The war on drugs, funded in part by an American military aid package to Mexico known as The Mérida Initiative, has intensified the violence it was meant to stop.
On September 26, 2014, on a rainy evening in Southern Mexico, a group of student teachers, known as normalistas, commandeered several buses in the rural city of Iguala, Guerrero. It wasn’t so much larceny as an irritation to residents, a tradition of “borrowing” the buses to attend an assembly in Mexico City to commemorate the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre.
Within a few hours of getting on the buses, a night of tradition and remembrance became one of bedlam and violence. By the next morning, after several shootings involving criminal gangs, police and the army, six people were dead, and forty-three of those students had been disappeared, leaving, officially, no trace of evidence. The locals blamed the state and army. The state blamed the local mayor and his wife because of their alleged ties to the Beltrán Leyva cartel. Witnesses said the police turned the students over to the gangs who killed them.
The 43, as they came to be known, have not been found. In early October of 2014, a mass grave containing 28 charred bodies was discovered near Iguala. Days later a second mass grave containing 15 bodies was discovered nearby. Within ten days the Attorney General’s Office said none of the remains matched the missing students.1 Then, who were they? We don’t know. In July of 2020, bone fragments confirmed to be from one of the students were discovered near the area of the disappearance.2
Precisely who is responsible for the attacks and disappearance remains in dispute. Area CCTV footage as well as a witness statement suggest the local authorities turned the students over to the Guerreros Unidos gang. The students may have been participating in a protest against the mayor’s policies. Family members have long insisted the military was involved. Anabel Hernandez, an investigative reporter from Mexico and author of the book, “A Massacre in Mexico,” has claimed her sources inside the cartels say the students inadvertently commandeered a bus that had two-million dollars’ worth of heroin hidden in secret compartments.
The fact that there were several shootings throughout the night raises questions about who was fighting whom, and for what. Why kill unarmed students who had simply made a mistake?
Many questions may never be answered, but one point remains. The army at that scene came under the command of General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, a former defense secretary who was recently released from US federal detention, ostensibly to be tried in Mexico. He had been arrested for taking bribes from the H2 cartel and alerting the cartel jefes about impending raids and counter-narcotics plans. In January of this year, Mexico dropped the charges against the general and published the evidence provided by US authorities, claiming the US had fabricated it.
His apprehension followed the arrests of two other high-level officials from the Mexican government, Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna and Iván Reyes Arzate, the head of the Sensitive Investigative Unit (SIU), a group accused of numerous human rights violations and trained with funds provided through the Mérida Initiative.3
These men were once trusted by the US government as part of the cooperative effort Mérida was purported to be. Both Luna and Arzate are being held on charges they took millions in bribes from the cartels, the transnational organized crime groups that Mérida-funded operations were intended to extinguish.
In fact, their cooperation and loyalty were seen as critical to the success of the Initiative. In May of 2010, U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual wrote a cable in which he stated, “If equipment and training are provided to corrupt individuals, the [U.S. government] will have accomplished nothing more than provide expertise and technology to individuals who may use it to undermine all [U.S. government] efforts in Mexico. The bottom line is that if Control de Confianza fails, Merida fails.”
Ten years after that prescient cable, Mérida may be failing.
The Initiative
In March 2007, President George W. Bush met Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón in Mérida, Mexico. They agreed to significantly increase cooperation to break up the cartels and create a culture of lawfulness in Mexico. The Mérida Initiative effectively rerouted American aid dollars from Plan Columbia to Mexico in yet another tactic in the perpetual failure that is the War on Drugs.
The State Department issued a joint declaration in 2007 on the Mérida Initiative in which they said, “The United States and Mexico will make it a priority to break the power and impunity of drug and criminal organizations that threaten the health and public safety of their citizens and the stability and security of the region.”
In a 2010 review of Mérida, The Wilson Center reported that the Initiative, “included a U.S. commitment to provide $1.4 billion in equipment, training, and technical assistance to Mexico over three years.”
The report loosely explained where the money was spent. “While the majority of U.S. funding in the first phase of the Mérida Initiative went to expensive equipment, particularly aircraft, the new approach shifts the focus toward institution building. It will attempt to create successful pilot projects, most likely in Tijuana and/or Ciudad Juarez, using a comprehensive approach to public security that could presumably be replicated in other parts of Mexico.”
Those presumptions have turned out to be laughable at best. The only things replicated in other parts of Mexico were corruption, torture, and murder. As Alejandro said in Sicario, “Welcome to Juarez.”
Some of the money was spent to train specialized investigative and operations units (Counter-Narcotics Units, Spec-Ops Groups, Marines etc) within the Mexican military and law enforcement. Several of those units have participated in or been indirectly responsible for, some of the most atrocious affronts to human rights, committed under the color of authority, that have been documented north of Colombia.4
The Mérida Initiative technically expired in 2010 but was rebooted by the Obama administration and the Clinton State Department.5 The “Beyond Merida” strategy was built on four pillars which were intended to evaporate the culture of criminality and begin to institute an accusatorial justice system, similar to the US courts system. They are as follows:
1. Combating transnational criminal organizations through intelligence sharing and law enforcement operations;
2. Institutionalizing the rule of law while protecting human rights through justice sector reform, forensic equipment and training; and police/corrections reform;
3. Creating a 21st -century U.S.-Mexican border while improving immigration enforcement in Mexico; and,
4. Building strong and resilient communities by piloting approaches to address root causes of violence, reduce drug demand, and build a “culture of lawfulness” through education programs.
The Initiative was elucidated through five points provided by the US/Mexico Consulates:
1. “…the focus of Mérida Initiative funding has been to support Mexico’s efforts to strengthen its law enforcement institutions, enhance criminal prosecutions and the rule of law, build public confidence in the justice sector, improve border security, promote greater respect for human rights, and prevent crime and violence.”
2. “The shared goal of the United States and Mexico is to support the capacity of a wide variety of Mexican security and justice sector institutions and personnel at the federal, state, and local levels to combat and prosecute transnational criminal organizations, to keep citizens and communities safe on both sides of the border.”
3. All projects are agreed upon by the US and Mexican governments, then State implements the projects through various US agencies.
4. “Mexican government recipients include SEGOB, INM, PF, (Dept of the Interior, Immigration, and Federal Police) and state government security and justice agencies. The training and equipment supports actors and institutions across the chain of justice…”
5. The Mérida Initiative does not “direct” joint military or law enforcement operations. State claims, “The Merida Initiative program has never provided weapons or ammunition to Mexican military or police.”
Curiously, State found it necessary to preempt any discussion that the US military would be deployed in this joint effort. “The strategies also include training programs and two-way exchanges of experts, but do not contemplate the deployment of U.S. military personnel in Mexico.” Things have a way of changing. It’s unknown at what level US special forces may have assisted with or guided the arrest of Pablo “El Chapo” Guzman in 2016.
In contrast, the current President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, known colloquially as AMLO, ran on an acquiescent “Hugs Not Bullets” strategy for dealing with the cartels. AMLO’s “abrazos no balazos” campaign was critical of the war on drugs. AMLO said in a series of news conferences, “This is no longer a war. It is no longer about force, confrontation, annihilation, extermination, or killing in the heat of the moment. This is about thinking how to save lives and achieve peace and tranquility in the country using other methods.”
In 2019, as reported in Mexico News Daily, AMLO said he wanted to end the Mérida Initiative, in favor of direct funds that could be used for “development and job creation.” He said they didn’t need armed helicopters and other military support. That year, Congress appropriated $145mm for Mérida-funded accounts (68M above budget request).
In a relatively under-reported legislative development, on December 15, 2020, the lower House of Congress approved legislation that regulates the actions of foreign agents operating in Mexico.6 It removes diplomatic immunity and allows for expulsion for violations of international agreements. AMLO needs to be seen as a paladin of Mexican sovereignty, particularly with a change in US administration. The law dramatically affects the manner in which the FBI and DEA will operate in country. They may have to cease all current operations.
A Positive Note
Some constructive programs are funded by the Mérida Initiative, particularly in the areas of training for courts, judicial staff, trial attorneys and prosecutors. According to Justice in Mexico, the OASIS program, the Oral Adversarial Skill-Building Immersion Seminar is “intended to provide training to advance the implementation of Mexico’s new criminal justice system. Its aim is to foster exchanges among U.S. and Mexican law professors and students in an effort to improve understanding and cooperation within the legal profession.”
Janice Deaton, a lawyer who helps run the program and trained court-system’s personnel in Mexico, told me, “OASIS (and other training programs) teaches not only the skillset needed to successfully litigate criminal cases, it also promotes a reverence for the law that is needed to strengthen the rule of law.”
Although these programs show promise, they get a thin slice of the Mérida pie (about 8mm USD thus far), funds that could easily be redirected to OASIS from other federal sources. Over 90% of the money allocated to the Mérida Initiative is spent on Foreign Military Financing.
Foreign aid can be halted under the Leahy Law, first sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont in 1997.7 The law prohibits the funding of units that have committed Gross Violations of Human Rights (GVHR). The law was made permanent under section 620M of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, 22 U.S.C. 2378d.
But the obstacles to funding can be dismantled under what one might term the “everyone deserves a shot at redemption” clauses, which allow for sufficient remediation of the offending units which can then unlock the vault. In an unclassified document, the Departments of State and Defense issued a joint remediation policy in 2015 that addresses how units accused of perpetrating GVHRs can overcome their deficiencies.
The Impotence of Government
How effective has the Mérida Initiative been in curtailing violent crime? Here are some fast facts.
When the counterparts first met in Mérida, the foremost concern was that murders had risen from 2,500 per year in 2006 to over 6,500. Mexico now averages 35,000 murders a year.
Of the 35,000+ murders in 2019, ten percent of the victims were women. The country now suffers ten femicides each week.
It is estimated that as many as 98% of violent crimes remain unsolved. A 2% close-out rate is almost incomprehensible.
“Report finds 80% of migrants waiting have been abducted by the mafia and 45% have suffered violence or violation.” - The Guardian
In the San Fernando Massacre in 2010, seventy-two undocumented migrants were slaughtered by the Los Zetas in the village of El Huizachal, for refusing to work for cartels.8
The Council on Foreign Relations, in their Global Conflict Tracker, estimates 150,000 deaths in Mexico since 2006 are attributable to organized criminal violence. Also noted in this report, “Mexican cartels killed at least 130 candidates and politicians in the lead-up to Mexico’s 2018 presidential elections.” If you harbor a perverse desire to be overwhelmed by crime, corruption and violence, read the CFR 2021 reports on Mexico.
“Mexico is an origin, transit and destination country for human trafficking, a global business estimated to be worth $150 billion a year.” - Reuters
In October 2020, the San Diego Union-Tribune estimated there are more than 73,200 Mexicans missing. Human Rights Watch claimed in 2013 there was “compelling evidence that state actors participated in the crime (half the missing persons cases), either acting on their own or collaborating with criminal groups.”
Ovidio Guzmán, son of the notorious El Chapo, was arrested and briefly detained in the city of Culiacán. He was released after a stream of attacks on security forces by hundreds of cartel gunmen, who blocked egress from the city with flaming buses.
One fact was not mentioned in the original Mérida Initiative. From 2000 to 2006, over 100,000 military personnel went AWOL. Another 50,000 have deserted since. The reasons range from low pay, to high risk, to bad morale, and better offers from the cartels to provide intel and security. In June of 2016, Mexico News Daily reported these numbers included more than 1500 officer and 53 of senior rank.
A portion of the Mérida money goes to the federal police. However, reports indicate that some of the violent crime and extortion committed against vulnerable migrants is perpetrated by the federal police, sometimes in tandem with members of the cartels.9
The Mexican Marinas, a ground force that operates under the auspices of the Mexican Navy, have been applauded for their effectiveness, ferocity and their ability to stay relatively untouched by corruption because of their shoreline or offshore bases. But these same Marinas, trained at least in part, by US Marines, have been implicated in a number of cases of excessive force, disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings. As reported by Reuters on June 01, 2018, “…the United Nations cited ‘strong indications’ that Mexican security forces were behind the disappearance of 23 people in and around the city [Nuevo Laredo] between February and mid-May.
“The Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee (CDHNL), a group that documents accusations of abuse against security forces, has said there were more cases from that period and that if reports from January were included, the total would exceed 50 so far this year [2018].”
In a 2009 cable from State intercepted by Wikileaks, classified as secret, the Monterrey, Mexico official stated there had been “no meaningful improvements in state and local law enforcement.”10
In June of 2017, The Intercept published a contemptuous report of US efforts to interdict cartel drug and violent criminal activity. The efforts, the writer claimed, have only made the violence more brazen, leading to such rampant impunity that, “the award-winning journalist Javier Valdez was pulled from his car and killed in broad daylight near his office in Culiacán, in Sinaloa state in Mexico.”
Cartel Overview
I spoke with Clarence Davis, a Task Force Officer with the DEA, an expert on the cartels and a thirty-five-year veteran of law enforcement. He detailed the staggering violence perpetrated against rivals, journalists, hostile politicians, migrants, informants and anyone else who crosses the cartels. Narcotics are not the only contraband compelling their actions.
Mexico writ large is religious, but the religion of the cartels adds a level of zealotry not seen in other groups. “The cartels are a death cult. They worship Santa Muerte, the death saint. They fervently believe that if they venerate Santa Muerte, she will protect them, no matter what they do. There is no good or bad. They pray to god to invoke her, then once she is invoked, they pray to her for security, prosperity and safety. They believe she can protect families and cure sickness, even cancer.”
“The gangsters believe that if they worship her, they will have a quick and easy death. They do not expect to live long lives, and mistrust each other as much as they do the authorities, perhaps more so.”
There are nine major cartels that operate in Mexico. Varying reports will balloon this number but they all fall under this nine-group umbrella: Sinaloa, Los Zetas, Tijuana/AFO, Juárez/CFO, Beltrán Leyva, Gulf, La Familia Michoacana, the Knights Templar, and Cartel Jalisco Nuevo Generación (CJNG) . There is not one major American city untouched by their tentacles. Cartel members have been arrested as far north as Chicago trying to buy weapons for war in Mexico. It’s not always on the surface.
“The cartels are smart enough to keep a low profile in the US. They use local gangs, such as MS13 and others, to do their bidding. Much of the violence and murders in Chicago are because of the Jaliscos New Generation and Sinaloa cartels fighting over turf. They are behind it all.”
To those who think legalizing drugs will hobble the cartels, think again. Drugs are only a portion of their income. “The number two source of income is kidnapping. They conduct virtual kidnappings, surveilling immigrant victims and their families here in the States who get a call from Mexico telling them to wire money or they will kill their children.”
They are deeply involved in extortion, prostitution and human trafficking. One of their cash cows is stealing petrol by tapping into fuel lines of the government-owned oil & gas businesses and loading it on trucks for sale across Mexico. What ensures their success in impunity. The trial of El Chapo revealed the number one key to their success—corruption, at some of the highest levels of government.
Beatings, torture (in ways you shouldn’t imagine), dismemberings, beheadings, the cutting out of hearts and the skinning of live victims are common. Much of this harkens back to the Aztec roots of Santa Muerte. Nothing and no one are off limits.
“In March 2011 gunmen from the Zetas cartel, one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world, swept through Allende and nearby towns like a flash flood, demolishing homes and businesses and kidnapping and killing dozens, possibly hundreds, of men, women and children.” – Ginger Thompson, writing for Pro Publica.
Depravity
The worst of it is stories like this. A source inside a counter-drug team told me that recently, in a southern state of Mexico, a prominent cartel suspected that a woman in their organization may have been compromised and could have been relaying information to the authorities. They found her in a donut shop, where she waited in line, holding her infant child. The gang members questioned her loyalty. As a punishment and warning for talking to law enforcement, they took her baby from her and threw the infant into the donut fryer, cooking her baby alive as she watched. One can’t imagine the lifelong horror that woman will endure. It is even harder to imagine the level of depravity that so afflicts a human mind that it could conceive of doing this to an infant.
It’s as though the cartels are in a brutality tournament, in which the victor will be proclaimed in the seventh ring of hell. At some point—and we may have passed it—the cartels will run out of victims and begin to eat their own. Rival gangs are virtually at war. Migrants are already casualties; regular working-class Mexicans, once indirect victims, are increasingly becoming direct targets of criminality. To avoid a self-inflicted genocide on the field of cartel violentia, the gangs are pressing the pitch northward.
The Military Perspective
After speaking with members of select special operations teams who have worked in Mexico and trained the units described herein, I have learned this is not an enemy to be taken lightly. The unit members I spoke with had not been in the country “blacked out.” They had been there as part of cooperative agreements between both countries, although there were aspects of their involvement they would not share with me.
The cartels are not a guerilla force like the Taliban. Because of an endless influx of money, they have bought access to specialized training like no other criminal enterprises ever have. Rogue, highly trained, experienced special-forces operators from around the world offer their services for cash. The cartels are well funded, highly organized, vicious and driven with a mindset similar to the Taliban. They are more ruthless than ISIS but with a much higher level of sophistication.
I asked if the legalization of drugs would defang the cartels. They laughed. “The cartels will mutate. If you legalize marijuana, they’ll step up production of cocaine or meth. If you legalize those drugs, they’ll make more opiates.”
They have brought violence to unfathomable levels. When they go after an enemy, a snitch, a rival—they take out their bloodline. They regularly and wantonly use torture. They will hold a victim for days, cutting off one limb at a time, searing the wounds so the victim doesn’t bleed out. They have doctors on standby to help revive the dying so they can be tortured more.
We spoke about systemic corruption and why it’s so difficult to accomplish anything in Mexico. I asked if the people they train could be trusted. They explained the vetting process. The high-level, counter-narcotics units get the strongest vetting, which includes searches of family histories. The special ops groups get a lower level; the regular army gets none and the police, well, they are a whole different animal.
“The police will be in a car with six bullets in their gun, meanwhile when the cartels roll into town to do an operation, they’ll walk into a 7-11 in full body armor with machine guns, and 50-cal-mounted trucks waiting outside. What are the police gonna do?”
They are deeply involved in human trafficking, for drug production, forced labor, commercial sex and extortion. This goes beyond the notion that the war on drugs is a failure, a sentiment to which I subscribe. There is a moral imperative to find a way to stop the degradation of human beings caught in their snares.
A criminal entity of this level has huge influence, tracking capabilities, cutting-edge technology and the cleverness to exploit vulnerabilities in counter-crime plans.
“These people are at our border and are bleeding into the middle of our country.”
To designate the cartels as terrorist groups would trigger another level of actionable capabilities that could be deployed against them. By openly working with Mexican Special Forces, US military could achieve, “access and placement,” giving the US entrée to a much deeper level of intel.
The Mexican government does not want the designation for a host of reasons, including its effect on trade and the economy. Businesses in Mexico may be reluctant to work with legitimate companies that are owned by cartels.
Confronting Malevolence
My original intent for this article was to show that tax dollars are being fed to a country trapped in a vortex of violence and corruption. I intended to call for the spigot to be turned off, to see who squawks loudest, feeling that would be the person or group losing the most money. At a minimum, the Mérida Initiative should be discussed publicly in Congress to answer one complex question on the record—what are we actually getting for our money and who is getting paid?
The counter-narrative to Trump’s wall was that it was hateful and intolerant. It was designed to hold back the other, to stem the tide of migrants seeking a better life. However, given what we know about the abuses rained upon Venezuelan and Central American migrants by the cartels and state actors, the desire to manifest decency toward migrants must be braided with the hard truth of who the real purveyors of inhumanity are.
Does ICE have problems? No doubt. But those maligned border camps are four-star hotels when compared to the conditions the migrants must endure as slaves for the cartels. If the left, if Americans, really care about the plight of migrants, they must acknowledge the situation is much graver than dirty toilets and shitty food.
Assume for the sake of argument that the Mexico problem is our own fault, because of iniquitous foreign policy, wonton drug use at home, culture and other factors. We still need to fix it.
We must look at the demand side as the impetus for the depredation committed to protect the vast flow of cash. Money is obviously the big driver of organized crime. Yes, we should look at the Portugal model of legalization and work to fix the root causes of addiction. Yes, we should work with Mexico to develop better economic policies that help create the kind of jobs and stability that might keep people from turning to the cartels for income.
The volume of guns coming into Mexico from the US, including high-powered, semi-automatic rifles, is an increasing point of contention between the two governments. Relations with Mexico are fraught with ambiguity and peril, despite the sanguine outlook depicted by the State Department.11
There are manifold arguments that illustrate how the Mexican cartel problem is our own doing. Those arguments should foster action to mitigate and prevent the recurrence of the misdeeds that have gotten us here. But here we are. Regardless of how and why they may have formed, the cartels are crafty, trained, wealthy, and malignant.
This is not a call to intensify the war on drugs. A call to end killing with more death seems incongruous. Drug prohibition may have given rise to the cartels, but their reach, the carnage inflicted on civil society, the good citizens of Mexico, the women, the poor, and the migrants, cannot be flicked aside as merely consequences of myopic policies that can be ended with a few pieces of legislation.
How did the men and women of the cartels become so hardened? Mr. Davis said, “It’s a generation that has grown up with bloodshed and death. They are not shocked by it.”
In “Blood Meridian,” Cormac McCarthy spoke of “violent children, orphaned by war.” Poverty, corruption, crime and violence, are the demon seeds that spawned the soldados de Santa Muerte—libertine hell hounds, torturing the defenseless, raping as punishment for being a woman, stealing the souls of migrants, killing for prowess among merchants of death.
Look out your windows. The lycans are at the gate. What do you want to do?
France 24. October 15, 2014. “Mexico says missing students not among bodies found in mass grave” https://www.france24.com/en/20141015-mexico-missing-students-dna-not-mass-grave-iguala-gangs-corruption
NY Times. July 07, 2020. Years After 43 Mexican Students Vanished, a Victim’s Remains are Found. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/world/americas/mexico-43-missing-students-remains.html?searchResultPosition=3
National Security Archive. December 09, 2020. U.S. Prosecutions Bring Mexico Corruption into Focus. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/mexico/2020-12-09/us-prosecutions-bring-mexico-corruption-focus
Grupo Hercules leader arrested in connection with the beating and execution of 4 US citizens. https://www.krgv.com/news/member-of-grupo-hercules-arrested-linked-to-2014-murders-of-3-valley-siblings/
CRS 2011, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and Beyond https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20110722_R41349_f7d8b23db2506a70e138b6d78d948e57bb6f6d7b.pdf
Mexico News Daily. December 16, 2020. Lawmakers Approve Bill That Regulates Activities of Foreign Agents in Mexico. https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/lawmakers-approve-bill-that-regulates-activities-of-foreign-agents-in-mexico/
US Department of State Fact Sheet. January 20, 2021. About the Leahy Law. https://www.state.gov/key-topics-bureau-of-democracy-human-rights-and-labor/human-rights/leahy-law-fact-sheet/
NPR. December 22, 2014. Mexican Police Helped Cartel Massacre 193 Migrants, Documents Show. https://www.npr.org/2014/12/22/372579429/mexican-police-helped-cartel-massacre-193-migrants-documents-show
InSight Crime. June 20, 2019. Mexico Police Collude With Criminals to Kidnap, Extort Migrant. https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/mexico-police-collude-criminals-kidnap-migrant/
State cable. Secret. WikiLeaks. Nuevo Leon's Efforts to Reform State and Local Police Have Not Been Effective U.S. Consulate Monterrey, cable, Secret. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=4355194-3-Nuevo-Leon-s-Efforts-to-Reform-State-and-Local
State Dept. September 2020. US Relations With Mexico. https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-mexico/