Article from "The Economist", London, Nov. 15, 1997 Republished in World
Press Review, February, 1998

POISON ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE

"Certify us? They should compensate us for the filthy mess they leave us."
These harsh words recently directed at the United States could have been
uttered by any of a dozen Latin American leaders outraged at its arrogant
annual practice of "certifying (or decertifying) other nations as allies in
its fight against drugs. The shock was that they came from Mexico's usually
diplomatic president, Ernesto Zedillo. The flow of illegal drugs across the
border is a hot issue--on both sides. Americans are preoccupied with
addiction and crime. Mexicans with violence and corruption; yet the
problems of one are rapidly be coming a menace in the other.

Americans are understandably frustrated. Since the early 198Os, the U.S.
has spent nearly $300 billion to stem the flow--with "no discernible impact
on either price or availability," as even the State Department admits.
Mexicans, too, are frustrated. It took senatorial threats of
decertification to push Zedillo into his outburst, but his words revealed a
resentment felt by many. After all, there would be little reason for
Mexico's drug mobs to exist if the U.S. could control its own appetite for
narcotics.

Zedillo's remark also hinted at a deeper fear: Thoughtful Mexicans have
begun to worry whether Mexico could go Colombia's way. Both struggle with
poverty, corruption, and a police and military with poor human-rights
records. Both face guerrilla groups--some with drug ties. But Mexico also
has a porous 2,000-mile border with the U.S. Mexican smugglers have for
generations ferried illegal goods across it. Using corruption and violence,
they have established a web of influence on both sides of the border that
threatens not only that country but the U.S. as well. Says Thomas A.
Constantine, administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA), "These sophisticated drug syndicates from Mexico have eclipsed
organized crime groups from Colombia as the premier law-enforcement threat
facing the United States today."

The irony is that American policies helped to create the Mexican mafia. In
the 1980s, the unquestioned kings of the cocaine trade were Colombian.
Mexicans played only a small role. But a fierce American-led crackdown on
Caribbean routes in the mid-1980s led the Colombians to ship
ever-increasing loads via Mexican smugglers. By the early 1990s, they had
grown reiant on them. American drug agents, aware of the shift, pressed for
a change in policy or at least for criticism of Mexico's growing role as a
drug route. But first President George Bush and then Bill Clinton were
preoccupied with getting NAFTA--the North American Free Trade Agreement--
through a skeptical Congress: Don't rock the boat, they warned the DEA.
Then, in the mid-1990s, the U.S. launched a vendetta against Colombials
President Ernesto Samper, accused of having accepted some $6 million from
the Cali drug lords for his election campaign. Attempting (in vain, it
turned out) to stave off decertification, Samper cracked down on the Cali
mob. When its leaders, the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers, were put behind
bars, their Mexican friends happily picked up the slack.

The death in July of Mexico's top drug trafficker, Amado Carrillo Fuentes,
unleashed a fierce battle among rivals and lieutenants. The winners are
likely to be the ruthless Arellano gang. The struggle has already prompted
an unprece- dented wave of killings across Mexico, particularly in the
border cities of Ciudad JuBrez and Tij uana.

The Arellano gang, say Mexican prosecutors, spends $1 million a week on
bribes in Mexico. And not just in Mexico. Its mobs have infiltrated
American life. The DEA reckons that 70 percent of all cocaine entering the
United States now comes through Mexico. The traffickers have moved into
heroin, whose popularity is again on the rise; poppies are spreading like
wildfire across the sierras of central Mexico. Methamphetamine, "speed,"
is another specialty. Mexicans have created a boom in the U.S. for the
"poor man's cocaine." In the country as a whole, emergency admissions for
speed overdoses tripled from 1991 to 1994.

With the poison has come blood. Drug-related murders in southwestern cities
are multiplying. Less tangible, but more insidious. is corruption. U.S.
officials insist it is "episodic,' not "systemic' as in Mexico. But local
officials in many poor border areas are often corrupt. So, too,
increasingly, are some U.S. border-patrol and customs agents.

Using wiretaps and stings, U.S. law enforcement has nabbed some
distributors. But the cartels are compartmentalized, and these small
potatoes do not know--and so cannot finger, even if they dared--the big
ones, safely ensconced in their haciendas in Mexico. The Pentagon plans to
spend $809 million fighting drugs this year. Yet even U.S. drug czar
General Barry McCaffrey admits that, if the army shut the entire border,
the Mexican mobs would simply ship their drugs through Canada (as they have
already begun to do).

What can be done? Clinton clearly does not believe he can push Zedillo into
a serious crackdown. The unstated fear is that instability in Mexico could
result in disrupting trade and sending millions of migrants north. To
tackle the Mexican mobs, America needs a more realistic drug policy.
Recognition that they are rapidly corrupting U.S. institutions would be a
start and would make it easier for Mexico's leaders to accept criticism and
join in the fight. Mexicans have shown, by voting the opposition into
control of Congress in July, that they are ready for a break with the past.

Colombia's case suggests that it is possible to beat down, albeit never
entirely eliminate, the influence of the traffickers. A former Colombian
president, while in office, said: "I am convinced that legalization is the
only solution. But as long as the Americans are prohibitionist, we need to
be even more hard-line or risk having every institution of our democracy
overwhelmed by narco corruption." Until--far off, if ever--the United
States accepts legalization, that is sound advice.