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

The killing of Jaime Zapata, the first US government official to be murdered while on duty in Mexico since 1985, has overshadowed what appears to be at least a stabilisation of the gang killing rate in Mexico in the first couple of months of 2011. This stabilisation, however, does not mean that the government can claim, finally, to be winning its self-declared war against the gangs.

The government's problem is more than ever one of public perception and trust. It is worth noting that in Ciudad Juárez, the most violent city in the country; more than 2,000 streets have been closed off to outsiders by their residents. Residents' associations have erected gates to prevent gangs members (and, significantly, the army and police) driving down their streets.

What is significant about this initiative is that it comes from the much-stigmatised municipal government. Fabiola Lara Gómez, the director of urban development controls, said that the municipality had authorised the closure of 2,011 streets in 20 areas of the city. Over the past three years, at least 7,000 people have been gunned down in the city. Residents pay for the gates and the guards that man them. Gómez admitted that in places where the municipality had denied permission, residents simply blocked the roads themselves and guarded the entrances on a rota.

The gate-ing of communities appears to have had some effect. According to the Chihuahua state attorney general's office, there have been 400 murders so far this year in Ciudad Juárez. That is about 20% fewer than in 2010, when at least 3,100 people were killed in the border city.

This fall is better than the stabilisation shown by national figures. In the first two months of 2011 around 1,850 people have been killed in gang-related violence across the country. In 2010 overall, 11,583 people were killed. Extrapolating the current trend to the end of 2011, about 650 more people (a 6% increase) will be killed by the gangs than in 2010. This represents a massive improvement on 2010, when the death toll increased 75% over 2009.

This Ciudad Juárez phenomenon of falling homicide rates is only partly good news for the government. The bad news is that the violence is spreading well beyond the places where it has been a major problem for the past two or three years. Equally alarming is how quickly gang killing rates can go up.

Nuevo Léon is the prime example. In 2009, 99 people were killed by gangs in the state, according to the daily Reforma's Ejecutómetro. In 2010, the death toll rose to 610 and in the first two months of 2011 (1 January-25 February) it was 206. The same sort of thing is happening in Jalisco (212 gang deaths in 2009; 545 in 2010 and 113 so far this year).

The big worry for the government is that the violence will spread to the heavily populated and politically important Estado de México and the Distrito Federal, but despite some pick-up there has not been the step change (in either state) that has occurred in Nuevo León.

The other indicator that the gang war is spreading geographically is the increase in the number of states and municipalities which employ either serving or retired soldiers as heads of public security or the police. On 28 February, an NGO published a well-sourced report pointing out that the army is now running the bulk of the police effort in 17 of the country's 32 states.

The militarisation of the police seems to be a reaction to the balloon effect, whereby gangs pushed out of one area by security forces (or a stronger rival gang)  move into another, upset the status quo there and make it more dangerous. The militarisation claim came from the Instituto para la Seguridad y la Democracia (Insyde). Its director, Ernesto López Portillo, claims that in 14 states, serving or retired army officers now head up the state law enforcement operations, while in another three (Chihuahua, Coahuila and Colima), they head the state police. Lower down the administrative scale, military officers now run municipal police forces in 25 states, generally the most violent, according to the Insyde.

The Insyde noted that the army has been running the police in Ciudad Juárez since March 2009, when a retired general, advised by a serving officer, took responsibility for security in the municipality. Police operations in the city are run by a retired colonel. In Ciudad Juárez there are 8,500 soldiers, 2,300 federal (i.e. paramilitary) federal police, and 1,600 municipal police officers, plus an unknown number of state police and agents from the Procuradurí­a General de la República.

The other big worry for the government is that the gangs will develop a political agenda. So far this has not happened, though the gangs have become much more prone to indulging in raw terrorism. On 14 February two separate incidents suggest that Mexican gangs are resorting to terrorism rather than, as the government claims, fighting largely between themselves.

Nine people, including a six year old girl, were injured on Valentine's Day when a grenade was thrown into a clothing store in a shopping mall in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. The grenade was thrown at about 7pm local time. Earlier the same day, 18 people were killed in Padilla, Tamaulipas. Some were killed when gang members opened fire on a bus and cars travelling along a road. The gang dumped seven of the bodies in the town square.

The argument over whether the gangs are largely fighting among themselves or trying to maintain no-go areas for themselves is far from academic. Michael McCaul, a US Republican congressman who is leading a charge against the Barack Obama administration's policy towards Mexico, claims that Jaime Zapata was targeted rather than, as his alleged killers claim, murdered by accident.

• Mexico rows with France
  On 14 February, Mexico cancelled the proposed 'Year of Mexico' in France. Mexico was reacting to the announcement made by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, dedicating the 'Year of Mexico', which was designed to celebrate links between the two countries, to Florence Cassez, a Frenchwoman currently serving 60 years in a Mexican jail after being convicted of kidnapping. In June 2009 President Felipe Calderón refused a compromise to allow Cassez to serve her sentence in France. The French government argues that Cassez's conviction and sentence is unfair and unwarranted. She was arrested (live on TV) on 9 December 2005. Genaro Garcí­a Luna, now minister of public security, was behind Cassez's arrest and he appears determined to keep her behind Mexican bars. If President Calderón were to pardon or release Cassez, the move would be a statement of no-confidence in Garcí­a Luna, who has been a fixture in the cabinet, despite the failure of the government's security policies.