The United States and Mexico, Out of Tune

This Friday, Washington will make another attempt in order to tune the actions of Mexico and the United States in their support against the gangs of organized crime. It would be an exaggeration to say that each nation has a different course, although there are meeting points; certainly there are two distinct viewpoints, and each one is phenomenal in its own way. The irrefutable proof of the differences can be found in the border cities such as a Juarez and El Paso, separated by a few meters, where people live diametrically different security conditions. While the Mexican city is one of the most dangerous in the continent, the American city is one of the safest in their country. This in spite of the integration of the same criminal groups operating on both sides of the Rio Grande.

What do the Americans want? Their objective is to have a safe border. To remove at all cost terrorist groups that get into their territory in order to commit acts against the United States population. They are in the fight against terrorism, and in order to better care for their southern border, they assume direct control of the strategy and actions of the Mexican government in matters of security. Their central position is not to detain drug traffic or to stop the migration in its tracks. What they are searching for is to get control of the process in order to regulate traffic; I am referring to the drugs and the people as it suits their interest and needs.

As the security crisis in Mexican territory worsens, there is a natural worry in the United States about the violence getting out of control and the criminal gangs moving their bloody disputes to the streets of North American counties. That is why it is disconcerting that they do not undertake an action that would help lower the level of violence, as to detain the trafficking of high power weapons, and lower consumption in order to shrink the market and combat money laundering. They limit themselves to criticizing us, discrediting the armed forces and emitting travel alerts so their citizens think twice before entering a Mexican territory.

What does Mexico want? To re-establish state sovereignty in all of its national territory, there can no longer be zones where criminals dispute the dominance of the government’s power to diminish the level of violence. What we are searching for is to avoid growing and strengthening the theory of the failed state. What is indispensable is to dismantle the largest cartels like the Pacific, the Gulf and the Zetas, who daily challenge the formal power of the federal government. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be significant advances. The violence did not decrease and the sensation of drugs between the citizens and drug consumption worsened; the Mexican population, far from diminishing, increases.

Can we tune ourselves? We had better. There are enormous fields of opportunities that have practically not been touched and do not have direct relation to the criminal aspect of the problem. Both countries could, for example, undertake a common cause against drug consumption. The two could work together in the detection of financial operations suspected of using dirty money and create a new border surveillance program. Not to mention constant communication with countries that produce drugs and those in Central America that serve for drug traffickers as a place to camp and acquire supplies.

The trouble is that the will to work together is weaker than the suspicions and resentment. The pathetic case of the Merida Initiative is extremely illustrative. This initiative advances slowly and its progress is really imperceptible. The Americans label the aid aspect and accesses to intelligence information as human rights. That is why aid arrives little by little and makes a great fuss when it arrives in a helicopter. Neither of the two countries wishes for the common border, one of the largest in the world, to be a no man’s land with gangs of gunmen imposing their law and settling their differences with blood and fire. In a river of unrest, terrorists and hit men profit.