MEXICO: Wayne testifies
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, perhaps unconsciously, gave a clear indication of how it views Mexico when it held its nomination hearings for Earl Anthony Wayne, the next US ambassador to Mexico, simultaneously with those for Arnold Chacon, the nominee as US ambassador to Guatemala. Indeed, Richard Lugar (R, Indiana), the ranking Republican on the committee, in his opening statement on 20 July, drew several parallels between Mexico and Guatemala.
Lugar did, however, sugar this allusion by pointing out that the US was more fortunate than most “Great Powers” to have Mexico and Canada as its neighbours, which both historically have provided regional stability. Lugar indicated there were now questions about Mexico’s stability. The three senators who asked most of the questions during Wayne’s two-hour session were: Lugar; Marco Rubio (R, Florida); and Robert Menéndez (D, New Jersey). It seems almost certain that the Senate will approve of Wayne’s nomination before the summer recess, likely to be delayed until 6 August because of current difficulties in extending the US’s debt ceiling.
Wayne is a career member of the State Department. He has served as ambassador to Argentina (2006-2009) and his last job was as deputy head of mission in Afghanistan.
Wayne, in his testimony, promised, as Lugar advocated, to support the Iniciativa Mérida, which has channelled US money into combating the drug trade in Mexico and Central America. Wayne said that, despite ongoing criticisms of the Iniciativa Mérida, he expected it to continue beyond the 2012 elections. In 2012, both the US and Mexico will hold presidential and congressional elections. Wayne also firmly backed President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s war on organised crime, which as led to over 34,000 violent deaths in Mexico since Calderón declared it on 1 December 2006. In response to a question from Menéndez, Wayne admitted that there had been criticism of the violence in Mexico, but said that he did not see any alternative to Calderón’s use of the military against the drug trafficking gangs and claimed that there was a “strong consensus” among political leaders in Mexico that the war had to continue.
Wayne said that one change he would make is to work with both US and Mexican officials for faster disbursement of the money under the Iniciativa Mérida. Currently (end June 2011), only US$465m has been disbursed (of the US$1.3bn authorised since the programme was launched in 2008) but the administration hopes that US$900m will have been disbursed by the end of the year. It is not clear whether this end year is the current fiscal year (30 September 2011) or the calendar year.
Wayne implied that that thanks to the Iniciatiava Mérida, Mexico had taken out of circulation (i.e. killed or arrested) around 30 leading gangsters. He said a lot of the operations which caught of killed the gangsters were the result of information being shared between Mexico and the US. He also noted that the US has supplied Mexico with 11 helicopters under the Iniciativa Mérida and provided training for over 13,000 Mexican law enforcement personnel.
While Wayne was speaking, elsewhere on Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives’ foreign relations committee, which is controlled by the Republicans, was in fact trimming US aid being delivered under the Iniciativa Mérida. A proposal from Michael McCaul (R, TX) to halve the cost of training aid provided under the Iniciativa Mérida in the 2012 financial year (which starts on 1 October), was passed and will go to the full House and then the Senate.
More controversially, Wayne said that if he were confirmed as ambassador, he would do all he could to ensure that covert operations such as Fast & Furious -in which the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) encouraged Mexican gangs in a “sting operation” to buy high powered weapons in the US, in an effort to uncover the networks which armed the gangs- “never took place” again. In fact, what happened was that the ATF tracking scheme failed and over 1,200 of the 1,800 guns that had been sold to known associates of gangsters were lost. At least one was used to kill as US Border Patrol officer.
The Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate are alleging that the government of President Barack Obama is covering up a major scandal by concealing information on Fast & Furious. Senator Charles Grassley (R, IA), the senior Republican on the Judicial committee, and Representative Darrell Issa, (R, CA), who is also chairman of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, are heading the Republican investigation into Fast & Furious, holding a series of hearings. Both politicians have sent letters to Robert Mueller, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Michelle Leonhart, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), to ask them what they knew about Fast & Furious. On 4 July, the legislators wrote to Eric Holder, the attorney general, after the acting head of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, told them in a closed session that the Department of Justice had instructed him not to give testimony in public. The letter published tracts of Melson’s testimony in which he described the Department of Justice’s attempts to conceal evidence.