Mexico & Nafta - April 2011 (ISSN 1741-444X)

As we have argued before, most recently in January, we agree with President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa that Mexico is not a failed state. In an interview with Spain's El Paí­s published on 27 March he argued, strongly, that the US was wrong to categorise Mexico as a failing state. Calderón pointed out that the economy is working normally in Mexico, children go to school and most parts of everyday life go on as usual.

However we disagree with Calderón and his government's claim that the violence which killed at least 11,583 people in Mexico in 2010 is mostly localised. It is true that a handful of states, Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Guerrero, top the murder league, but worryingly for the government, other states are now also in the mix. Nuevo León has been in the top five murder states for most of the past year; killing in Tamaulipas surged in 2010. The big worry for the government is that other states, such as Morelos or Michoacán, will join them. It is worth noting that in 2010 gang killings in Michoacán fell from 371 to 259. All the figures are from Reforma's Ejecutómetro.

What the surge in killing shows is that the drug trade in Mexico is unlike the drug trade in South America. In South America, there is a balloon effect: when the drug trade is squeezed, it moves elsewhere. This does not seem to be happening in Mexico. Michoacán may be a special case, because one of the dominant gangs in the state, La Familia, has been virtually eliminated. Mexican gangs have risen and fallen even before Calderón launched his war on organised crime in 2006.

President Calderón appears conscious that his power is starting to ebb. This is why what he says and does now, with his reducing authority, is so important and will shape the circumstances his successor has to confront. Calderón has done two important things in the past month. The first is to suggest, effectively, that the only way the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) can be prevented from returning to power is if the anti-PRI parties unite behind an independent. The second move Calderón has made is over relations with the US.

He has forced the US ambassador, Carlos Pascual, out. What is more interesting is that Calderón has held back from criticising the US over the supposed sting operation 'Fast & Furious'. Calderón is letting the political outrage in the US build. On 29 March Charles Grassley, a Republican senator, said that he was not happy with the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and its explanation of 'Fast & Furious'. By holding fire, Calderón is keeping the pressure firmly on the US and, more importantly, preventing relations with the US becoming an issue in next year's presidential elections in Mexico.