Sol Sanders Archive

Our splendid isolation is over: Time to move Mexico off the security back burner

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The U.S. had, after all, lived in splendid isolation from the early 19th century with two non-threatening neighbors. In the post-World War II years, Washington concentrated on Europe and then Asia, with problems thought of as being “over there”. But increasingly, I prophesied, a crisis might come if Mexico’s deep social, political and economic problems were not resolved.

A generation later, we may be at that marker.

While it may be true, as Administration spokesmen claim, that the southern border has never received more security resources, that statistics show amelioration — decline in illegal crossings, increase in expulsions of criminal illegals, increased apprehension of drug traffickers, etc. — Mexico’s crisis at the same time appears deepening. That can only lead to a growing threat to U.S. domestic tranquility.

It starts with the economy: Mexico has been an important victim of the worldwide recession. Its gross national product has skidded — dropping 6.5 percent in 2009 alone. But even during the earlier boom, Mexico grew at under 2 percent annually — less than the Latin America average which it once led. Although Mexico’s 112 million are increasing by only 1 percent a year, 50 percent of its people are under 25. That means the search for jobs will continue to challenge Mexico’s resources — and the U.S. border.

But economic development may not be the main ingredient of Mexico’s dilemma. Note that Ciudad Juarez, El Paso’s twin city just across the Rio Grand River, has had remarkable growth. Yet today it is a center of the murderous three-cornered war between the government and competing drug gangs.

It’s not that there has not been progress. Politically, Mexico in 2000 broke from almost a century of authoritarianism. But after waiting for decades, the Catholic-oriented National Action Party has produced two less than stellar presidents [handicapped by limitation to one six-year term] and an almost paralyzed legislature. Perhaps that was “inevitable” given the preceding overwhelmingly corrupt if populist dictatorship.

But political processes are dysfunctional. A crippled judicial system, for example, cannot disentangle 1930s Marxist land tenure laws inhibiting agriculture which, again, trails most of Latin America even with an enormous market next door.

Ironically, one of the contributing factors to political immobility was the 1970s discovery of new oilfields permitting government survival on an inoperative tax base. But it has led to crushing consumption taxes and stultifying indecision for domestic and foreign investors. And just as anachronistically, a corrupt union has used nationalism to block international investment to maximize Mexican fossil fuel reserves. That is leading to long-term declining revenues, intensifying the economic malaise.

The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, an attempt to unify U.S., Canadian and Mexican markets has benefited Mexico as it has the other partners. But, again, it has made Mexico more vulnerable to the American market, not least from the flood of competing Chinese imports.

If illegal border crossings are down now, it is largely a function of diminished U.S. jobs for unskilled workers. At the same time, remittances to families back in Mexico are expected to fall by another $4 billion this year, down from about $25.1 billion in 2008 slightly more than $21 billion in 2009.

What has this thumbnail sketch got to do with the U.S.?

Mexico’s failure to provide economic opportunity for a growing work force has unleashed violent gang warfare among drug traffickers. The continuing — and in some key areas, growth — of U.S. illicit drug consumption provides an unquenchable market for these Mexican gangsters, increasingly operating with international sophistication.

President Felipe Calderon has been blamed by some for the growing violence by unleashing an all-out attempt to destroy the drug cartels. It may well be his campaign has spurred the internecine war among the druglords. But it is hard to see how he had any alternative, with their growing infiltration into the police and other government organs threatening to turn Mexico into a narcostate.

Near stalemate in Calderon’s war on the cartels has Mexico suffering — 28,000 casualties since 2006. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence the druglords’ tentacles reach into the U.S. Marijuana grown by the Mexican cartels has been found on American territory. Some experts claim the cartels are functioning in more than 200 American cities. Mexico’s border violence has occasionally slopped over — something Arizona lawmakers forcibly have tried to bring to Washington’s attention.

All this represents the early signs of a volcano erupting on the U.S.’ southern border. As with domestic breakdowns in other countries, it is not clear what the U.S. can and should do. But it is certain Mexico now warrants Washington’s prioritized attention.