NEIGHBORS

The political culture of Mexico is I immature; any perceived
slight by the 'giant of the north' could lead to an up surge in
nationalism." This unsigned memo, which found its way into briefing
packets sent earlier this month by the White House to members of
Congress, was typically crude and patronising. But it was perceptive.
America's annual round of "certification"a stamp of approval given to
those countries judged by the United States to be cooperating in the
fight against drugshas this year been more fraught than ever. Relations
with Mexico have significantly soured in consequence.

For weeks, Congress threatened to overturn Bill Clinton's decision to
certify Mexico. Then, under pressure from an embarrassed White House
and outraged Mexicans, the Senate last week agreed to let certification
stand and settled instead for telling both the administration and Mexico
to brush up their drugfighting efforts. It is a political fudge which
has soothed tempers for the moment; the White House, in particular,
wants to keep Mexico happy in advance of Mr Clinton's firstever trip
there, now planned for May 6th7th. But it leaves the impression that the
United States' war on drugs in general, and its treatment of Mexico in
particular, are riddled with contradictions.

Nobody would claim that Mexico is an ideal drugfighting partner. The
head of its antidrugs agency, General Jesus Gutierrez, was recently
arrested on charges of being on the payroll of its most notorious drug
lord. On March 17th another army general was arrested for offering $im a
month to a fellowofficer to secure safe passage for co caine into the
United States. In an effort to overhaul the antidrugs campaign, the
president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo, has already replaced his
attorneygeneral. On March 21st, Mariano Herran, the replacement for
General Gutierrez, promised a toptobottom sweep of the antinarcotics
force. But Mexico's ambassador to Washington, Jesus Silva Herzog,
concedes that any improvement will take years.

However, the corruption is not all on the Mexican side: federal
authorities have found mounting evidence that local sheriffs and judges
in Texas counties along the border have been accepting money from Mexican
drug lords to turn a blind eye to their activities. Besides, the United
States has other, increasingly important, concerns in Mexico, which make
it hazardous to stir resentment there.

Spurred by the North American FreeTrade Agreement (NAFrA), trade between
the two countries has risen fast (totalling around $120 billion in 1995,
third only to trade with Canada and Japan). The number of Mexicans living
in the United States, legally and illegally, is also growing fast. Until
the recent row over drugs, American and Mexican diplomats reported that
relations on a host of issues, including trade and the environment, were
getting easier.

Yet those larger considerations are less apparent to congressmen who,
unlike the administration, do not deal with Mexico on a daytoday basis.
The debate over drug certification became a rallying cry for all those
with general worries about Mexico, notjust those concerned specifically
about drugs. It united politicians (such as Dianne Feinstein) worried
about the tide of immigration with those (such as Richard Gep hardt)
still worried about the impact of NAFFA on American jobs.

Mark Falcoff, a LatinAmerican special1st at the American Enterprise
Institute, detects an increasingly vociferous antiMexico coalition in
Congress, embracing both leftwing Democrats and nationalist
Republicans. This coalition will have plenty of opportunities to get
angry again later this year. Injuly, for example, the president is due to
deliver to Congress a progress report on NAFr~ The administration is
also planning to ask Congress for "fasttrack" negotiating authority to
make it easier to strike new trade deals with other Latin American
countries, starting with Chile.

Meanwhile, the question many in Washington are asking is whether the
process of certification serves any useful purpose. It is meant to punish
countries deemed uncooperative in the drugs war by withdrawing aid and
other forms ofassistance. In practice, only countries whose po litical
sensitivities the United States can afford to ignore, such as Iran and
Colombia, are decertified; the administration has to pretend that
countries with which it wants to stay friendly also happen to be good at
fighting drugs.

Even James Jones, America's ambassador in Mexico city, argues that
decertification is counterproductive and should perhaps be scrapped.
Yet Congress is unlikely to agree: not least because certification
conveniently shifts the debate about drugs away from the tricky issues
of how to reduce demand at home, and focuses it in stead on which
foreigners to blame for supplying the stuff

On the face of it, demand for drugs in the United States is under
control: surveys suggests that around 13m Americans take illegal drugs,
compared to a high (as it were) in 1979 0f 25m users. Yet these figures
mask two worrying trends. First, though casual taking of many drugs has
dropped, frequent consumers and addicts seem to be taking drugs in
greater quantities. Second, there has been a sudden revival in drugtaking
among teenagers, from 5% 0f1217yearolds in 1992 to 11% in 1995.

Around two thirds of the $15 billion federal drugs budget still goes on
trying to curb supply by, for example, imprisoning drug dealers, policing
borders and fighting drug gangs abroad. There is little evidence that
this achieves much. Drugrelated crime is as high as ever, and the price
of both cocaine and heroin sold on American streets has dropped
dramatically since the early 1980s.

Whenever the United States succeeds in blocking one import route,
another opens.

Efforts in the mid19805 to stop cocaine coming in through south Florida
encouraged the Colombian cocaine cartels to develop new routes through
Mexico. Efforts to stop opium production in Mexico in the 1970s by
spraying poppy crops with herbicides worked for a while until production
simply moved to more remote areas.

The Mexican border is still the biggest drugimport route into the
United States. Every year 23Om people and 84m cars cross it, making the
border a 2,000 milelong sieve. According to intelligence sources, the
Mexican drug cartels (which have become big traffickers in their own
right) now have transport and distribution organizations that use both
smuggling routes and legitimate commerce to ferry cocaine, heroin,
marijuana and methamphetamines. Their organization is compartmentalised.
Even if a courier is caught, he cannot rat on his associates because he
does not know them.

Three years ago the Americans set up the SouthWest Border Initiative
(SWBI), which brought together all the drugfighting agencies with their
Mexican counter

parts. Using wiretaps, the 5WBI identified a number of barons living in
Mexico. Yet efforts to nab them through joint operations inevitably
liiil, complain the American drug agents, when corrupt Mexican
commanders tip off the suspects. According to Thomas Constantine, the
head of America's Drug Enforcement Administration, "There is not one
single lawenforcement institution in Mexico with which the DEA has an
entirely trusting relationship."

A report in February by the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank
highlights the failure of America's efforts to control international
drug supplies, and argues that more emphasis should be placed on
reducing demand. Shifting popular attitudes to wards drugs is not easy:
telling teenagers to say no will encourage some to say yes. But surveys
suggest that much of the recent rise in teenage drug use is driven by a
softening of attitudes rather than a surge in supply. The report also
argues that treating addicts is a much more costeffective way of
reducing drug use than international efforts to block supplies.

Mathea Falco, an assistant secretary of state for narcotics issues in
the Carter administration and an author of the study, recently pointed
Out that the United States has a long tradition of blaming other
countries for its drugs problems. Back at the turn of the century, opium
was associated with the Chinese, and marijuana with Mexicans. The recent
row over Mexico's certification has certainly brought the tradition bang
up to date.