Drug War Capitalism (15 page)

The stated focus of the Mérida Initiative is fourfold: dismantle criminal organizations; strengthen air, maritime, and border controls; reform the justice system; and diminish gang activity while decreasing demand for drugs.[2] The Mérida Initiative, or Plan Mexico, is the overarching policy and legislative framework that establishes drug war capitalism in Mexico. It takes a page directly from Plan Colombia in terms of enshrining support for disrupting narcotics trafficking while transforming Mexico in three key ways: introducing a new legal system and promoting structural reforms, increasing levels of militarization, and, as a by-product of the latter, encouraging the formation and multiplication of paramilitary groups.

As with Plan Colombia, the Mérida Initiative is not strictly a military agreement. It has four “pillars”: disrupt organized criminal groups, institutionalize reforms to sustain rule of law and respect for human rights, create a 21st century border, and build strong and resilient communities. According to the US Government Accountability Office, “The Mérida Initiative is an assistance package with diverse program components that is being implemented by a wide range of U.S. agencies under the leadership and management of the State Department.”[3]

The first component of the Mérida Initiative is officially known as “Assistance to Enhance the Rule of Law and Strengthen Civilian Institutions.”[4] Tied to—or simultaneous with—anti-drug funding, laws are adjusted, and reforms are brought in that encourage privatization and increased foreign direct investment. According to the US government, this will “Build Strong and Resilient Communities,” and “Strengthen Institutions.”[5] An alternative analysis of this component of drug war funding could instead carry a title that represents the spirit of these adjustments: in the case of Mexico these policies could be called “NAFTA-plus” as they are a form of deepening institutional changes formalized in the Canada-US-Mexico (North American) Free Trade Agreement, signed in 1994. In addition, this component fulfills an important part of counterinsurgency, as it attempts to convince and capture the hearts and minds of Mexicans.

The second component of the Mérida Initiative is officially called “Law Enforcement and Security Assistance.”[6] This consists of state-funded militarization of police and of borders, as well as increased police and military powers, training, and weaponry. This represents agreements made in a legal manner between cooperating governments, though implementation can be on the margin of legality in host states.[7] The US government tells us that this is designed to “Disrupt Organized Criminal Groups” and “Build a 21st Century Border,”[8] but in actual fact it looks a lot like counterinsurgency. Back in 2010, Hillary Clinton, then US secretary of state, compared the situation in Mexico to an insurgency. “It’s looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago,” she told delegates at a Council on Foreign Relations event. Drug cartels “are showing more and more indices of insurgencies,” she went on.[9] In 2009, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that he backed the use of counterinsurgency in Mexico.[10]

Counterinsurgency can be understood not only as a form of warfare but also as a kind of war with outcomes that may differ from those of traditional combat. “Victory in the context of counterinsurgent warfare is measured not by the number of enemies vanquished but by the increase in trust and sympathy among native peoples that would wean them away from the insurgents’ influence,” writes Vicente L. Rafael, a professor of history at the University of Washington.[11] Keep Rafael’s description of victory in mind, and then take a look at how John D. Feeley, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the US State Department describes the US’s National Drug Control Strategy as it is applied in Mexico. He describes the core of the strategy as enhancing citizen security and strengthening the rule of law, “while empowering average citizens to collaborate with police, prosecutors, and judges, as well as teachers, community activists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and human rights advocates.”[12] Seen from an alternative perspective, the law enforcement segment of the Mérida Initiative can be understood as the application of counterinsurgency war within a formally democratic framework. It also serves as a program to limit human mobility while encouraging the flow of goods and services.

The two components described above are both formally acknowledged by proponents of anti-drug policy. The policy component and the policing component reinforce one another: as public companies are privatized and state revenues fall, more force will be required on the part of the state in order to maintain social order. Take Pemex, the state oil company, for example. Before reforms in December 2013, 99 percent of the state-owned oil company’s profits went to paying taxes, representing the largest revenue source in Mexico’s national budget.[13] It remains to be seen how the reforms to Pemex will affect the country’s revenue stream and budget. If the taxation of private oil companies fails to fill state coffers in the future, it could result in the application of the harshest austerity measures yet in Mexico, which may in turn trigger mass social protest.

To this end, the capacity of security forces to make massive arrests and jail dissidents is being increased through Mérida Initiative programs. As more people are arrested by larger and more aggressive police forces, the expedited justice system offered by the United States model could prove useful in processing them. The increased prison capacity, also funded by the US through the Mérida Initiative, will doubtless be useful in detaining them. Looked at from this perspective, the Mérida Initiative appears to be a long-term strategy to enforce austerity and globalized capitalism while militarizing Mexico.

The third and final component of the Mérida Initiative is a generally unacknowledged yet known effect of the application of the drug war: the emergence of new forms of social control that stem from the reorganization of narcotics flows and crime groups provoked by the militarized disruption of existing trafficking networks. In the dominant discourse of the drug war, this phenomenon is described using cartel war discourse. However, from a critical perspective it can be understood as something closer to a form of paramilitarization. This part of the drug war is the most nebulous and difficult to describe. Journalists are encouraged to use a frame around cartels warring with each other to explain this phenomenon, but a closer look shows that paramilitarization is a known effect of militarizing drug trafficking. As we saw in the example of Colombia, paramilitarization can serve the interests of investors and transnational corporations seeking to prevent unionization or community mobilization.

The Mérida Initiative served as catalyst for a sharp increase in domestic police and military spending in Mexico. Before the Mérida Initiative, the US was giving Mexico in the neighborhood of $60–70 million a year.[14] The drug war changed that, and fast. US security spending in Mexico in 2010 was over $500 million, compared with $434 for Colombia, before falling off to $160 million or less (compared to over $250 million in following years for Colombia).[15] World Bank data shows Mexico’s military spending as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) has risen 0.4 to 0.6 percent over recent years, between 2012 and 2013 Mexico increased military spending “by 5.1 per cent, despite weaker economic growth.”[16] “It should be noted that Mexico has devoted considerable monies of its own to combat drug-related crime in the country, increasing the defense budget from just $2 billion in 2006 to $9.3 billion in 2009. This investment has been used to mobilize thousands of troops and federal police, underwrite interdiction of drug shipments, implement institutional reform, and enhance inter- and intra-agency cooperation and intelligence sharing,” reads a report by the US army–linked RAND Corporation.[17] It is worth pointing out that military spending does not include the full spending on policing. Calderón’s offensive “was backed by the U.S. under the Mérida Initiative and included deployment of 96,000 army troops, together with thousands of marines and the appointment of dozens of military officers as police chiefs in towns and cities.”[18]

Total US funding appropriations for the Mérida Initiative in Mexico between 2008 and the end of 2014 totaled $2.35 billion. Congress requested $115 million for the Mérida Initiative in 2015.[19] It was estimated in 2012 that for every dollar that the United States spent on the Mérida Initiative, Mexico spent thirteen.[20] Central America Regional Security Initiative funds began flowing to Central America in 2008, by the end of 2014 totaled approximately $806.3 million, with an additional $130 million requested by Congress for 2015.[21] By mid-2013, the US had disbursed $27,151,000 for the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, a fraction of the over $157 million allocated.[22]

The US government did not provide any cash to the Mexican government as part of the Mérida Initiative, instead spending the earmarked dollars on US-made equipment and various private contracting firms. Additionally, non-Mérida counter-drug assistance was provided by the US Department of Defense, totaling $208.6 million between 2009–2012.[23] Through newspaper reports generally focus on the police and military aspects of the drug war (the violence), recent testimony by the US point man for anti-drugs policy in the Americas, William Brownfield, highlights how the US government’s motives in funding the Mérida Initiative go beyond security: “In every society, citizen security underpins economic stability and allows trade, investment, energy development, and education exchanges to flourish. The partnership forged between the United States and the Government of Mexico over the past six years under the Mérida Initiative exemplifies how strengthening citizen security supports these broader objectives.”[24] The objectives outlined by Brownfield could be more important than they first appear. According to economist Dr. Paul Collier, “Conflicts are far more likely to be caused by economic opportunities than by grievance. If economic agendas are driving conflict, then it is likely that some groups are benefiting from conflict and that these groups therefore have some interest in initiating and sustaining it.”[25] Collier is referring to civil wars, but the same applies to Mexico. The drug war in Mexico can hardly be called a civil war, due to the extent of international involvement in the conflict (the same can also be said of other so-called civil wars, like those in Guatemala and El Salvador, for example). The scale of the killing has pushed the conflict far beyond the frame of being a dirty war. In some senses, it is a war with no proper name. Regardless, Collier’s point about economic opportunities holds true for Mexico.

In the case of the drug war in Colombia, Central America, Mexico, and elsewhere, it is clear that dominant factions in the state apparatus stand to benefit. State military power, policing, and the prison system are strengthened through increased aid and cooperation with the world’s military superpower. Another beneficiary of drug war policies generally is the transnational corporate sector. It experiences improved conditions for investment thanks to reforms as well as an increasingly militarized and repressive social context that allows a freer hand to pursue destructive and/or controversial mega projects.

Criminal groups, the ones moving the drugs, are the third category of beneficiaries. These are the war profiteers the mainstream media and governments focus on. According to a 2010 report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 85 percent of gross proceeds in the $35 billion cocaine market stayed in the United States. Of that amount, 15 percent went to US wholesalers and mid-level dealers, and 70 percent went to street-level dealers who sold to US consumers. Compare this to the $4.6 billion (13 percent) that stayed with traffickers moving the product between the Andean region and the US, or with the mere 1 percent that stayed with Andean producers.[26] These statistics help us understand that drug traffickers in Mexico are accessing amounts of money that are, all told, relatively small. A similar division of profits in the narcotics trade exists worldwide. According to the Global Commission on Drug Policy, “drug prohibition has fueled a global illegal trade estimated by the UNODC to be in the hundreds of billions. According to 2005 data, production was valued at $13 billion, the wholesale industry priced at $94 billion and retail estimated to be worth $332 billion.”[27]

Though it is the military aspect of the Mérida Initiative that gets the lion’s share of funding and media attention, it is worth examining policy aspects that constitute the first component of the Mérida Initiative. Of the $400 million the United States promised to spend on Mexico’s security, $73.5 million was devoted to funding judicial reform, institution building, and rule of law. The rule of law, judicial and institution building or policy component of the Mérida Initiative is of crucial importance. It brings together security and economy in what is perhaps one of the greatest innovations of Plan Colombia: the militarization of aid and the steering of anti-drug money toward fostering the creation of more welcoming investment policies and legal regulations. Though not often talked about in the context of the drug war, these policy changes often have little or nothing to do with illicit substances and everything to do with the transformation of the business environment.

The policy part of the Mérida Initiative is carried out and coordinated by USAID, with participation by the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.[28] USAID’s general focus is on “furthering America’s foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free markets while also extending a helping hand to people struggling to make a better life, recover from a disaster or striving to live in a free and democratic country.”[29] The agency, together with the US State Department, requested nearly $50 billion from the federal government in 2014.[30] “U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere seeks to seize and expand opportunities for inclusive economic growth, transforming the region’s emerging middle class into dynamic new markets for U.S. exports and creating jobs at home,” according to the US State Department.[31] The US government plans to spend about $205.5 million in Mexico in 2014, a significant reduction from the previous year, but still the third highest amount in the hemisphere, after Colombia at $323 million and Haiti at $300 million (together these three countries make up over half of total US government spending in the Western Hemisphere).[32]