Special Report

Mexico’s “Permanent” Crises

Frontera NorteSur

June 21, 2010

Although the Arizona immigration law and two recent US Border Patrol

detentions that resulted in the deaths of two Mexican nationals have upset

US-Mexico relations, close economic and political ties between Washington

and Mexico City are unlikely to change in the near future. Under the

policies of the Obama and Calderon administrations, the strategic thrusts

of the bilateral partnership- the North American Free Trade Agreement and

anti-drug Merida Initiative-are likely to deepen.

Meeting in Cancun this month, Mexican and US Congressmen discounted any

move to renegotiate NAFTA- a long-standing demand of much of the US

Democratic Party’s base as well as Mexican farm and labor groups-and

expressed renewed support for President Calderon’s so-called drug war. US

delegates even proposed beefing up the Merida Initiative to the tune of

$500 million annually, an amount about $200 million higher than the sum

budgeted for 2011.

“The support that we have for the armed forces and police of both

countries to cut the flow of drugs is important,” retiring Democratic

Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, was quoted.

Yet even as Washington prepares to toss more golden eggs into Calderon’s

basket, the growing political buzz in Mexico is that the Calderon

presidency is essentially over, even though the country’s chief executive

still has more than two years remaining in office.

“Felipe Calderon has lost the reigns to the country,” wrote journalist and

author Lydia Cacho in a recent El Universal editorial. “I write this

without the least bit of exaggeration. Violence has acquired unimaginable

proportions.”

Evidence abounds to support Cacho’s thesis. From the dozens of narco

victims who were recently recovered from mass graves outside the tourist

centers of Cancun and Taxco to deadly prison disturbances which left

scores more dead in different parts of the country, mass slaughter is a

daily headline.

Other examples of an ungovernable situation proliferate. The crown jewel

of northern Mexico, Monterrey, was recently brought to a halt by armed

gangs blockading public roads, while the governor of Nayarit dismissed

public school weeks early because of fears of violence. Nationwide, the

body count in the so-called narco war since President Calderon took office

in December 2006 approaches 25,000 people.

Mexico has not witnessed such levels of violence since the Taliban-like

Cristero uprisings of the 1920s.

On the economic front, the news for Mexican workers and consumers is not

uplifting-despite talk of recovery. While Mexican media trumpet the

country’s World Cup triumphs, prices for gasoline, milk, beans and other

necessities keep creeping upward.

Across the country, legions of youth, forming perhaps what might be called

the NAFTA Generation, are without jobs or schooling. At least 12.5 million

people, or 28.6 percent of the workforce, earn a living in the informal

sector selling pirated products and other goods.

Taking Cacho’s observations a step further, the current landscape

resembles one of the periodic presidential succession crises that grip

Mexico every few years, albeit this one comes slightly earlier and is much

more violent.

In certain ways, 2010 recalls the last year of the Salinas de Gotari era,

when the slaying  of  Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas, the Zapatista uprising,

the assassination of ruling party presidential candidate Luis Donaldo

Colosio and other calamities unhinged Mexico.

Factoring in the endless open season on journalists, the bloody siege of

the indigenous town of San Juan Copala in Oaxaca and crackdowns on

striking miners and electrical workers, this year’s turbulence is also

reminiscent of the last days of the Fox presidency when labor-capital

showdowns, the repression of the Oaxaca rebellion and an intensifying

narco war all created a climate of crisis, which only worsened after a

post-electoral conflict challenged Calderon’s claim to victory in the 2006

election.

The Diego Drama

2010 also resembles 1994 in another eerie way. In both years, a leading

member of the Mexican elite was kidnapped. Sixteen years ago, prominent

banker Alfredo Harp was snatched in action widely blamed on the leftist

Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), which presumably used a multi-million

dollar ransom to fund an uprising in eight Mexican states two years later.

This year a leading figure of Mexico’s political elite, National Action

Party (PAN) politician Diego “El Jefe” Fernandez de Cevallos, is missing

and said to be held against his will.  Now heading into its second month,

the presumed kidnapping has jolted Mexico’s political class.

The disappearance has also resurrected other political ghosts from the

past, and underscores how obscure but powerful forces continue shaping the

destiny of a country where a modern democracy supposedly prevails.

Ironically the PAN’s 1994 presidential candidate, Fernandez de Cevallos is

no ordinary politician. A central figure in Mexico’s power structure, the

71-year-old lawyer has represented deep-pocketed clients of all stripes.

Two of Fernandez de Cevallos’s former law partners are high-ranking

members of the Calderon administration: Interior Minister Fernando Gomez

Mont and Attorney General Arturo Chavez Chavez.

Among Fernandez de Cevallos’ more controversial clients were the Mexico

City hospital where Juarez drug cartel chieftain Amado Carrillo Fuentes

was said to have died in a botched 1997 operation, and the old Anahuac

Bank, an institution allegedly linked to cartel money laundering.

A bridge between the erstwhile opposition PAN and former ruling

Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Fernandez de Cevallos was an

essential broker between his forces and the Salinas de Gortari and Zedillo

administrations. He was considered a key player in the privatization of

Mexico’s banks, the passage of NAFTA and the establishment of FOBAPROA,

the controversial bank bail out paid for by taxpayers.

Fernandez de Cevallos later emerged together with Carlos Salinas de

Gortari as one of the men behind the so-called “video scandals” of 2004.

Choreographed by Argentine taxi driver-turned-tycoon Carlos Ahumada, the

tapes showed members of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution

accepting cash in return for presumed political favors. Ahumada declared

the intention of the videos was to derail presidential front-runner Andres

Manuel Lopez Obrador’s 2006 bid, with the connivance of then-President

Vicente Fox.

Speculation swirls over who and what is behind Fernandez de Cevallos’

disappearance. The theories include the EPR, unknown political forces out

to destabilize the country, drug cartel leaders seeking a prisoner

exchange, audacious kidnappers simply out to make pay-dirt, and even a

Machiavellian melodrama hatched by the wealthy lawyer himself. Rumors

stand that the old PAN stalwart is dead.

On repeated occasions, the EPR has denied it had anything to do with

Fernandez de Cevallos’s May 14 disappearance. Calling the charges “false

and perverse,” the guerrilla group said in a statement posted on the

Internet that the accusations are meant to “justify repression” against

discontented sectors of Mexican society and isolate the EPR’s

revolutionary struggle.

Interestingly, only one day before Fernandez de Cevallos vanished from his

Queretaro ranch, Mexican media ran a story based on an anonymous Colombian

government source who alleged the EPR had been trained in kidnapping by

the Colombian FARC.

In terms of political timing, Fernandez de Cevallos disappeared only days

before the PAN’s national assembly, an important meeting in the road to

choose the conservative party’s 2012 presidential candidate; one of the

possible contenders mentioned was none other than Fernandez de Cevallos.

Going into the meeting, the party was marked by power jockeying between

more moderate forces and El Yunque, a secret ultra-right organization

rooted in the ashes of defeated Cristero rebels that reportedly enjoys

influence within the PAN and seeks to establish a Catholic theocratic

state in Mexico.

“El Jefe’s” disappearance also coincided turbulent and violent state and

local election campaigns in 13 states.

The Fernandez de Cevallos incident also brought another historic but

largely enigmatic figure back into the public spotlight-General Mario

Arturo Acosta Chaparro. A veteran of Mexico’s Dirty War of the 1970s,

Acosta Chaparro has long been implicated in the forced disappearances of

scores of suspected guerrillas and supporters in the southern state of

Guerrero.

Later, his name popped up in connection with the narco graves unearthed on

the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez in November 1999, a discovery which

presaged a whole new chapter in modern Mexican “archaeological” finds.

In 2000, Acosta Chaparro was arrested along with the late General Humberto

Quiroz Hermosillo and accused of collaborating with the Juarez drug

cartel. Military prosecutors also probed Acosta Chaparro’s responsibility

for the disappearance and murder of 22 suspected guerrillas in Guerrero

butlater dropped their legal case.

In 2007, Acosta Chaparro was absolved of the organized crime charges,

released from confinement and later retired with full honors from 45 years

of military service.

On May 19, five days after Fernandez de Cevallos went missing, Acosta

Chaparro was shot and wounded in Mexico City. Press accounts reported he

was serving as an adviser to the Calderon administration and, in fact,

investigating Fernandez de Cevallos’ disappearance.

If reports of Acosta Chaparro’s involvement are accurate, another big

question surrounds the affair: Why would an administration which has

accepted the Inter-American Court of Human rights ruling to resolve the

1974 disappearance of  Rosendo Radilla,  an activist and former mayor

disappeared during the Dirty War in Guerrero, maintain a working

relationship with a man long deemed central to the Dirty War in the

Pacific state?

All the President’s Men And Women Close Ranks

A constant media diet of mass killings, high and low-profile kidnappings

and frequent political scandals has left much of Mexican society

psychologically exhausted, morally disgusted and politically cynical, with

flashes of rebellion here and there. In a way, the country might be said

to be experiencing a state of collective Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

Designed with colorful graphics and photos, an e-mail circulating on the

Internet shows the differences between 2006 and 2009 staple prices and

compares the salaries of well-paid and fancily attired Bank of Mexico head

Agustin Carstens, pictured chomping away at a snack, and an impoverished

Chiapas laborer quoted as saying he “sometimes earns enough to eat.”

Mocking Felipe Calderon’s 2006 campaign slogan, the e-mail asks, “And you?

Do you live better?”

In defense of his administration, President Felipe Calderon addressed the

nation in an important televised talk on June 15. While he repeated

earlier contentions that US drug consumption and gun-running had

contributed a big share of Mexico’s problems, Calderon emphasized how the

drug cartels had changed from being clandestine, mainly export-oriented

enterprises into high profile, multi-product line outfits dedicated to

conquering  sections of the country and corrupting Mexican youth with

drugs.

Said Calderon: “Since the middle of the 1990s, (criminals) began to want

to sell drugs here, among our children and Mexican youth…. little by

little, the violence began over controlling the local drug market and

forcing away their rivals from those places they wanted to control…..they

began to fight among themselves, disputing the markets, and also trying to

terrorize the government and citizenry. Their action stopped being

low-profile and converted itself into an open and frank challenge to all.”

Insisting that he inherited a putrid mess, Calderon vowed to stay the

course with his anti-crime war. The president assured Mexicans his

government had delivered “important blows” to all the cartels, without

exception, and created divisions in criminal ranks.

Calderon’s war was vindicated in the United Nations by Mexican Attorney

General Arturo Chavez Chavez  and Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa last

week.  “Mexico is strong,” Chavez told the international audience. “It can

defend itself and end up controlling the violence and defeating the

criminals.”

Speaking to a domestic audience, the official in charge of human rights

and victims’ rights issues for the federal attorney general’s office told

students at the University of Guanajuato that the Calderon administration

was close to checkmating organized crime.  “More lives will be lost,” Juan

de Dios Castro Lozano predicted. “The three (government) levels and

society are needed. The federal government can’t do it alone.”

Globalizing Mexico’s Crises

Increasingly, Mexico’s internal conflicts and troubles are spilling onto

the international stage.  In the 1990s, a huge international movement

jelled in support of Chiapas’ Zapatista leaders. Later, the murder of

women in Ciudad Juarez sparked an international mobilization.

The globalization of Mexico’s crises continues-with an important

difference. Largely unlike previous times, multiple issues are being

raised in multiple places and at the same time.

In May, US labor leaders staged a Washington march to support striking

Mexican utility workers and miners, whose long-running occupation of Grupo

Mexico’s historic Cananea copper mine was broken by Federal Police only

days after the US union representatives conveyed their Mexico concerns to

Obama administration officials.

In the face of international condemnation, Mexican Labor Minister Javier

Lozano traveled to the International Labor Organization in Geneva last

week to defend the eviction and strike-breaking.

On June 28, while the World Cup is still in prime-time splendor, South

African unionists plan a Cananea solidarity march. Two days later,

European lawmakers are expected to be in Mexico City to inquire about the

April 27 murders of Mexican activist Beatriz Alberta Carino and Finnish

human rights observer Tyri Jaakkola near San Juan Copala, Oaxaca.

Appalled by the Mexican Supreme Court’s decision to exonerate high-ranking

federal and state officials of any responsibility for the deaths of  49

children killed in a Sonora daycare center fire last year, parents of the

victims plan to take the matter to the United Nations.

Meanwhile, the mothers of three murdered young women in Ciudad Juarez and

their legal representatives sent a preliminary report to the

Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica, accusing the Mexican

government of not complying with a December 2009 sentence ordering Mexico

to clarify the killings, punish officials responsible for covering up the

crimes, compensate family members and publicize the cases of other

disappeared young women. Like the Radilla case in Guerrero, the Calderon

government has agreed to follow the Court’s sentence.

Surveying a crisis-ridden political, economic and social scene, La Jornada

columnist Marco Rascon recently wrote that Mexico is saddled with a

permanent crisis.

Tracing the roots of contemporary troubles to the collapse of the

post-war, growth-driven “Mexican Miracle,” which was interred by the 1976

peso devaluation, International Monetary Fund mandates, open trade and

investment borders, and the virtual dismantlement of the old PRI-dominated

state, according to Rascon, the author contended that the ironic outcome

of the turmoil is likely to be the 2012 restoration of the PRI-the same

party once voted out of national office for causing multiple crises.

“After 34 years of living in a structural crisis…we have the richest man

in the world (Carlos Slim), born from a country whose identity is crisis,”

Rascon wrote. “The permanent imbalance has extended to all spheres:

culture, security, politics, social cohesion, health, education,

nutrition. Violence extends into politics, and justice experiences its

severest crisis of credibility…”

Additional Sources: El Diario de Juarez, June 16, 2010.

Presidencia.gob.mx, June 15, 2010. Proceso/Apro, May 14, 18, 21, 25, 26,

2010; June 15, 17 and 18, 2010. Articles by Alvardo Delgado, Jenaro

Villamil, Jorge Carrasco Araizaga, Carlos Acosta Cordova, Ricardo Ravelo,

Gloria Leticia Diaz, Pedro Zamora Briseno, and editorial staff.  La

Jornada, May 14, 15, 16, 20, 23, 2010; June 8, 10, 14, 15, 18, 2010.

Articles by Notimex, AFP, Reuters, Gabriel Leon, Georgina Saldierna,

Andrea Becerril, Luis Javier Garrido, David Carrizales, Enrique Mendez,

Hugo Martoccia, Javier Valdez Cardenas, Marco Rascon, Patricia Munoz Rios,

and editorial staff.

El Universal, May 13, 16 20, 22, 2010; June 14 and 18, 2010. Articles by

Hilda Fernandez Valverde, Raymundo Rivapalacio, Jorge Medellin, Lydia

Cacho, Adriana Varillas, EFE, Notimex, and editorial staff. John Ross

(Mexico City), May 27 and June 18, 2010. Cimacnoticias, June 14 and 16,

2010. Articles by Gladis Torres Ruiz. El Sur, May 23, 2010; June 14 and

18, 2010. Articles by Proceso and Agencia Reforma. Commondreams.org, May

23, 2010. Article by David Macaray.

 Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news

Center for Latin American and Border Studies

New Mexico State University

Las Cruces, New Mexico

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