Op-Ed
Calderón's Cleaning Up With Sweeping Policy
Austin American-Statesman, January 31, 2007
Peter M. Ward, C. B. Smith Sr. Centennial Chair in U.S.-Mexico Relations, LBJ School of Public Affairs
For Mexicans, the word seguridad (security) has a different meaning than for Americans. Its significance is domestic, embracing local and regional public security issues, as well as individual safety. It is not obsessed with threats from international terrorism, by law enforcement and the need to build walls along the border. For Mexicans, the gangs engaged in street and drug-related crime, kidnappings, muggings and murders pose the greatest threats to public safety.
Understanding the meaning of the word security is crucial to an understanding of what is going on in Mexico. The recent extradition from Mexican prisons to the United States of more than a dozen cartel capos and drug gang leaders—with the promise of more to come—is a clear indication of President Felipe Calderón's determination to carry through on his promise to improve public security and not to allow democracy to be derailed.
At the same time, however, his decision to allow the unprecedented extradition and transfer the judicial processes to U.S. courts—along with the joint police and army operations underway since his inauguration to dismantle gang organizations in the states of Michoacán, Guerrero and Baja California—has also raised concern that he might ride roughshod over human rights. So far, it appears that the fine line between bold and concerted actions, while maintaining respect for due process, is not being overstepped.
Fortunately, over the last decade or so, Mexico has created institutions for human rights monitoring, for transparency and guarantees of access to public information. Those institutions are beginning to develop the necessary "teeth" so corrupt politicians and public officials, judges, prison staff and police can no longer act with impunity. However, there is still a way to go in modernizing and merging the principal federal police systems, creating an effective national criminal database, achieving a higher rate of prosecutions, and cleaning up the prison system.
Indeed, the dire state of the prison system is the main reason Calderón chose to sign off on the extraditions. One of the few significant successes of his predecessor, Vicente Fox, was the capture and incarceration of a number of cartel leaders and gang members. However, even though they were placed in high-security prisons, several managed to bribe their way to escape, while the others continued to run their operations from prison. Thus the gang activities continued; replacement gang leaders gained traction locally; and violence and public insecurity worsened.
For Calderón, therefore, there are three principal policy elements: to intensify efforts to upgrade the capacity of the criminal justice system; to use military and police operations to destroy or reduce endemic gang operations; and to remove from his worry list the care and control of the capos by permitting their removal to the United States for trial and imprisonment.
For Calderón, extradition is smart and pragmatic. And though it could be viewed as kow-towing to the United States and cost him politically, so far the extraditions have played well for his administration. However, much will depend upon showing that his policies respect human rights and apply due process of law.
While Mexico has yet to develop the same level of participation and buy-in from civil society as occurred in Colombia during the 1990s (when hundreds of drug and gang leaders were extradited to the United States), there is evidence that Mexicans recognize the need for vigilance and commitment to the construction of a new criminal justice system, casting aside their cynical attitudes of the past.
It will also be important that criminal justice operatives in the United States and Mexico take care not to be hoodwinked by spurious accusation and misinformation about individual public officials in Mexico that comes from these extradited capos, who will undoubtedly seek plea bargains of information for lesser sentences.
Certainly, some of this information will be extremely useful in Mexico and will help clean up and remove remaining corrupt elements embedded within the criminal justice system. But it is equally important to ensure that the many officials who are honest, and who in recent years have been on the front lines working to ensure Mexico's democratic transition, should not find their careers "burned" or undermined by spurious accusations from the very criminals they helped to put away. Their rights, too, must be protected.
Ward holds the C. B. Smith Sr. Centennial Chair in U.S.-Mexico Relations and is a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Department of Sociology at UT.
Copyright 2007 Austin American-Statesman
