Two Nightmares

The tragic events in Juarez City in recent weeks embody one of the worst nightmares of the United States: Bordering on Chaos, as Andrew Oppenheimer — years ago — titled a book about scandal in Mexico. The only difference is that the origin of this nightmare is not the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), not an authoritarian government, nor is it an electoral process that has unleashed violence and triggered complete political destabilization. The principal actor in this nightmare is organized crime, which has disrupted large areas of the Juarense society, areas which have been taken hostage and held under threat of death. The difference between political instability and the instability arising from crimes of the common order is not minor. In the first case, no responsibility could be attributed to the U.S. government; in the second case, criminal violence in the border area is linked to the fact that that country is the largest market for drug consumption — spurring drug trafficking — and is also the leading provider of high-powered weapons to drug traffickers. Therefore, it is a bilateral issue, and its solution calls for cooperation between the two countries.

One of the worst nightmares that plagues Americans is the influx of a large wave of Mexicans fleeing their country, driven either by poverty or violence, political or criminal. It matters little; the result is the same: a powerful destabilizing pressure on public services — education and health in the border towns of Texas, Arizona and California, on real estate, on employment, on wages and on public safety. By the same token, it should be easy to predict the exacerbation of social tensions resulting from the anxiety spread about by anti-Mexican commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs, who resigned from CNN in November and is considering starting a political career. Both men have made fortunes due to racial prejudice. Just consider the destructive impact that the massive influx of Palestinian refugees had on the Lebanese social fabric or the underlying reasons that led Miguel de la Madrid to participate actively in the resolution of Central American conflicts in the eighties. This decision had nothing to do with foreign policy, and much to do with the fear that refugees from the violence in Guatemala, for example, would destabilize a region with as fragile a balance as that of southeastern Mexico.

Cooperation on intelligence and security is a natural strategy for two countries that share three thousand kilometers of border, which rests on the assumption that security and management of this peculiar border is the responsibility of both countries. It is as if a homeowner, seeing a burglar prowling around a neighbor’s house, decided to keep quiet about it. Such silence could make the homeowner an enemy, if the neighbor is subsequently assaulted. However, in the case of the bilateral relationship between Mexico and U.S., cooperation poses certain dilemmas, not easily resolved, arising from the depth of the asymmetry between the U.S. and Mexico. The differences between the two countries force a certain quarrelsome tone into their relations, different than that which normally governs bilateral cooperation. When trying to turn a decision about joint work into concrete institutions or specific measures, the enormous differences that separate them crop up: One is tempted to impose its will, and the other is tempted to resist such treatment, even though both lose out in the end.

The nightmare for Mexicans is the intervention of the U.S. police or military forces in their sovereign territory, among other reasons, because wherever the U.S. enters, it usually stays. In other circumstances and places, the murder of two U.S. citizens has been sufficient justification for an intervention of this nature. If this were to happen here, it would be an international scandal, but in the end, a powerful one that could justify itself by referring to the growing difficulties the government of President Calderon has in ensuring public safety. However, a police or military intervention by the U.S. in our territory would be a mortal blow to the Mexican president — an effect probably sought after by drug dealers, because the attack on the consular officers hints at provocation. Washington rejects this apparent effect; at least, that is the attitude revealed by the statements of President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Janet Napolitano, head of the powerful Department of Homeland Security. All of these have rushed to express support for the Mexican government. Under these conditions, cooperation, with its costs and ambiguities, is the only way of averting the two nightmares.