MEXICO CITY, Mexico – Mexico’s massive wave of drug killings can be traced to outgoing president Felipe Calderon’s failed security strategy — and stemming the bloodshed will be a key challenge for his successor.
Soon after his inauguration in 2006, Calderon pitted some 50,000 soldiers against cartels in an all-out offensive against drug trafficking. Experts say the main result was a spike in violence, particularly after 2009.
At last count, more than 47,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence from the time Calderon took office, according to government figures running through September 2011.
More than 7,000 people were murdered in the first half of 2012, a 10 percent jump over the previous six months, a study out this week by Lantia Consultants found.
If this trend continues, the death tally will surpass 60,000 by the end of November, when Calderon’s six-year-term ends.
“For any government, to speak of 60,000 victims in a country with no officially-recognized internal conflict is a clear proof of failure,” said Erubiel Tirado, a security expert at the Iberoamericana University.
Calderon has touted the news that, since he took office, 22 of 37 of the “most dangerous criminal leaders in Mexico” have been captured or killed.
But experts say even this apparent victory is not so clear-cut.
A study by Eduardo Guerrero, published in July’s Nexus magazine, found the government’s strategy of targeting gang leaders has actually led to more murders, maimings and kidnappings across larger swaths of the country.
Cartel violence had previously been concentrated in six of the 32 Mexican states, Guerrero found.
But starting in 2009, deadly turf battles spread across wider areas and even into the states with Mexico’s biggest cities, including Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Veracruz — which, before then, had been largely spared.
According to Guerrero, “following this strategy without taking measures to contain the increase in violence was irresponsible.”
Numerous NGOs, including Amnesty International, have also denounced numerous and serious human rights violations committed by the Mexican army, saying it was ill-prepared for internal security tasks as it undertook Calderon’s anti-drug offensive.
Security expert Tirado said that when Calderon put his military strategy in place — as protests over contested election results still filled the streets — “there was an intention of legitimizing his presidential stature.”
But the analyst acknowledged that the new president inherited a collapsed security infrastructure, and “didn’t have many options.”
Calderon and his National Action Party were soundly defeated in the July 1 election — for most commentators, a loss directly traced to security policy failures.
They say the next administration will have to move quickly to address the issue when it assumes power in December.
President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party — which ruled Mexico for more than seven decades until 2000 — has promised a “new strategy” in the war on drugs, one aimed at protecting ordinary people instead of making showy busts.
He has also pledged to wage his battle “without pacts or truces” — a nod to the strategy his party was previously known for, of looking the other way while drugs were sent north of the border as long as the cartels did not commit violence within Mexico.
However, he has yet to offer many details of exactly what he plans to change. – Jean-Claude Boksenbaum, Agence France-Presse
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