Bloggers of The Americas

Iván Gerardo Cruz - Author/Contributor of Bloggers of The Americas

Among all countries in The Americas , Mexico and Colombia are two of the american nations with greater Hispanic historical, literary, visual arts and cultural heritage. They also enjoy the good reputation of giving birth to the most beautiful women on the continent, comparable only, to be fair, with the Venezuelan and Puerto Rican.

Their cuisines are envied in many places. And when partying or going to a musical concert to there is no better way than going to see Shakira, Juanes and Vives, or why not with Paulina Rubio, Maná, Julieta Venegas and Luis Miguel. But unfortunately not everything is rosy for these two beautiful countries. They also share the greatest scourge that a state and society can have : drug trafficking.
Drug traffickers in both countries have historically been partners in the more lucrative and dangerous “business” in the world. For over 30 years, thousands of tons of cocaine have been sent from Colombia to Mexico, via different routes. Theses cocaine shipments  later end up in Europe and the U.S., where the largest number of consumers are.

From 1985 to 1995, Colombia lived a decade of terror that killed over  twenty thousand people due to the great crusade of the Colombian state security forces battling against drug trafficking. Then, the Colombian  Cartels were fighting using  all its devastating force to prevent the signing of an extradition treaty with the United States.

During that time and for over five years, Colombians live with all types of terrorist attacks, especially car bombs. Politicians, judges, magistrates, prosecutors, military, police, lawyers, human rights defenders, and even athletes were victims of the drug cartels and its cruel bombs and murderous bullets.

Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, alias El Ajedrecista

They were also thousands of victims who died in the war between the same drug Cartels: in Cali, the Valle del Norte, Medellin and the Atlantic Coast. Their own families, in many cases, paid with great pain for the betrayal, theft and showdowns.
Today, Mexico reminds me of those years in Colombia, when terrorist attacks were the daily bread, when police chiefs were shot every week, when the massacres did not longer astonished the people , not even the most naive and innocent of the Colombian peasants.

Death of Pablo Escobar

In those days no one could feel safe being in any public market or mall. At any moment a car bomb could explode , in any place, it could be outside the mall or a bomb in an elevator, within the same site. Every week, whole families appeared killed , caused by Colombian Mafia vendettas, ordered by murderous drug lords like Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha.

Tragic own goal of Andrés, lately assasinated in Medellín.

In Mexico, cases like the player of the soccer team América, Salvador Cabañas, who although has not been linked to Mexican drug, can now show us the degradation and insecurity prevailing in Mexico City caused largely by the power of drug traffickers who make and unmake according to their will. Those images immediately took me back to Medellin and I do remember the absurd death of Andrés Escobar, footballer of the Atlético Nacional and player of the Colombian national soccer team. He was just 24 years old, and was killed by gunmen at the service of drug traffickers, assassinated only because he accidentally scored one goal against his own team during  the World Football Championship of U.S. 94.  When I think of this heinous crime, I still can not believe it really happened.

Those years were extremely difficult for the good guys in Colombia. In cities like Cali and Medellin was very dangerous to go out to a disco with your partner without encountering a defiant and brutish drug lord , full of bodyguards, dressed outlandishly, who wanted to dance with your girlfriend or wife, or in worst cases, taking her with him. It was the price millions of Colombians had to pay for a little over ten years to get rid of     the terrorism and barbarism of the narcos.

President of Mexico Felipe Calderon and President of Colombia Alvaro Uribe, face the same challenge.

Only through a tenacious warfare determined and conducted by the Colombian state, and with the cooperation of other governments and the use of high technology,  Colombia started gradually with the process of defeating the wild bunch of drug lords who managed to kneel the country, by bribing the Justice and the politicians and by intimidating the colombian society.

 However, and unfortunately, the drug has not been totally defeated in Colombia. Many insist that today Colombia exports more tons of cocaine than 20 years ago. Fortunately and somewhat to mitigate the sad feeling for failing to exterminate  all of these criminals, the new drug dealers also understood in a way that an open struggle against the Colombian state was what least suited them and that sooner or later they were going to lose, like Pablo Escobar Gaviria missed.
So now these criminals work in another way: quietly. They do not show their wealth and they do operate using a low profile, even many are lawyers or business managers and they managed to publicly appear as such. As a comfort to many, at least now Colombia does not live in the midst of death and the terrorist attacks of that time.
I personally have the feeling that governments can do more to tackle drug traffickers in a more strongly way, but unfortunately it is even stronger the corrupting power of drug money, able to turn almost anybody, from senior generals of the republic , to a minister of justice, or judge, even the most ’straight’ from the police corporals.

You don´t need to be a soothsayer  to realize that the Mexican society and institutions are going through the same thing : hard times on account of the struggle that President Felipe Calderón declared against the narco.
Nor is it a secret that the outcome of this battle during the last three years in Mexico are not what everyone expected or else just ask former Foreign Secretary Castañeda,  and that the efforts of the Mexican Armed Forces and the Police apparently are too weak  to successfully confront  the Mexican drug cartels and its power  both militarily and economic , of corruption and intimidation of Mexicans, by using barbaric methods far more vicious and cruel that they met and still practiced in Colombia.
Colombian experts in the anti-narcotics fight,  as well as Colombian police and military, frequently travel to Mexico City and other Mexican cities in order to give theoretical  lectures and dictate practical courses, workshops, seminars and in schools, on matters about how best to prepare for and counter the violent methods used by the Mexican cartels.

Castañeda argues that Mexico shouldn´t  have declared war on narco.

Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's foreign minister under Fox, had spied for Cuba, according to declassified report published by El Universal, February 4th, 2008 and by PoliticalWarfare.org

Now what really strikes me is that the former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda,  just a few days ago,  said in his column in the newspaper El Pais in Spain, that President  Calderón was wrong when he decided to openly declare war on Mexican drug traffickers.

Obviously Castañeda is the wrong one, although his arguments does have enough weight to be exposed in the way he did, and maybe many will think that his thesis could be right. That’s why his words should be analyzed in depth.
The fact that they are not great results in the fight against the Mexican cartels, despite several sharp blows of the state, including the capture of drug lords and a number of extraditions to the United States, does not justify Castañeda´s  hasty statements on the issue and can´t dismiss the performance of the Mexican security agencies.
Castaneda goes further and compares Irak with Mexico. He says that the war in Iraq and the war against drug trafficking in Mexico were choices made by the governments, both wars difficult to win and they should not have taken. In regard to the Mexican case, his argument is based in large part,  in the increasing of  the homicide rate,  overflowed after the crusade against cartels. He said that before the war declaration, it was only 10 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants in Mexico, behind countries like Brazil (25 ), Colombia (37) and Venezuela (48).
Now , what Mr. Castaneda forgot to mention in his controversial column is the analysis of  the levels of corruption to which Mexican officials came before Calderon, thanks to the ability of penetration and infiltration of drug traffickers in the institutions of justice, government and the armed forces of the state,  to break the will of much of the country and to act at ease before the blind eyes of the Vicente Fox administration.
It was therefore necessary to change in Mexico, to change attitudes, government, president, and to recuperate the moral values. That is why  the whole country applauded Calderon’s decision to declare war on drugs in Mexico, and to face a very serious problem that threatened to turn Mexico into a narco-state as it came to be under the governments in  Colombia of the former presidents Cesar Gaviria, Ernesto Samper and Andres Pastrana, being the Colombian President Gaviria –also former secretary of the OAS- the one in charge of waging the war that ended with the death of Pablo Escobar and the apparent weakening of the Cartel´s of that time in Colombia .

In this way the Mexicans have begun in recent years to restore the morale of its public officials, its police, its armed forces, governors and their society. It is clear that the Mexican war on drugs is just in the starting phase and it also for sure that they can not win by themselves, they need the assistance of other countries, and it is also unfortunately clear  the war will last for at least another decade, remaining optimistic.

They will need strong support from the U.S. and its technology, they will also need the help of Colombia and its experience in this field.  But more than that, they are going to need the goodwill and continuity of the next governments to come in Mexico.  They will need another Calderón,  or perhaps Calderón himself, just to finish the hard work.
Castañeda may not be that wrong.  Maybe he is right when he says that the way to defeat drug traffickers is not the armed confrontation with the drug lords and Cartel´s  and maybe his view is as valid as that of former Presidents Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, that is to decriminalize the minimum personal consumption of illegal narcotics as the most feasible alternative to end the great scourge in Colombia, Mexico, United States and around the world.
But  the former minister  was wrong to say that Calderón´s decision was a failure, or that the president´s act was crazy, insane.  Without a clear legal framework to combat drug trafficking in Mexico, the only way to defeat them was by declaring war and starting a armed struggle. And now  Calderon and Mexico are on the right track, in spite of the growing number of victims, which often are part of the conflict and are not as innocent as people think through the news.
If Calderon had not acted in time in Mexico, the drug mafia  would be far more powerful today, the country would be completely penetrated by the tentacles of the drug mob and the mexican society would be adrift amid a dark landscape dominated by dirty money and  criminality.
The hardest time is to come. Mexico still does not reach its “ Proceso 8,000 ” – this was a chapter of the Colombian war on drugs in which the fragile Colombian justice put into trial dozens of politicians, businessmen, journalists, and members of the same justice system, who were bribed by drug money in exchange for favors.

The fight against drug trafficking in Mexico should continue, strongly and decisively.  Hitting the big “capos”  with strength , weakening the structure of the cartel´s, boosting the morale of the armed forces and especially of the Mexican justice, and to prevent corruption of officials are the main tasks. Not easy to achieve but not impossible. So Mexico reminds me of what Colombia experienced.