Mexico: Democracy Interrupted by Jo Tuckman

Author:Jo Tuckman [Tuckman, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: history, Latin America, Mexico, Modern, 21st Century, political science, Political Ideologies, democracy
ISBN: 9780300160314
Google: sJ_LwAEACAAJ
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2012-06-26T00:24:46.294523+00:00

As evidence of increasingly direct US involvement continued, it emerged that some of it was going on at the edges of Mexican law, which places tight limits on what foreign agents can do on Mexican territory. Most of the revelations came from US media investigations, much of it in the New York Times. In March 2011, the paper reported that unarmed US surveillance drones were flying deep into Mexico. In August it revealed that CIA operatives and civilian military employees were posted at a Mexican military base, advising on operations. The paper said the idea was modelled on the ‘fusion intelligence centers’ set up by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq to keep an eye on insurgent groups. By the end of the year, another story emerged, quoting DEA agents talking about how they routinely laundered millions of dollars in drug money in an effort to get to high-level operators and so as not to blow their cover. It was not clear whether the Mexican government knew about this or not.

All of these stories were controversial, but none compared to the revelation in the US media, also in 2011, of a secret gun-tracking operation – codenamed Fast and Furious – that was run out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Beginning in November 2009, the ATF field offices in Arizona and New Mexico deliberately allowed ‘straw buyers’ to stock up on weapons from US dealers and deposit them in safe houses. The operation was supposed to track the guns and see what happened next. The blindingly obvious problem with this was that the ATF lost sight of the marked guns once they had crossed the border, and only began to catch up with them again when they turned up at crime scenes. Thousands of firearms were allowed to ‘walk’ in this way.

The operation came to light after one of the weapons was linked to the shooting of a Border Patrol agent in Arizona, prompting whistleblowers to reveal both the operation and the way their concerns had been overridden by superiors. There followed congressional hearings, during which a string of high-level officials denied all knowledge. The officials also confirmed Mexican claims that the Mexican authorities had not been informed of what was going on. It appeared that not even the US embassy in Mexico had known what was going on.

The US ambassador might moan about the lack of communication, coordination or efficiency within the Mexican authorities that was hampering the Calderón offensive, but growing US inter-agency involvement was hardly a beacon to follow. Nor did it appear to be of any great assistance, and it certainly did not help President Calderón's efforts to convince the Mexican public that he was taking Mexico down a road that would ultimately deliver security. As he himself acknowledged several times in interviews, the struggle against organized crime was also a matter of perception, and that was obviously not going very well. One of the problems was that the government not only

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