Mexico Fights Drug War on Its Own Terms

MEXICO CITY — Fernando Gastelum, a top security official in the state of Baja California Sur, was invited to lunch recently at a local military base. Little did he know that he was to be the main course.

As Gastelum sat down with other officials to discuss crime, an aide informed him that he had a phone call. Heading out of the dining room, he was seized by black-clad federal agents. Within hours, he was in detention in Mexico City.

The Mexican attorney general’s office charges that Gastelum organized a notorious 1995 shipment of cocaine--10 tons packed into a passenger jet that was met and unloaded by police in Baja California Sur. Gastelum says he is innocent.

To Mexican authorities, his detention last month is a key example of the skirmishes they are waging and winning in the war on drugs.

But if Mexico claims it is winning more and more battles, critics in the United States say the country is losing the war. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and other lawmakers are seeking to strip Mexico’s annual certification as a full partner in fighting drug trafficking, a step that would chill relations between the neighbors. The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on the measure today, although it is not expected to pass.

Who is right? To some extent, both sides are. Even skeptics praise the integrity of top Mexican anti-drug officials. But analysts say their victories pale before the size of the problem--a multibillion-dollar drug trade that supplies more than half the cocaine entering the United States.

The Mexican officials face odds that are often more daunting than those confronting anti-drug authorities in Los Angeles or New York. They must contend with widespread corruption, fragile institutions and traffickers who have billions of dollars at their disposal--thanks to U.S. drug users.

In addition, Mexican anti-drug officials must deal with a problem rarely acknowledged by authorities here or in the United States: There is little public support in Mexico for a high-profile fight against traffickers.

“There is nothing driving the government to wage a war on drugs,” political scientist Jorge Castaneda said, noting the low level of drug use in Mexico. Opinion polls routinely indicate that the trafficking problem is a low priority for Mexicans, far outweighed by such issues as common crime and unemployment.

“There’s no consensus in Mexico on this,” Castaneda said. “You can’t wage a war without consensus. It doesn’t happen. It didn’t happen in the U.S. [with] Vietnam. Why do countries lose wars? Because their people don’t want to fight them.”

Seeing Progress, but Big Obstacles Remain

Mexican officials say they have made progress despite the difficulties. In the past year, authorities have arrested several important members of the powerful Tijuana cartel. Its reputed leaders--the Arellano Felix brothers--are apparently lying low because of the pressure. The government also believes its pursuit of top trafficker Amado Carrillo Fuentes drove him to undergo extensive plastic surgery in July that cost him his life.

Meanwhile, a new law has resulted in 19 criminal cases against alleged money launderers. And a program to thoroughly vet the national anti-drug police force is bearing fruit: Nearly 900 members have passed the battery of background checks and drug tests, and 1,000 officers suspected of corruption have been fired.

“We’re beginning to see the first results, and we’ll consolidate them little by little,” said Mariano Herran Salvatti, who became Mexico’s anti-drug czar a year ago. “There is going to be a drop in the amount of drugs passing through [Mexico].”

But authorities face huge obstacles. Drug corruption has turned police and officials into well-paid allies of the traffickers. One trafficker alone--Carrillo Fuentes--is believed to have spent more on bribes per year than the entire budget of the Mexican Justice Department, which this year is $425 million.

Jesus Blancornelas would seem an unlikely fan of the government’s performance against drug traffickers. In November, the editor of a muckraking news weekly was attacked by gunmen allegedly working for the Arellano Felix brothers, just days after the state government suddenly withdrew his bodyguards. His car was riddled with 100 bullets, and he was seriously wounded.

Still, Blancornelas said federal authorities, in close cooperation with U.S. officials, are making progress against traffickers in Tijuana. The problem, he said, is that the federal police and army are sometimes frustrated by the very people who should be their allies--local authorities.

“The [federal prosecutor’s office] is working well in Tijuana,” he said. “But there’s corruption in the state prosecutor’s office.”

How Deep Does the Corruption Run?

Mexican officials say they are trying to expose corrupt local officials, and point to the Gastelum case as one example of progress. Gastelum is being held for questioning but has not been charged.

But some analysts wonder whether the corruption goes so deep that uprooting it would destabilize the political system. Raymundo Riva Palacio, a well-informed columnist for the daily El Financiero, recently wrote that the government has linked several top officials to Carrillo Fuentes. But the government took no action, he wrote.

“One explanation could be that the penetration of narcos in the government and society is so great, that the regime couldn’t handle unveiling it,” he wrote.

Mexico also suffers from weak institutions. During seven decades of one-party rule, the police and courts were often used to carry out the bidding of political leaders. Only recently have authorities tried to build a more professional, independent justice system.

Craig Chretien, who retired last fall from a senior post in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, praised the purge of the Mexican anti-drug force. But, he said, the selection of honest cops can’t fully compensate for a lack of experience.

“You’re still talking about at least one or two generations of police officers before you effect any real institutional changes,” he said. And that assumes that top anti-drug officials aren’t changed every year or two, as they have been.

Analysts here say the U.S. government must understand that Mexico’s democratic institutions are in their infancy.

“The Mexican state is under construction,” said Jorge Chabat, a political scientist who studies narcotics issues.

Little Political Pressure to Act

Further complicating the anti-narcotics fight is the lack of a clamor here for a war on drugs. Unlike in Colombia, where drugs became a major issue after traffickers assassinated politicians, journalists and judges, Mexican traffickers have largely aimed their guns at one another.

That means there is little political pressure to fight drug trafficking. No Mexican political party has made the issue a priority. Many Mexicans blame the United States, saying the drug trade is controlled not by their efforts here but by the great sniffing sound to the north.

And close cooperation with the United States is not a popular policy. To the Mexican government, such steps as sending soldiers for anti-drug training in the United States, or extraditing Mexican citizens, must be undertaken gingerly or even secretly, to avoid inflaming nationalist passions.

The drug issue has been largely overshadowed by issues such as Mexico’s sweeping political transformation, the economic crisis and soaring common crime. Still, while many Mexicans might not view drugs as a priority, the traffickers could be a severe threat to the country’s nascent democracy.

Luis Astorga, a sociologist who studies drug trafficking, notes that in the past, the authoritarian political system was strong enough to contain any challenge from criminals. But that system is crumbling and hasn’t yet been replaced by strong democratic institutions.

“These mechanisms [of control] have collapsed because of the deterioration of the political class,” he said. “The risks grow every day, because there are fewer and fewer controls.”

* FEINSTEIN ASSAILS MEXICO: Sen. Feinstein continues fight for decertification of Mexico as a full ally in war on drugs. A3