U.S. Relations with Mexico: The Height of Intrusiveness

Yesterday White House officials announced a bilateral meeting to take place March 3, 2011, in Washington D.C., between U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón. According to Philip Crowley, a spokesperson for the State Department, Calderón’s visit to the capital will present the opportunity to discuss the countries’ joint efforts, revise the current state of the Merida Initiative and renew the support that Mexico needs from the United States in these times.

At the meeting it will be impossible to avoid the revelations exposed in recent WikiLeaks releases. Documents published on the site in the last two weeks have revealed a bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Mexico marked by the U.S.’s subordination of the Mexican government. Within Mexico, the government has also uncovered constant illegal raids taking place, the presence of progressives in favor of Mexican sovereignty and the subordination of domestic politics — even more so than the suppression of public security matters — to the interests of Washington.

With these revelations in mind, it is disconcerting that in yesterday’s press release from Los Pinos confirming Thursday’s meeting, it was insisted upon that both countries agree on a so-called “common interest” when it comes to security. The truth is that there is really no connection between the acute crisis of public security posed by drug cartels in Mexico and the U.S.’s obsession to perpetuate the disastrous “war on terror,” which was launched by the Bush administration.

The divergence in interests between the two countries can be seen clearly in the fact that while Calderón’s government asks the U.S. for a maximum commitment in the a battle against violence carried out by drug traffickers, various sectors of the U.S. seem more interested in seeing this scourge continue to grow. The U.S. is also interested in seeing the arms industry continue to grow, which is why the violence in Mexico constitutes an excellent business opportunity as well as an opportunity for the U.S.’s political leadership, which claims to be alarmed by the blood bath in Mexico but does nothing to stop it. It is important for the U.S.’s political leaders to remember that last Saturday, the majority of the House of Representatives rejected establishing minimal regulations for the sale of arms in the U.S., including the requirement that gun retailers in the states bordering Mexico declare the sale of two or more assault rifles to a given person.

Moreover, Washington’s role in combating drug trafficking is far from the “compromise” to which the U.S. government’s spokespeople refer. Remember, for example, during the Iran-Contra crisis, U.S. intelligence agencies documented promotion of drug trafficking within the United States. The U.S. government actually tolerates the illegal trafficking of drugs within its borders, which happens with relative frequency and without the violence produced in similar transactions happening south of the Rio Grande. This substantiates the country’s slack attitude toward controlling arms trafficking in Mexico and eliminating money laundering in the U.S. financial sector.

The U.S.-promoted solutions to drug trafficking south of the border, which were adopted by Calderón’s administration in the context of the “war against organized crime,” have not only been inefficient but have also had counterproductive effects on Mexico, yielding hundreds of thousands of deaths, exacerbating violence and causing an institutional deterioration as well as a loss of control within an extended border territory. The U.S.’s purported solutions to drug trafficking have also evinced the lack of credibility and duplicitous moral discourse coming from Washington and, worse, the country’s interest in justifying interventionism in Mexico.

For these reasons, it is necessary that society demands that leaders report with truthfulness and transparency on agreements made during the upcoming meeting between the U.S. and Mexico in order to prevent the occasion from being exploited by the U.S. government as a new opportunity to increase its intrusive pressures on the Mexican government.