Mexico & Nafta - March 2009 (ISSN 1741-444X)

The federal government decided to increase its deployment of soldiers and federal policemen in Chihuahua after a federal security cabinet meeting on 25 February at Ciudad Juárez, the most violent city in the state. The move paid off, initially, as there were no gang killings for three days. Then a prison riot left 20 dead on 3 March.

The crisis in Ciuadad Juárez reached a new low when Roberto Orduña Cruz, resigned as the police chief for the city on 20 February. Orduña, a former soldier, resigned after Sacramento Pérez, the operations director of the municipal police, was murdered along with two of his bodyguards, presumably by gangsters, on 18 February. Immediately after they were killed, banners went up in Ciudad Juárez saying that one policeman would be killed every 48 hours until Orduña resigned. Indeed, just before Orduña resigned, one young policeman and a prison guard were killed. A message was left by the policeman's body which read: “Time is passing and the public security director, Roberto Orduña Cruz, has not resigned".

Orduña said that his respect for police lives was greater than his dedication to public service. José Reyes Ferriz, the mayor of Ciudad Juárez, had tried to dissuade Orduña from resigning. Ferriz himself lives across the border, in El Paso, because it is safer there.

The resignation of Orduña was followed on 22 February by an apparent assassination attempt on the governor of Chihuahua, José Reyes Baeza Terrazas. If the attack was an actual assassination attempt it would have been a first by gangsters against a front-rank politician. The doubt about the attack revolves around a preliminary finding from the federal Procuradurí­a General de la República which concluded that the incident, in which one of Reyes Baeza's guards was machine-gunned to death, was more likely an example of road-rage.

Gangsters have threatened, and killed, police chiefs and municipal and state heads of public security and, most recently, a retired general in Cancún. The attack, and the fact that the authorities could dismiss the machine-gunning of a bodyguard as road-rage, marks yet another deterioration in the security situation in Chihuahua, by far the most violent state in the country. Besides the attack on the governor on 22 February, at least another eight people were murdered in Ciudad Juárez that day. 
The attack on Reyes's motorcade occurred as he was going home. The attackers used two cars and machine-gunned one of the two pick-ups in which Reyes's bodyguards were travelling. They killed one bodyguard and wounded two others. In a press conference held immediately after the incident, Reyes clearly believed that he was the target. Reyes said that the bodyguards' vehicles stopped to beat off the attack while he escaped in the vehicle he was driving back to the governor's mansion, two kilometres from the site of the incident.

Besides the gangsters, Reyes is also having to contend with allegations from local businessmen that one of the reasons why the violence is out of control is that his attorney general, Patricia González Rodrí­guez, is in league with the gangsters. On 25 February, a banner appeared draped around the statue of Pancho Villa, Chihuahua's emblematic hero, in Chihuahua City's main square, calling for González's resignation.

US reaction
The upsurge in violence in Chihuahua is worrying the US. On 25 February, the US Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano, testified before the Homeland Security Committee. She said that Mexico had moved up her list of priorities as it was currently facing unprecedented violence. Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona, is the second leading figure in the Obama administration to fret publicly about Mexico. The new administration seems to have concluded that the warnings about Mexico voiced by senior officials in the outgoing administration are justified.

Napolitano gave some clues about what the US may do to help the government of President Felipe Calderón. She said that she had been in contact with the national security adviser, General James Jones; the attorney general, Eric Holder; and other state and national law enforcement officials, to review ways to help Mexican law enforcement. She also wants to do more to stop the flow of arms from the US to Mexico.

Other US politicians are also worried about Mexico. On 24 February the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, asked for 1,000 federal troops or agents to be sent to the border. Texas borders Chihuahua.

The US did make a tangible move to help Mexico on 25 February when the US House of Representatives agreed to allocate US$405m to the Mérida Initiative, which provides military aid to Mexico, as part of the 2009/10 budget. The amount was not changed by the Senate, which approved the budget on 10 March. Some Mexican officials had feared that the Iniciativa would be a casualty of the financial crisis, so they barely complained that the package was smaller than the US$450m originally promised.

Strangely, it is US congressmen who are complaining about the shortcomings of the US government in delivering the promised aid under the Iniciativa Mérida. Congressmen took issue with claims by the US State Department that the US had already committed 60% of the military aid promised to Mexico under the Iniciativa Mérida. The figure came from David Johnson, an Assistant Secretary of State responsible for anti-narcotics policy.

Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D, NY), who chairs the House of Representative's subcommittee responsible for overseeing the Iniciativa Mérida, criticised the US Department of Defense for delaying the delivery of eight helicopters to Mexico. Five are going to the Mexican army and three to the federal police. Her criticism became bi-partisan when it was endorsed by two Republicans on the same subcommittee, Kay Granger, (R, Texas) and Jerry Lewis (R, California) both criticised the delay, which may last for 18 to 24 months. 

Johnson stressed that the US would work with Mexico to deal with the problem, which some politicians in the US fear will cross the border. Thomas Shannon, another Assistant Secretary of State, who has responsibility for US policy towards Latin America, also testified to congress on 10 March. He said that Mexico was paying a price in blood for fighting the drug gangs and that the US needed to support the efforts by the Mexican government.

On 2 March the Mexican media played up comments by the US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, in defence of President Felipe Calderón's efforts against drug gangs and organised crime. Gates's comments were the strongest endorsement yet by the Obama administration of Mexico's war on organised crime. Controversially, Gates backed President Calderón's claim that the current bloodletting in Mexico is the product of negligence by previous presidents, who he says failed to confront the drug gangs. This line was endorsed on 10 March by the Director of National Intelligence, Vice Admiral, Dennis Blair, to the Senate Armed Services committee. Blair said “I believe that they can handle the situation,  given the determination that President Calderon has showed_[President Calderón has taken] a full range of actions which are necessary_and I think he can succeed."

Calderón has now deployed 40,000 troops across the country to fight the gangs. Blair endorsed the Mexican government's argument that the increase in killing (to over 1,000 so far this year and over 5,600 in 2008) was the direct result of Calderón's decision, on taking office in December 2006, to confront the drug gangs.

This argument divides Mexico's political elite. Santiago Creel, a former interior minister and prominent senator representing Calderón's ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), pointed out in early March that the ministers currently heading Calderon's war on organised crime had also held  prominent public security positions in previous administrations.

Creel was President Vicente Fox's interior minister, and was Fox's preferred choice to succeed him. Creel was, however, defeated in the PAN presidential primary in 2005 by Calderón. Creel said that comments by the new interior minister, Fernando Gómez Mont, were “absurd, disgraceful and irresponsible". Gómez Mont had claimed that the Fox government had not fought the drug-trafficking gangs.

It is not only senior politicians who disagree about the government's anti-drug policy. On 19 February Calderón called on Mexicans not to be duped into opposing the army. Calderón's strong words show how shaken the government was by demonstrations against the deployment of the army in various states in Mexico in mid-February. Calderón was speaking in Monterrey, where there had been week-long protests against the deployment of the army as an auxiliary police force. The 19th of  February is celebrated as Army Day in Mexico.

Calderón's presence in Monterrey demanded a major security operation in the main streets which deterred the demonstrators who have been protesting for a week, but launched major demonstrations on 17 February.

Calderón said that gangsters were cowards who used women and children to protest against his government's use of the army. He claimed that the gangsters wanted to provoke an overreaction from the army and the government. The Calderón government has been deploying the army as an auxiliary police force ever since the president took office on 1 December 2006.

What is undeniable is that the army is not deterring the gangs. Mexico City newspapers claimed that the country's criminal gangs have already killed 1,169 people between 1 January and 6 March. The rapid rise in the rate of gang killings is frightening prominent Mexicans and politicians alike: 20 senators from across political parties have submitted applications to the ministry of defence to be allowed to bear firearms. There are growing fears that gangs are preparing more assassination attempts on senior officials ahead of mid-term elections in July.

According to the Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH), 10,500 people have been killed in the two years since President Calderón launched his offensive against crime and deployed the army against the gangs. The unofficial (press) count for those killed in 2008 came to 5,600.

Chihuahua is the most violent state in Mexico. Between 1 January and 6 March  2009, 422 people were killed by gangs in the state. In the whole of 2008, gangs killed 2,206 people in Chihuahua, so they are on course to murder about 1,250 more people this year, if they maintain their current rate of killing.

Besides being well-armed, the gangs are also well-trained. One of the gang members wounded in the attack on the governor of Chihuahua is a former soldier. The press reported that he was dismissed from the army in 2003 for insubordination. Investigators hope that he will spill the beans about the incident.

• Chihuahua

The federal government decided to send an extra 5,300 troops and federal policemen to Chihuahua on 25 February. There were already 2,026 soldiers based in the state under 'Operación Chihuahua. Altogether there are now 7,000 soldiers, as well as 2,000 federal police officers (mostly former soldiers) and 2,000 municipal police patrolling the streets of Ciudad Juárez.

• Localised killings?

The federal government's claim that gang killings are highly localised is arguable. Michoacán is enduring a lot of grenade attacks. On 26 February four municipal policemen in Guerrero were killed when they were attacked with grenades and machine guns.