U.S. SPENDS MILLIONS ON MEXICO'S DRUG WAR THAT CLAIMED SALCEDO

When slain El Monte educator Bobby Salcedo was laid to rest earlier
this month, Cardinal Roger Mahoney and Father Beto Villalobos
challenged El Monte to become drug-free.

Villalobos reminded the hundreds of mourners that the cost of drugs
isn't the dollar price, but rather the lives lost in the war driven
by the illicit substances.

In so doing, the two religious leaders said U.S. drug users play a
complicit role in the violence that has defined Mexico in recent
years, violence that has killed more than 12,000 people since 2006.

Last year, this shared responsibility was acknowledged on an official
scale by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our
inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the
border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers,
soldiers and civilians," she said.

One of those civilian deaths was Salcedo, who was killed,
execution-style, along with five other men, while visiting his wife's
family in G mez Palacio last month, though he had no ties to the cartels.

So if the United States has a "co-responsibility," in the words of
Clinton, what is this country doing about it?

On this side of the border, officials point to various anti-drug
programs aimed at reducing demand, and arms programs aimed at
stopping the illegal flow of weapons to Mexico.

In Mexico, the centerpiece of the U.S. effort to combat the drug
cartels is the Merida Initiative, a controversial spending package
aimed at equipping and training Mexico's military and strengthening
the federal police and justice systems there.

"Our consumption is wreaking havoc on other countries... so we have a
duty to provide assistance to these countries, to assist them in
enforcing laws and reducing at least the supply side of some those
drugs," El Monte Mayor Andre Quintero said.

While supporters say the initiative is building Mexico's capacity to
fight its war against the cartels and demonstrates an unparalleled
level of cooperation between the neighboring countries, critics
charge it is contributing to the militarization of Mexico, funding
human rights abuses, and expending valuable resources to no end.

The more than $1.3 billion package - the second largest foreign aid
package in the Western Hemisphere in the past decade - marks a major
shift in U.S. policy toward Mexico and a 700 percent increase in
counter-drug spending there - from an average of $57 million a year,
to $400 million in 2008 and $720 million in 2009.

The aid came at the request of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who
has made fighting the drug cartels the main, if not sole, objective
of his presidency.

Though the initiative started in 2007 under then-President George W.
Bush, it has largely been carried forward by the administration of
President Barack Obama.

"It was truly radical for Hillary Clinton to take 50 percent of
responsibility," said USC international relations professor Carol
Wise, an expert in Latin America. "The Bush Administration was so
single mindedly focused on Iraq and Afghanistan that there was this
explosion on our own border that got very little attention."

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Lakewood, said the continued aid marks a
fundamental shift between the administrations.

"In all the areas of the globe where we were giving foreign aid under
Bush, the one area where aid was cut was to the Western Hemisphere -
it shows the complete neglect in U.S. policy towards Latin America," she said.

The Obama administration has looked at Mexico's drug cartels not just
as a foreign policy issue, as the Bush administration did, but as a
domestic issue, officials said.

The Merida Initiative is considered a piece of the administration's
agenda to tackle drug trafficking, which also includes new efforts to
prosecute cartels here and stop the smuggling of guns and cash across
the border.

Congress is also attempting to address some of the main criticisms of
the policy - that it funds another country's military, a military
that is responsible for human rights abuses.

Lawmakers are shifting money away from buying Blackhawk helicopters
for the Mexican military and toward programs to strengthen Mexico's
judicial system and federal police.

They are also attempting to incorporate more measures to determine
whether the Merida Initiative is a success.

Making any judgement right now is difficult.

Though cartel-related violence is exploding in Mexico, supporters
point to incremental successes.

In addition to buying helicopters, scanners, and complex IT
equipment, the initiative has helped train more than 3,000
college-educated, federal police, who are "going to be the vanguard
of Mexico's new police," said Sara Mangiaracina, spokeswoman for the
State Department.

"We are seeing success on the ground... if you are wanting an
overnight response, that is not going to happen, but the money is
flowing, the equipment is being delivered, people are being trained," she said.

In December, the Mexican military claimed a major victory when it
killed drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva - nicknamed the boss of
bosses and head of a cartel that smuggles cocaine, heroin and
marijuana, trafficks arms and people, launders money, and conducts kidnappings.

"It was an operation that demonstrated Mexico's increasing capacity
to debilitate the cartels, and we are building up this capacity
through Merida," Mangiaracina said.

Continued proof that the aid is having an impact will be necessary
for it keep flowing, S nchez said.

As it is, the initiative has been slow to deliver equipment;
marijuana, heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine continue to flow into
the United States; and the violence seems to only be getting worse.

"We are starting to see something we haven't seen before, gratuitous
killings... what we are seeing is hell holes of violence and crime,"
said Wise, the USC professor. "The level of violence is such that the
cartels are winning."

Bobby Salcedo's brother Juan takes an even harsher stance.

"Essentially (Mexico) has no laws. They cannot protect you. It's as
simple as that, you are not protected," he said.

Prominent Mexican intellectual Jorge Castaeda, a former Secretary of
Foreign Affairs, calls the Mexican drug war "costly, unwinnable, and
predicated on dangerous myths."

For many opponents, the initiative is reminiscent of Plan Colombia,
the U.S.'s multi-billion dollar effort over the past decade to reduce
drug trafficking in Colombia and end the brutal armed conflict in that country.

That plan has succeeded, by some accounts, in reducing violence in
Colombia, but not reducing drug trafficking to the United States.
Instead, it just pushed the cartels to Mexico and is largely viewed
as responsible for the rise of cartels there.

"Plan Colombia has been a disaster, we spent all that money,
billions, and just shifted the locus of the violence," Wise said.

Wise is equally pessimistic that the dollars spent on the Merida
Initiative will do much to help the problem.

"We have thrown so much money towards this, since the war on drugs
was declared, and we don't have a lot to show for it," she said. "We
have been throwing good money after bad policy."

And some fear the violence could be pushed into Central America,
which has also received aid under the Merida Initiative.

Some local officials question sending millions to Mexico when local
programs to combat drug use are in need of funding.

"Are we effectively using our dollars to combat, fight a front there?
I personally feel the government can be doing more," said South El
Monte city councilman Hector Delgado.

Delgado has demanded a thorough investigation by the Mexican
government into Salcedo's murder, even suggesting that U.S. officials
withhold Merida funds until an investigation is completed.

He, like many others, says the United States should be concentrating
its limited resources on reducing demand for drugs in the United
States and stopping the flow of weapons across the border.

"We have taken a criminal approach when dealing with drugs, and we
should be taking a medical approach," he said.

Increasingly, experts, including Wise and Castaeda, are turning to
efforts to legalize drugs.

"We are never going to eradicate the drug trade unless you change the
laws and the price structure for drugs in the United States," Wise said.