by Dawn Paley
In his 1996 book Promoting Polyarchy, Robinson explains that “political and economic power tends to gravitate towards new groups linked to the global economy, either directly or indirectly through reorganized local state apparatuses which function as ‘transmission belts’ for transnational interests. In every region of the world, in both North and South, from Eastern Europe to Latin America, states, economies and political processes are becoming transnationalized and integrated under the guidance of this new elite.”[32] Elsewhere, he notes that “‘going global’ allowed capital to shake off the constraints that nation-state capitalism had placed on accumulation and break free of the class compromises and concessions that had been imposed by working and popular classes and by national governments in the preceding epoch.”[33] In Mexico, as we have seen, many of these compromises and concessions survived the imposition of NAFTA and the onset of neoliberalism into the twenty-first century.
In Mexico, something more than an economic shock was in order: a comprehensive strategy proven to increase foreign direct investment was needed. Among other things, this strategy had to ensure that local police and the army, and eventually the entire legal system, would operate according to US standards. A similar strategy had already been developed via Plan Colombia—a carefully planned, US-backed war on drugs. For example, over the past years in Mexico, the privatization of large state companies has taken place alongside attacks on the working population along the US-Mexico border and the displacement and murders of communal and small landholders. The drug war can be understood as forming the basis of a permanent shock in Mexico.
In December 2006, immediately after he was inaugurated, President Felipe Calderón launched a new phase of the war on drug cartels and organized crime in Mexico. It was a high point in social mobilization in Mexico City and throughout the country, as Calderón’s inauguration took place amidst massive protests against election fraud, which brought over two million people, including left-wing candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, into the streets of the capital. Also that year, the Zapatistas carried out their Otra Campaña, consulting with Mexicans around the country from below and to the left. “There was also the Popular Revolutionary Army [EPR], there were movements like that in Atenco, which was repressed and which provoked important solidarity actions, and also between June and November 2006 in Oaxaca an important social movement against then governor Ulises Ruíz rose up,” said Carlos Fazio, a professor at the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM). “In 2006 we could say that there were large mass protests by systemic and anti-systemic social forces, by people who wanted change.”
Since 2006, social movements have not mobilized with such a vengeance, and the violence and terror in Mexico have instead taken center stage. The social costs of the drug war have been enormous: one of the few independent counts, carried out by Molly Molloy, a librarian at New Mexico State University, affirms that since December 2006, over 153,000 people have been murdered in Mexico.[34] At a March 2012 press conference, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta stated that the violence was tremendous, and that Mexican officials had told him there were 150,000 people dead because of drug violence.[35] The body count reported in the mainstream media is much lower, often referring to 60,000 dead as a result of drug war violence.[36] This is a misleading figure since it is known that less than 5 percent of all crimes in Mexico are investigated. As well, some bodies have been secretly disposed of in mass graves, while others are dissolved in chemicals; these bodies have not made it to the morgues to be counted. The number of murders increased sharply when US military aid came online—rising from 10,452 to over 25,000 in 2010 and over 27,000 in 2011.[37] Though the media fanfare about the war on drugs diminished when President Enrique Peña Nieto began his term in December 2012, reports show that in 2013, over 21,000 people were murdered in Mexico.[38]
In addition to the dead, one official count pegs the number of disappeared in Mexico at 42,300.[39] According to a survey carried out by the National Statistics Institute (INEGI), 105,682 kidnappings took place in 2012, and less than 2 percent of kidnappings were reported to officials that year.[40] Not included in these numbers are the kidnappings of migrants transiting through Mexico; from September 2008 to February 2009, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) recorded 9,758 such kidnappings.[41] Activists estimate the number of disappeared non-citizen migrants in Mexico since 2006 could be over 70,000.[42] In Mexico the majority of the dead are civilians, and their assassins are often members of state forces, but we are told over and over again that the dead in this war are criminals. We are told that the war on drugs is about in-fighting between the cartels that transport narcotics from Colombia through Central America and Mexico to the United States. Few analyses take a more in-depth look at how this violence interacts with capitalism, state power, and resource extraction. That is exactly what Drug War Capitalism proposes to do.
In Mexico, states along the US border, like Baja California Norte, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas, have been hard hit by the war on drugs. Some non-border states like Veracruz, Guerrero, and Michoacán have also been affected by the violence, which has touched every state in the country to some extent. In nationwide polling in 2011 and 2010, over 60 percent of respondents polled by Mexico’s national statistics agency felt that public security was worse or much worse than twelve months before, and a minority felt it was the same or better.[43]
The ratcheting up of conflict linked to what we are led to believe is inter-cartel violence and a state-led assault on drug trafficking goes beyond Mexico; violence is also on the rise in Central America, where insecurity reigns. Massacres linked to drug trafficking have shaken Guatemala in recent years, and in 2011, Honduras had the highest murder rate in the world.[44] The players responsible for the violence in parts of Mexico and Central America are not necessarily consistent, nor are their methods, which vary depending on the region and the environment. In Central America, unlike Mexico, the United States openly uses its own forces in the field, as evidenced by DEA activities in Honduras in the spring of 2012 and the deployment of US marines to Guatemala later that year. Seven military bases were designated throughout Colombia for use by US troops following Plan Colombia. Some say this could be part a plan to destabilize left-led countries in the region, like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
The overall picture is this: drugs, and particularly cocaine, are produced in Colombia (as well as Bolivia and Peru) and shipped north, often using small planes and go-fast boats. Trafficking organizations must cooperate with at least a segment of local authorities in each country they transit, paying bribes so that their product can cross borders and avoid impoundment. The state and state security forces are not a monolithic enterprise—while some politicians and judges are attempting to curb corruption, others are deeply involved in facilitating narcotrafficking, money laundering, and other sectors of the illicit economy. Similarly, in some cases units of the army or marines have faced off against police, who themselves are involved in drug trafficking. Major drug trafficking routes can only exist in places where sufficient cooperation with authorities has been achieved. When official cooperation ends or is interrupted, violence results. A 2012 paper found that in municipalities where Felipe Calderón’s National Action Party defeated the PRI in 2007 and 2008 elections by a close margin, the probability of drug-related homicides increased by 8.4 percent. According to the study, “Analysis using information on the industrial organization of trafficking suggests that the violence reflects rival traffickers’ attempts to wrest control of territories after crackdowns initiated by PAN mayors have weakened the incumbent traffickers.”[45] Empirical evidence indicates that the election of the PAN Party in municipalities caused violence to increase, though the idea of a crackdown by PAN mayors reveals only one facet of the impacts of the anti-drugs policy in place since 2006. That said, we lack sufficient information to clearly understand the configuration of alternative trafficking networks operating with the support and
complicity of the PAN, including on a local level. The interruption of drug trafficking does not signify cutting off the flow, rather, it leads to the diversion of routes elsewhere.
A similar logic applies to cultivation: in the 1990s crop eradication programs pushed coca growing for cocaine production from Bolivia and Peru into Colombia. The next generation of eradication programs in Colombia pushed coca growing back into Peru and Bolivia.[46] Through it all, the overall amount of cocaine produced was virtually unchanged. What this means is that both crop eradication and the interruption of drug trafficking effectively divert those practices into other regions. In addition to ensuring the continued supply of narcotics to the United States and other markets, the diversion of trafficking and production allows the militarization of the newly used regions, under the pretext of fighting the drug war.
Throughout the 1980s and until the mid-1990s, the dominant media and government narratives held that Colombian drug cartels, the top-down organizations with high-level government connections and high-profile leaders like Pablo Escobar, were responsible for much of the drug running. But even then, for those involved in the trade, it was apparent that the boogeyman figure of the cartel was being exaggerated for public consumption. Gustavo Salazar, who worked as an attorney to Medellín drug runners in Colombia, told journalist Ioan Grillo, “Cartels don’t exist. What you have is a collection of drug traffickers. Sometimes, they work together, and sometimes they don’t. American prosecutors just call them cartels to make it easier to make their cases. It is all part of the game.”[47] Following the murder of Escobar in the mid-’90s, the organizations once portrayed as cartels were presented as having splintered into smaller groups that kept the cocaine flowing to the United States.
Mexico’s oldest drug trafficking groups, formerly known as the “big four” (Juárez, Gulf, Sinaloa, and Tijuana) have splintered to varying degrees as a result of the drug war, resulting in what are estimated to be between sixty and eighty drug trafficking groups.[48] In addition, the Zetas, which splintered from the Gulf Cartel in 2010, are said to have established a presence through Mexico and Guatemala, often working in tandem with local and regional state security forces and government officials.[49] While the armed actors vary from place to place, it has long been established that the lines between the state and criminal groups are murky, and that each empowers the other. There are defecting soldiers and police, like those who formed the Zetas, and there’s the phenomenon of double dipping—police receiving paychecks from criminal organizations and the state simultaneously. In some places, entire police corps has been known to double dip.[50] Sometimes those dressed up as police are actually soldiers or criminals, and military men are increasingly at the head of city police outfits, as was Colonel Julián Leyzaola Pérez previously in Tijuana and today in Juárez. There are also security corporations and private mercenaries, whose members are sometimes identifiable by their jackets, boots, and vehicles. And there are also community police, armed in defense of their (often Indigenous) communities through the blessing of local authorities, and self-defense groups, which are often more spontaneously formed groups in rural areas. Telling one from the other (from the other, from the other) in this war, and knowing who exactly is fighting whom, is difficult and dangerous.
The state role in drug trafficking and illegal activity runs deep and is complex. “It is known that it is not possible to move tons of cocaine, launder thousands of millions of dollars, maintain an organization with hundreds of armed individuals operating clandestinely, without a system of political and police protection, without growing alliances with the productive and financial apparatus,” wrote Yolanda Figueroa, a journalist who wrote the seminal history of the Gulf Cartel in 1996.[51] Indeed, there is no reason to assume a clear division between state forces and cartels. Throughout this text I refer to what official discourse calls drug cartels using various terms, including paramilitary groups, organized crime groups, and cartels. The actions of so-called cartels can strengthen state control, and often consist of ex-special forces or state troops, and can thus be considered paramilitary groups. Another reason I don’t always use the term “drug cartels” is that these groups in Mexico are responsible for carrying out actions that have little or nothing to do with drug trafficking, including attacks and extortion against civilians, migrants, journalists, and activists.
The term “war on drugs” is definitely problematic, and I debated using other terms for describing what’s called the drug war, since as I argue throughout this book it is very clearly a war against people, waged with far wider interests than controlling substances. But in the end, I decided to stick with the familiar “drug war,” so as to ensure the text is accessible and understandable for people who may only read a section at a time. The term “drug war” is the most visceral shorthand for what is taking place vis à vis US policies carried out in the name of stopping the flow of narcotics. In 2009, the Wall Street Journal ran a story headlined “White House Czar Calls for End to ‘War on Drugs.’” The story goes on to explain that the Obama administration has attempted to distance itself from the concept of the drug war. “Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” said Gil Kerlikowske, who was then the US drug czar. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”[52] Indeed, people living through the impacts of the war on drugs in the US and elsewhere understand that it is a war on them and their communities. As for Kerlikowske’s clarification that the US government is not at war with its own people, a maxim from reporter Claud Cockburn comes to mind: “Never believe anything until it’s officially denied.” For these reasons, and for accessibility and readability, I use the term war on drugs to describe these US-led policies, and drug war capitalism to underscore the connections between these policies and the economic interests of the powerful.
The Mérida Initiative, from Talk to Action
One Friday in September 2006, just after his election as president, Felipe Calderón and his wife invited Antonio Garza, then US ambassador to Mexico, and his wife over for dinner. At some point in the evening, Calderón told the ambassador that improving security would be a key part of his administration. When Garza recapped his evening to State Department bosses, he included Calderón’s comment, to which, according to his own notes, the ambassador replied: “Gains on competitiveness, education, and employment could be quickly overshadowed by narcotics-related organized crime.” To jump-start Mexico’s economy, “foreigners and Mexicans alike had to be reassured that the rule of law would prevail.”[53] What became the Mérida Initiative was first discussed between President George W. Bush and his homologue Felipe Calderón in Mérida, Yucatan, in the spring of 2007. The Mérida Initiative was crafted in secret negotiations, which took place the following summer. “These negotiations were not public, and Members of both the U.S. and Mexican Congresses reportedly have expressed frustration that they were not involved in the discussions.”[54] The US State Department openly touts the success of Plan Colombia as an important factor in the creation of the Mérida Initiative, the Central America Regional Security Initiative and other similar plans. “We know from the work that the United States has supported in Colombia and now in Mexico that good leadership, proactive investments, and committed partnerships can turn the tide,” Hillary Clinton told delegates to the Central America Security Conference in Guatemala City in 2011.
As soon as Felipe Calderón was sworn in as Mexico’s president in December 2006, he announced that he would crack down on the drug trade. Less than a year later, Mexico announced the Mérida Initiative, a bilateral anti-narcotics initiative funded by the United States and Mexico. Critics immediately began calling the agreement Plan Mexico, after its predecessor, Plan Colombia, which ended in 2006. In 2007, the United States shifted its weight behind the war on drugs from Colombia to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. The drug war in Mexico has some features that set it apart from Colombia, the most imp
ortant of which is a shared physical border with the United States. A related dynamic of the drug war in Mexico, not present in Colombia, is the targeting of non-status migrants (mostly from Central America) as part of the conflict. The spike in attacks against and murders of migrants in Mexico has accompanied the creation of countrywide structures of paramilitary control, particularly by Los Zetas. The paramilitarization in Mexico differs from that in Colombia because of distinct historical, territorial, political, and economic roots of paramilitary and resistance forces. Paramilitaries have long existed throughout parts of Mexico with militant social movements, but the phenomenon has never been as widespread as it is today. Mexico’s guerrilla movements have historically been much smaller and more dispersed than those in Colombia, in part because of land tenure, which has generally been more equitable in Mexico than in Colombia. On the economic front, Mexico’s gross domestic product in 2010 was more than 3.5 times larger than Colombia’s, and Mexico’s economy is far more complex.[55] Despite the differences, there are important drug war precedents, first set in Colombia, now being applied in Mexico.