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By an overwhelming vote last week, the House International
Affairs Committee initiated a congressional effort to
overturn President Clinton's decision to certify Mexico as
a fully cooperating ally in the war on drugs. Although
this endeavor is well intended, it is sorely misguided and
threatens to undermine precisely the objective it purports
to promote reducing the everexpanding supply of drugs on
the streets of America. Members of Congress who support
this bill argue that the president's certification was
mistaken, given recent revelations that have raised serious
doubts about the sincerity of Mexican attempts to crack
down on narcotics smuggling. They also suggest that their
proposal to waive the economic sanctions which normally
accompany decertification should limit the negative impact
of this action on the broader US relationship with a
strategically important neighbor. In short, Congress
believes that if the US uses a bit of coercive pressure,
Mexico will increase its cooperation in the drug war.
This reasoning displays a very limited understanding of
Mexico and the Mexican people. Congress is correct to
emphasize that Mexico's counternarcotics measures have been
uneven at best. Although Mexico has begun to extradite
leading traffickers to face prosecution in the US and has
significantly increased drug seizures and arrests, its
successes have been more than matched by blatant failures.
Collaboration between Mexico's former drug czar and a
prominent drug cartel has, by all accounts, badly damaged
the drugfighting capacity of the Mexican attorney
general's office, and it may have compromised undercover
agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration operating
in Mexico. The unexplained release of a prominent
moneylaunderer, announced only after certification was
approved, puts into plain view Mexico's limited ability to
keep traffickers in prison. But the strategy favored by
Congress would make matters worse. As the decision to
certify recognizes, any US attempt to use an explicit
threat of economic sanctions to "encourage" Mexican
cooperation will almost certainly be counterproductive.
When Mexicans look at the US, they see a neighbor that has
historically used force to coerce Mexico into adhering to
US policy aims, with little regard for Mexican needs. Any
Mexican on the street knows the US absorbed half of Mexican
territory following a war in the mid19th century. Mexican
schoolchildren learn of the occasion in the early 20th
century when US troops invaded Mexico or when the US
government used economic coercion to influence Mexican
policy. More recently, the use of political and economic
leverage to encourage Mexico to take actions that further
US interests has perpetuated the perception that the US is
a bully. THIS experience has imbued Mexicans with a
deepseated sensitivity toward any US action that appears
to compel Mexican collaboration through force. This means
any public threat of US retribution for shortcomings in
Mexico's drugfighting efforts will generate more
resentment than cooperation in Mexico. The Mexican
aversion to US pressure in the drug war also reflects a
perception that the certification process is really a
matter of US domestic politics. Mexicans believe that US
politicians, unable to win the war on drugs at home,
have used the certification process to transfer
responsibility for their policy failure abroad. The real
issue in the certification process is not what is best for
the counternarcotics efforts but how US politicians can
best attract the support they need to ensure reelection or
a run at higher office. Mexico sees itself as merely a
convenient punching bag in the political struggle. Whether
or not Americans believe this Mexican view of certification
has merit is irrelevant. What matters is that this is the
way Mexicans see it. As a consequence, the congressional
attempt to overturn Clinton's decision to certify Mexican
cooperation in the drug war has unleashed Mexico's latent
resentment of the US. The best way to win Mexico's full
cooperation in the battle against illegal narcotics is not
to chastise Mexico publicly for its shortcomings but to
encourage energetically the sincere efforts of the Zedillo
administration to eradicate the corrupting influence of
drugs in Mexican society and politics. *Pamela K. Starr is
a visiting professor of political science at the University
of California, Los Angeles, and coeditor of a forthcoming
book on political and economic reform in Latin America.