US-Mexico Anti-Drug Cooperation: A New Look?

The United States and Mexico revised the terms of counternarcotics cooperation Tuesday, “refocusing their efforts on strengthening civilian law enforcement institutions and rebuilding communities crippled by poverty and crime.” This according to the New York Times’ Ginger Thompson and Marc Lacey who write that the new strategy agreed to in high level talks in Mexico City will “expand on and improve” programs included under the Merida Initiative, among them “cooperation between American and Mexican intelligence agencies and American support for training Mexican police officers, judges, prosecutors and public defenders.” (According to the LA Times, President Obama is seeking $310 million in security aid for Mexico in next year’s federal budget). US officials also say they will move resources away from creating a wall on the US-Mexico border and towards new and improved screening systems prior to border checkpoints. The paper continues:

“The most striking difference between the old strategy and the new one is the shift away from military assistance. More than half of the $1.3 billion spent under Mérida was used to buy aircraft, inspection equipment and information technology for the Mexican military and police. Next year’s foreign aid budget provides for civilian police training, not equipment.”

Citing data from the Washington Office on Latin America, the Times notes that Pentagon assistance to Mexican counter-narcotics efforts amounted to $78.2 million in 2009 and 2010.

The Washington Post leads its coverage of the Mexico meetings by saying, although the rhetoric about US-Mexico anti-drug cooperation changed, “few concrete proposals for fighting the powerful drug cartels” were offered Tuesday. The paper does highlight a verbal commitment made by Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and her Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa to create a “joint survey to better understand the whys and hows of drug consumption in the two countries.” But Clinton flatly rejected any discussion about decriminalizing drugs in the two countries.

From the Wall Street Journal, reporter David Luhnow calls the new approach a “guns and butter” strategy, emphasizing the new social and economic strategies discussed by Ms. Clinton and Ms. Espinosa. “To combat the long-term effects of the drug trade, we want people to feel economic security and health security,” Clinton said in yesterday’s public news conference. Also, the Journal says US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske will be making a follow-up visit to Mexico in the next few days at which time he is expected to announce a new plan seeking to stem drug consumption.

Also Tuesday, the AP writes that planes filled with some 450 additional Mexican federal police officers arrived in Ciudad Juarez during yesterday’s talks. The new “surge” brings the total number of federal agents in the city to 3,500. More than 2600 were killed in Juarez in 2009 and some 500 have already been killed there this year.

In other major stories today:

· Today marks the 30^th anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, the much beloved clergyman from San Salvador who spoke out against social injustice and was murdered while saying mass in 1980. The event contributed to the beginning of a bloody, 12-year civil war. The government of Mauricio Funes will be honoring Romero’s death with a state commemoration—the first such official remembrance of Romero in El Salvador’s history. As the LA Times notes, the murder of Romero has long gone unprosecuted. But that could be in the process of changing. Salvadoran daily, El Faro, published an interview earlier this week with, Rafael Alvaro Saravia, the air force captain who had previously admitted to his role in the murder of Romero. Via Tim’s El Salvador blog, in the interview, Saravia denies being the gunmen who actually carried out the assassination, instead implicating other high profile individuals in the crime—specifically, Mario Molina, son of former Salvadoran president Arturo Armando Molina and the now deceased ARENA founder Roberto D'Aubuisson. Tim also has posted a YouTube video with excerpts of the Saravia interview (with English subtitles). The anniversary of Romero’s assassination also brings a new call from Amnesty International to overturn an amnesty law which protects those responsible for the murder and disappearances of thousands—including Romero—during the country’s civil war. But the Funes government reiterated its position on the amnesty law again Tuesday, saying it will not answer questions about the law at this time.

· Also, more words of remembrance on Romero from former US ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, at Commonweal.

· From Venezuela, the arrest of opposition figure, former Zulia governor, and COPEI party member Oswaldo Alvarez Paz on “conspiracy charges” is drawing significant criticism this morning. Alvarez Paz was detained by Venezuelan intelligence officials Monday after giving an interview to the anti-Chavez television station Globovision two weeks ago. In the interview, Alvarez Paz accused his government of having relations with narcotraffickers, including the FARC. Reuters says the charges against the former governor hold a maximum sentence of 16 years. COPEI released a statement yesterday about the arrest, saying “the national government, once again using the institutions it has taken over, tries to silence criticism and denunciations by those who do not think like it does.” HRW Americas director, José Miguel Vivanco responded to the arrest as well Tuesday. “Throwing someone in prison for expressing an opinion is an egregious abuse of power,” the Wall Street Journal quotes him as saying.

· In other breaking news from Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is entering the blogosphere! On his Sunday broadcast of “Alo Presidente,” Chavez remarked that through a new presidential blog he could “reach millions, not only in Venezuela but around the world.” “I am going to dig my own trench on the Internet…Our Internet -- the Bolivarian Internet -- has to be an alternative press,” said Chavez. Foreign Policy notes that there is no specific launch date for Chavez’s new blog yet (from one blogger to another, my guess is that Chavez is having difficulty choosing between Blogger or Word Press). Word has it that a specific room in Miraflores will also be designated the president’s “computer room.”

· In a recent post at the Chronicle of Higher Education’s site, an interesting piece by Stan Katz on why travel to Cuba should be allowed once again so as to fuel mutual understanding through education.

· The Wall Street Journal reports today on how Haitians are selling steel construction rods, pulled from the country’s quake rubble, to China who then apparently recycles the metal. “The recycling industry is providing jobs to thousands of Haitians struggling for daily survival in the aftermath of the quake,” and with a significant multiplier effect, says the paper.

· From Al-Jazeera, news on the rescue of five Colombian oil contractors from FARC captivity by Colombian troops.

· Marking the World Day of Water, Bolivia’s Evo Morales petitioned the UN earlier this week to make access to safe drinking water a basic universal human right.

· NACLA has a report on the increased militarization of the Peruvian countryside and what the magazine calls the “deployment of the country’s security apparatus into resource-rich zones to serve as protection for corporate interests.” In addition, extraction firms are increasingly in the business of contracting private security groups who may be “conducting of espionage operations on groups opposing resource development projects.”

· Journalist Ben Dangl writes in The Progressive on the issue of new US military bases in Colombia. “…Plans for the expansion of the bases show that the intent is to prepare for war and intimidate the region,” says Dangl. The outposts could also serve to increase US training of Latin American militaries. “The bases will be used to strengthen the military training of soldiers from other countries,” John Lindsay-Poland, the co-director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean Program tells the magazine. “There is already third-country training in Colombia, and what the Colombia government says now is that this agreement will strengthen that.”

· And finally, also on Colombia, Laura Carlsen’s column in Foreign Policy in Focus looks at Colombia’s legislative elections of 10 days ago. Carlsen, a pre-electoral international observer of the poll, writes that “the real crisis of [the vote’s] legitimacy lies in the broken chain between a voter’s free choice of representation and the real ways that candidates come to power.”