Mexico

DrugSense

New York Times, 18 May 2013 - MEXICO CITY - A comprehensive report on drug policy in the Americas released Friday by a consortium of nations suggests that the legalization of marijuana, but not other illicit drugs, be considered among a range of ideas to reassess how the drug war is carried out. The report, released by the Organization of American States walked a careful line in not recommending any single approach to the drug problem and encouraging "flexibility."

Washington Post, 15 May 2013 - The New President's Decision to Rein in U.S. Agents Spurs Dismay in Washington, Highlighting Divisions Over Goals and Costs MEXICO CITY - The recent changes ordered by new President Enrique Pena Nieto to Mexico's anti-narcotics partnership with the United States have produced markedly different reactions here and in Washington, underscoring what appear to be diverging perceptions of the drug war's goals and the costs of fighting it.

In a sharp break with the policies of his predecessor, recently installed Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto is moving to restrict the open relationships US law enforcement, intelligence, and security agencies have developed with their Mexican counterparts as the two countries attempt to repress violent and powerful Mexican drug trafficking organizations, the so-called cartels.

[image:1 align:right caption:true]The move was hinted at broadly in the Washington Post Sunday and confirmed by the Associated Press Monday. The AP cited deputy foreign secretary for North American affairs Sergio Alcocer as saying that all US law enforcement contacts with Mexican agencies will go through "a single window," the Mexican Interior Ministry.

Mexico has had a historically prickly relationship with US drug law enforcers, but under former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, whose term ended in December, US law enforcement and security cooperation with Mexican agencies expanded dramatically. The DEA, as well as the FBI, CIA, and Border Patrol, had agents working directly with units of the Mexican Federal Police, the army, and the navy.

US law enforcement and security agencies worked closely with their Mexican counterparts on a strategy that aimed at arresting or killing top cartel figures, and managed to eliminate dozens of them, but at the same time, prohibition-related violence only mounted, with the death toll somewhere above 70,000 during Calderon's six-year term. The incoming Pena Nieto administration has previously signaled that it wants to shift away from high-profile target strategy to one centered on crime prevention.

The Pena Nieto administration also represents a reversion to governance by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had famously ruled Mexico as "the perfect dictatorship" for most of the 20th Century before falling to conservative National Action Party (PAN) presidential candidate Vicente Fox in 2000. Like Fox, Calderon ran under the PAN banner and cultivated closer relations with the US, especially on drug enforcement, than the PRI ever had. The PRI's relationships with US drug enforcers could be characterized as one of mutual suspicion and distrust, with occasional bouts of cooperation.

As the Washington Post reported, high-ranking incoming PRI officials who met with US DEA, CIA, FBI, and other security representatives in December were stunned and "remained stone-faced as they learned for the first time just how entwined the two countries had become during the battle against narco-traffickers, and how, in the process, the United States had been given near-complete entree to Mexico's territory and the secrets of its citizens."

Now, the Pena Nieto government is moving to get a better grip on the assistance it gets from its neighbor to the north. It was in the interest of Mexico to do so, Alcocer said. "The issue before is that there was a lack of coordination because there was not a single entity in the Mexican government that was coordinating all the efforts," he told the AP. "Nobody knew what was going on."

The DEA and other agencies declined comment, leaving it the State Department, which said it looks forward to "continued close cooperation" with Mexico. President Obama flies to Mexico City Thursday for a meeting with Pena Nieto, whose administration says it wants to expand its bilateral agenda with the US beyond drugs and immigration, as well as shift from dramatic law enforcement actions to crime prevention and public safety.

"For us the security theme is one of our top priorities, but it's not the only one," Alcocer said. "The relationship has issues such as the economy and trade, advanced manufacturing, infrastructure, energy."

New York Times Magazine, 21 Apr 2013 - Early on a December morning, Robert Coogan pulled his red Chevy hatchback into the parking lot of the state prison in Saltillo, Mexico. It was frigid outside, the sun had not yet cleared the reddish mountains, and Coogan lingered, staring at the tall black letters on the prison's high walls: "CERESO" - Centro de Reinsercion Social, the place where criminals are supposed to be reformed. Coogan, who has served as chaplain at the prison for a decade, slowly pulled himself from the warm car. In dark jeans, brown boots and a thick gray sweater, he looked more like a factory foreman than a Brooklyn-born priest.

Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel dominates the methamphetamine trade in the Asia-Pacific-Mexico-US area, controlling 80% of the market, according to a Mexican security report released this week.

[image:1 align:right caption:true]The report, "Methamphetamine Traffic: Asia-Mexico-United States," by researcher Jose Luis León, was presented as part of the 2012 Security and Defense Atlas of Mexico (both are in Spanish), which was released this week. It estimates the Sinaloa Cartel's take from meth sales at about $3 billion a year.

The Sinaloa Cartel, Mexico's most powerful, is headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, one of the world's wealthiest criminals, as well as Mexico's most wanted fugitive. Guzman has eluded capture since escaping from a Mexican prison in 2001. The US Treasury Department considers Guzman the most powerful drug trafficker in the world.

The Sinaloa Cartel has been a leading actor in the prohibition-related violence that has plagued Mexico, especially since former President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels in December 2006. At least 70,000 have been killed in the violence, much of which pits the Sinaloa Cartel against national-level competitors such as the Zetas, as well as against regionally-based rivals.

"The Sinaloa cartel is an authentic global enterprise since both their markets and products exhibit a high degree of diversification," León said in his report.

In addition to methamphetamine, the Sinaloa Cartel traffics cocaine, marijuana, and opiates throughout North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. It also purchases precursor chemicals from China, India, and Thailand, which in uses in drug production laboratories hidden away in the cartel's Western Mexican heartland.