FELIPE CALDERON'S CARTEL WAR DEAD-END

The Evidence Is Mounting That the Militarised Policing Strategy
Against Mexico's Organised Crime Gangs Has Failed Horriby

"The fact that there are those who are corrupt, criminal or abuse of
their public office does not make a state criminal or corrupt. We
should not extrapolate the actions of individuals as those of the
state ... Mexico is not Arizona."

So remarked Mexico's sub-secretary of Latin America and the Caribbean,
Ambassador Ruben Beltran Guerrero, on 5 April, following the release
of report by the government of El Salvador accusing Mexican
authorities of human rights violations against 250 El Salvadorian
immigrants in 2010.

El Salvador's complaints against Mexican authorities have gained
greater weight with the recent imprisonment of over 40 members of
Mexico's National Immigration Institute (INM in Spanish) -for charges
ranging from statutory rape, human trafficking, extortion, kidnapping,
murder and collusion with organised crime- as well as the release of a
report by the country's Human Rights Commission (CNDH) detailing at
least 128 complaints against the INM thus far this year. They also
highlight a growing pattern of abuse against migrants following the
recent discovery of mass graves in the northern states of Durango and
Tamaulipas (with 223, and 183 bodies, respectively), where many of the
dead are believed to have been migrants kidnapped by organised crime
groups while en route to the United States."

While Mexico is, indeed, unlike Arizona - where anti-immigrant laws
are passed by politicians in an effort to appeal to certain political
interest groups - it is very similar to countries like China, India
and the Philippines, where poor law enforcement and oversight has led
to the enrichment of government officials through human trafficking
and complicity with organised crime. For Mexico's cartels human
trafficking is a $15-20bn dollar industry second only to drug
trafficking, and is especially rampant in Mexico, due to the country's
function as a conduit for migrants travelling to the United States.

The public furore brought on by the recent scandals involving Mexico's
immigration institute have led the federal government to join the
chorus of complaints against the INM and make clear their efforts to
clean up the country's dysfunctional immigration agency. This effort
has included dramatic helicopter rides by government officials along
Mexico's "migrant route", the purging of seven high-ranking INM
officials (after three years of complaints in some cases), and a
series of indignant-sounding speeches by cabinet members calling for
the "modernisation" of Mexico's National Immigration Institute.

Mexican legislators from the country's main political parties have
gone further and demanded inquiries into the immigration agency's
management, as well as the congressional testimony of the current and
former heads of the INM, which include Cecilia Romero Castillo, now
secretary general of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's National
Action party (PAN). The federal government's new line is striking in
that it makes tacit recognition of the INM's systemic corruption, and
contrasts sharply with the response of Ambassador Ruben Beltran
Guerrero to the allegations made by El Salvador.

Still, full recognition of the immigration agency's problems is far
from universal. The current head of the INM, Salvador Beltran del Rio,
continues to deny that his agency has any endemic faults, while
Ambassador Ruben Beltran Guerrero insists that Mexico is not Arizona
(apparently, it's worse), and that the recent scandals are not
symptomatic of a larger institutional malady.

As the Mexican authorities slowly begin to understand the relationship
between the corruption in the country and its battle with organised
crime, Mexico's human rights record has only become direr.
Demonstrating the extent of the government's role in abusing the
rights of migrants, a report released Tuesday analysed the complaints
by migrants in more detail and identified similar patterns of abuse by
Mexico's federal police force, the country's refugee commission
(Comar) and the special prosecutor's office on crimes against migrants.

What these recent events now make overwhelmingly clear is that
although Mexico is not yet a failed state, many of its most important
institutions have failed. Organised crime survives by exploiting
sectors of the economy where the rule of law and the state is not
present (even if that includes government institutions themselves). As
a recently released independent Global Commission on Drug Policy
shows, the current prohibition-based approach to battling the illegal
drug trade has mostly led to massive collateral damage, while
increasing global consumption and promoting the trade of more
dangerous drugs. As Mexico enters its fifth year of militarised
conflict against organised crime, it would serve the federal
government well to recognise the mounting evidence of failure of its
national security strategy.