting of U.N. climate talks is raising the stakes for nations with hard-line positions -- such as Japan and Bolivia -- since they risk getting more blame if the meeting fails, analysts say.

At the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, Denmark's use of "secret" negotiating texts among only a few nations angered many poor countries who felt left out. Denmark then got some of the blame for the failure to agree to a binding U.N. climate treaty.

This year, Mexico has won high marks so far for steering talks among almost 200 nations in the Caribbean resort of Cancun. "There are no secret texts," Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa has often insisted, drawing a contrast with Copenhagen.

That means the spotlight is less likely to be on Mexico if Cancun fails to overcome a deadlock over a modest package of measures including a new climate fund to help the poor, ways to share green technologies and to protect tropical forests.

"The Mexicans are doing a great job here and it will put people on the hook to deliver at the end of the week," said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, of the November 29 to December 10 meeting.

[Break]

"This is always very, very difficult. There was transparency last year despite the myths that are being created. And the Mexican presidency has done a lot of work to ensure transparency here," she told Reuters.

Citizen Candidate

Felipe Calderón encouraged the possibility of someone outside the PAN running for the party in 2012. Maybe it was a meaningless comment, and personally I'd love to see more political outsiders running for office in every party, but it doesn't seem like something one would say if there were a logical, viable PAN candidate.

One of the people most able to mount a legitimate campaign is Alejandro Martí, and I was interested to learn that he has a blog (which in Mexican media is often a euphemism for online opinion column) with Animal Político, a new politics website. Here's a piece of one of his first efforts:

I see two great bottlenecks that impede the improvement of our system of justice: police corruption and inefficiency of the public ministry [the department in each entity that carries out investigations, from what I understand of a combination of a DA's office and a homicide detective].

In conclusion: either no one realized that we would arrive at this national public security crisis because of abandoning our state and municipal police, or many people benefited from this abandonment, which in any event is complicity.

Like a hydra of 1,000 heads, the police, corrupted, have turned against their own creators, leaving the citizens as their prey.

Picking Up Latino Votes by Default, Not By Design

Janet Napolitano's department is evidently quite proud of its unorthodox methods and unprecedented results in deporting Mexicans:

But in reaching 392,862 deportations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement included more than 19,000 immigrants who had exited the previous fiscal year, according to agency statistics. ICE also ran a Mexican repatriation program five weeks longer than ever before, allowing the agency to count at least 6,500 exits that, without the program, would normally have been tallied by the U.S. Border Patrol.

When ICE officials realized in the final weeks of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, that the agency still was in jeopardy of falling short of last year's mark, it scrambled to reach the goal. Officials quietly directed immigration officers to bypass backlogged immigration courts and time-consuming deportation hearings whenever possible, internal e-mails and interviews show.

[Break]

But at a news conference Oct. 6, ICE Director John T. Morton said that no unusual practices were used to break the previous year's mark.

"When the secretary tells you that the numbers are at an all-time high, that's straight, on the merits, no cooking of the books," Morton said, referring to his boss, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "It's what happened."

Awesome. I'm sure everyone who's completely straightforward immigration case has been bungled or delayed is pleased to know that the relevant agencies were busy meeting these goals.

Interesting Choice of Words

Milenio reports that Gustavo Madero called Peña Nieto a danger to democracy in Mexico. Given the lingering upset over the above advertisement, "danger" is an interesting word choice, though I personally don't think much of Peña Nieto's democratic instincts.

Another sign that Madero is following a calderonista playbook: he's stacking the PAN's National Executive Committee with Calderón loyalists, including the president's sister. Within the party, at least, Calderón doesn't yet appear to be the power-hemorrhaging lame duck he's been rumored to be for more than a year.

On the Radio

I talked with Silvio Canto about WikiLeaks, comparisons between Mexico and Colombia, and sundry other topics.

No Less of a Fan For Distance. Well, Not Much Less Anyway.

The story in the North of Mexico this weekend isn't any lifeless body or corrupt official, but the Clásico Norteño doubling as the final of the Mexican League: Santos vs. Monterrey. Santos carries a 3-2 edge into Monterrey for this evening's game, and Laguneros and ex-Laguneros alike have to feel good about their chances. Should they win, it'll mean the first title for perennially snake-bit coach Rubén Omar Romano, who I believe has lost the final four separate times without ever winning, none more heartbreaking than last spring's when Santos had a 3-1 edge in penalty kicks and missed two straight chances to close it out. Romano was also kidnapped while coaching Cruz Azul in 2005, his first match back being the first Mexican league game I ever saw live.

New Pres

Gustavo Madero is the new PAN president, after yesterday's seven-vote victory over Roberto Gil Zuarth and company. He promised to avoid that the PRI returns to Los Pinos next year, which seems like bold talk if he wants to have his performance measured by that high standard, though I guess his first statement couldn't very well be, "We'll do what we can, but I don't like our chances".

Embarrassment for Calderón and Company

Sandra Ávila Beltrán, la Reina del Pacífico, has been freed from prison and cleared of all charges of drug trafficking. She had always said that her crime was growing up among drug dealers and being of that world, not actually trafficking drugs. According to the Mexican legal system, she was right. Felipe Calderón was among those who loudly trumpeted her arrest in 2007. As with Michoacanazo, thanks to the triumphant reaction on the occasion of the arrest, he now looks worse than he would have had the case come apart with him remaining silent. In most of these cases where there is some doubt, he'd be better off remaining silent until the conviction came down.

WikiMexico, II: I Stand Corrected!

Actually, there was something pretty juicy in the WikiLeaks from Mexico: Guillermo Galván evidently suggested the imposition of martial law in Mexico in 2009, a proposal that was subsequently shot down by Fernando Gómez Mont (martial law would require Congressional approval to be legal, and Gómez Mont, as the Interior Secretary, acted as Calderón's chief liaison with Congress at that point). Had it been implemented, Galván's gambit could have resulted in suspensions of freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and constitutional guarantees to due process. I'm interested as to whether Galván really believed that this was a viable option for the pacification of the nation, or if it was just a suggestion made in the interest of putting all the options on the table, a la Adlai Stevenson during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Daniel Hernandez has lots more on the cables at La Plaza. This cable notwithstanding, it seems that most of what we have learned has been official analysis of things we've long been reading in the papers.

Cracking Down on the Kids

It's ironic that the Senate passed a new law that allows for much harsher penalties of 14- to 18-year-olds convicted of drug trafficking, terrorism, rape, or kidnapping on the same day that Mexico's most famous child hit man was arrested. The hit man (boy?) in question, known as El Ponchis, turns out to be 14 years old, not the 12 years or younger that had been rumored. I haven't read any specifics about the law, but Mexico's recent focus on strengthening the penalties for crimes without increasing the risk of capture for criminals amounts to much sizzle, very little steak. Also, it's important that you try to avoid turning every law-breaking teen into a career thug. The article mentions mechanisms for reinsertion into society, but the very act of establishing harsher criminal penalties for kids accused of drug traffic seems to run counter to that.

Update: El Ponchis is American.

WikiMexico

As is the case elsewhere, everyone is all atwitter because of the release of cables having to do with Mexico. Many of the revelations are interesting enough, though none that I've seen are especially remarkable: Hillary was worried about Calderón's stress level, Carlos Pascual thought that the Marines were more trustworthy and competent than the army. Given that, I think the full-throated condemnations from the Mexican government are odd. Everyone probably assumes there is juicier stuff in diplomatic cables; if what they are saying merely echoes what you read in the papers, who cares? It's not like anyone thinks a great deal less of Calderón or Mexico because of what was leaked thus far. Nor does anyone believe that Mexican diplomats abide by some higher code of conduct in their cables back home.

Also, someone earlier this week (I think it was Matt Yglesias) was saying that the Saudis worrying about Iran doesn't reflect only their own concerns, but their perceptions of what the Americans want to hear. The same thing occurred to me as I was reading about Calderón voicing worries about Chávez interfering with Mexican politics.

You can find further commentary from Malcolm and Richard.

The Scandal No One Is Paying Attention To

I want WikiLeaks to get their hands on the cables coming in to Sepp Blatter so we can find out how the hell the US lost the World Cup to Qatar. Although it will be nice to see the Qataris playing inspired before their home fans, digging into their deepest reserves of athletic ability, and being eliminated with an 11-goal differential after three straight losses.

Colombia's Lessons for Mexico: A Nuanced Take

Courtesy of Nathan Jones:

The most important lesson Mexico can take from Colombia is the importance of a willingnes to pay. According to Professor Samuel Gonzalez Ruiz of UNAM and the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, Mexico generates less than 9% of GDP in tax revenue. Only one country in Latin America does a poorer job: Haiti. Upon entering office in 2002 Colombian President Alvaro Uribe raised taxes to improve and expand the military and national police forces. The funding also paid for social programs like Familias en Acción, which paid for poor children in rural areas to attend school and get basic nutrition. Without a willingness to pay for better state institutions, any reform plan will fail regardless of its strategic orientation. There can be no more relying on the state oil company PEMEX to generate 40% of government revenues. Those profits should be distributed to taxpayers and taxed back by the government to increase transparency, accountability and swell the ranks of official taxpayers.

That 9 percent is lower than what you see from other sources (such as the OECD), but Mexico without a doubt needs to collect more cash. Like most of the ways in which Colombia offers lessons for Mexico, this is a goal whose realization would help Mexico regardless of its security situation and Colombia's resemblance to it. This is good advice because a broad, sustainable tax base is objectively better than a narrow, declining tax base, regardless of what your spending needs are.

A Harsher Take on the PAN

Here's Alberto Aziz Nassif on the decade of the PAN:

In ten years the panista right has demonstrated that it doesn't have the capability of changing the course of development toward more inclusive policies, that could correct the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans that each year join the informal workforce or immigrate. The social policies that has been applied in these years is, according to some economists, is like a tip that won't thoroughly attack poverty. In economics there is a continuity of the neoliberal orthodoxy and an incapacity to grow. In the labor market corporate control has grown, adding to the destruction of jobs. Politically, there is a weakened presidency that navigates between special interests without achieving its own profile, except on the issue of organized crime.

In the celebration of their ten years, Felipe Calderón said yesterday that Mexico didn't deserve a return to the "old-fashioned, the authoritarian, the irresponsible [past]". But, since when did panista governments leave those circumstances behind?

There's a lot of fair criticism in there, and a lot that is a little too strident for my taste (i.e. the final implication that there is nothing separating the PAN presidencies from that of, say, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz). I would have been interested to see a little more about Calderón's neoliberalism, which is repeatedly tossed off without much clarification. I'm having a hard time thinking of any single episode that was both a significant change of course and a significant embrace of any of the ten planks of the Washington Consensus. I guess you could point to the Luz y Fuerza takeover, but operations weren't privatized, but rather turned over to another state firm. Trade wasn't further liberalized, nor was there a great change in attitudes toward FDI, nor was there a big change in how exchange rates were managed. There was, painfully, no tax reform, nor did the oil reform come close to being neoliberal. Or how about this goal of the WC:

Redirection of public spending from subsidies ("especially indiscriminate subsidies") toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary health care and infrastructure investment;

Does that describe the source of Calderón's economic failures? I'd say not in the least. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but nothing comes to mind. I guess you could argue that Calderón's neoliberal sins lie in maintaining previous changes in policies regarding trade, property rights, and the rest, but in that case AMLO may well have been a neoliberal devotee, too.

That's not a defense of Calderón's development program, but I think attacking him as a "neoliberal" just confuses the issue. The argument would be much better were he --and everyone else who accuses with that loaded term-- to point to specific policies that failed. In other words, I'm not convinced that the ways in which Fox's and Calderón's development policy fell short were failings of neoliberal per se, despite each man coming from the right. This sounds more like neoliberal as a euphemism for, "a rightist president whom I dislike".

Really, the basis of any criticism of Calderón's (though not Fox's) development results is provided very concisely by Aguachile here. And no, the word neoliberal doesn't pop up once.

A Dip in Violence

Milenio reports that November had the lowest daily number of murders related to organized crime of the year, which is surely faint praise, given that 853 people were killed. Still, one can hope that the tendency continues. Chihuahua remains the bloodiest state in the country, with 218 killings, though that number is down from 275 in October.

Mexican Narcos Are in Every American City! Or, There Exists a Global Supply Chain

Via Malcolm Beith, this, from a story on Operation Xcellerator, is an amusing reflection of the fact that for all the talk about Mexican gangs operating in American cities, mass arrests in the US do little to affect the Mexican capos:

Many of the people they do arrest are not even middle management. They are low-level American street dealers and "mules" who help smuggle the drugs. But most have never heard of the Mexican organized crime gangs they're supposed to represent, let alone have conducted business directly with the cartel. Such workers are easily replaced with only an inconvenience to the organization.

[Break]

The Justice Department claimed that Xcellerator arrested "hundreds of alleged Sinaloa cartel members and associates," but the outcomes of individual criminal cases suggest otherwise.

Otis Rich, a 34-year-old career criminal from Baltimore, Md., was arrested after he was connected, via cell phone calls, to another Baltimore cocaine dealer, who had his product shipped from an Arizona trafficker, who got his product from Mexico.

When asked about the Sinaloa cartel, Rich said, "Sina-who? I don't know anything about them guys." He's serving 15 years in federal prison in Atlanta for conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

Xcellerator, you may remember, was hailed as an unprecedented blow to Chapo Guzmán, despite the fact that Chapo was about as threatened by the arrest of Otis Rich as I would be if you kill an errant blade of grass while walking from your home this morning. Here's a portion of the DoJ press release when the operation was announced:

The Sinaloa Cartel is responsible for bringing multi-ton quantities of narcotics, including cocaine and marijuana, from Mexico into the United States through an enterprise of distribution cells in the United States and Canada. The Sinaloa Cartel is also believed to be responsible for laundering millions of dollars in criminal proceeds from illegal drug trafficking activities. Individuals indicted in the cases are charged with a variety of crimes, including: engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise by violating various felony provisions of the Controlled Substances Act; conspiracy to import controlled substances; money laundering; and possession of an unregistered firearm.

“We successfully concluded the largest and hardest hitting operation to ever target the very violent and dangerously powerful Sinaloa drug cartel,” said DEA Acting Administrator Michele M. Leonhart. “From Washington to Maine, we have disrupted this cartel’s domestic operations—arresting U.S. cell heads and stripping them of more than $59 million in cash—and seriously impacted their Canadian drug operations as well. DEA will continue to work with our domestic and international partners to shut down the operations of the Sinaloa cartel and stop the ruthless violence the traffickers inflict on innocent citizens in the U.S., Mexico and Canada.”