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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2009
World in View
Latin American Notes
Mexico--Since the beginning of Felipe Calderon's presidency, there has been a sharp escalation of the war on drug cartels centering on Calderon's unprecedented decision to involve tens of thousands of Mexican army troops in the fight. A military occupation of the border states and border cities like Ciudad Juarez has taken place. In response the narco-gangs have unleashed a reign of violence. Wars between narco-gangs involving execution-style murders, beheadings, kidnappings have erupted, with a dozen and more deaths every night. Attacks using sophisticated high-power weapons on police stations and police patrols as well as army troops are daily occurrences.
However, it is not simply a vicious shoot-out between rival drug gangs, and a war with the police and the military. Over many years the drug cartels have been smuggling drugs and bribing policemen, police chiefs, politicians and many others. The U.S. is strongly involved as well, not alone as the consumer of illegal drugs, but as the principal supplier of the high-powered, sophisticated weapons that the cartels use to outgun the police and military. An estimated 90% of captured weapons have their origin in the gun shops and weapon suppliers in the U.S.
Furthermore, a new report from a number of human rights organizations accuse the Mexican military of illegal searches, arrests without cause, rape, sexual abuse and torture. Mexico's National Human Rights Commission reported 1,230 complaints last year versus 182 in 2006.
The question of militarization is not alone a question of one side of the border. The governor of Texas is calling for 1,000 National Guard troops to be sent to the border areas of his state. This, in addition to the huge increase in border patrol agents that were deployed under the Bush administration.
One of the most alarming results of the Bush years was a policy that conflated the smuggling of illegal drugs across the border with the movement of undocumented workers north from Mexico and the countries of Central America. Thousands of border agents as well as immigrant agents inside the U.S. have spent their time pursuing non-citizens whose only crime is wanting to work. Meanwhile the drug wars spin out of control. Whether the Obama administration will separate drugs and undocumented workers, and push for a comprehensive immigration reform remains to be seen.
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El Salvador--In a remarkable victory, the candidate backed by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), Mauricio Funes, won the presidency of El Salvador. The defeat of the extreme right Nationalist Republican Alliance party (ARENA), after more than two decades of rule, marks a turning point. The FMLN had participated in a civil war in the 1980s and 1990s--a period marked by tens of thousands of murders and disappearances of Salvadoran citizens, including massacres of dozens at a time. The Salvadoran military and its paramilitary support groups were primarily responsible. After the peace accords were finally signed, ARENA-backed candidates continued in power. But their decades of rule proved a dead-end. Spiraling food prices and a runaway murder rate characterize El Salvador at the present moment.
While the election of an FMLN-backed candidate does mark a new beginning, it represents a difficult challenge. El Salvador's impoverishment is daunting, and fully 25% of its population is in exile, the majority in the U.S. Reestablishing local food production and creating a nationalized healthcare system are two priorities that Funes hopes to implement. El Salvador has now joined the movement to the left of many Latin American countries.
--Eugene Walker
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