Reasons of State that Sustain Mexico’s Strategy Against Organized Crime

Eduardo Medina-Mora

Attorney General of Mexico

From the beginning of his administration in December 2006, President Felipe Calderón resolved to line-up the whole strength of the State to radically sever the growth of drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico.  This decision, although questioned by some, for the most part has been highly praised at home and abroad.

The President’s decision was firmly anchored in several reasons: the commitment of every government to ensure the security of its citizens; to slash the corruption caused by the criminal organizations; to guarantee the integrity of public institutions; and to eradicate the growing violence.  But the deepest, most basic raison d’Etat was to confront and weaken an organized crime that had expanded without bounds, to the extent that the lives of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have already suffered an unacceptable tragedy.  Many of them slept, awoke, and passed their days living in fear of crime, violence, and death.

It was impossible to hear about Mauricio and do nothing.  He was a kid of only nine years old who was becoming an addict since the criminals gave away drugs at the entrance of his school to sow future clients for their deadly trade.  How can we avoid feeling Elena’s story as if it were our own?  She was a brilliant university student, adored by her parents and with a promising future, who yielded to the pressures of friends to try drugs because “nothing bad will happen.”  Now she sells her body to support her addiction, her health already showing irreversible damage.

It was impossible not to feel a deep compassion for the thousands of youths who lost their lives believing that crime provided the easy way to make money, and who chose that route to live in communities where delinquency had become power, a culture, and the way to climb to a superior social status.

How could we possibly accept without doing anything that many policemen and officials in charge of public security had been corrupted by organized crime?

It was clear from the beginning that this was not a problem of bad Mexicans or bad officials but of social values corrupted by the enormous economic, social, and cultural power wielded by the criminals.

Too many people had lost any trace of shame to commit crimes, to corrupt, and to kill.  Meanwhile, society had been loosing its capacity to feel righteous anger about such a grim situation, a deadly combination for the future of any nation.

For all these reasons we embarked on this struggle, since it was our historical and generational duty, and because we rejected being indifferent to thousands of Mexicans that had become hostages, directly or indirectly, of organized crime and drug addiction.

Drugs and organized crime are challenges of enormous consequence for the Mexican State, which is the reason behind the broad and consistent policy adopted by President Calderón.

Mexico suffers a vicious drug cycle of production, trafficking, distribution, and consumption. In the first two, production and trafficking, we already face a very real war.  Regarding distribution, we are waging a constant fight. And with respect to consumption, we can see a dangerous increase in the number of youths who, at the start of their addictions, become victims of social pressures, of the “nothing will happen” argument, or the “I can quit whenever I want” excuse.

In order to prevent the first cause of addiction, the “imitation effect” and the pursuit of fitting-in socially, children and young people must take care of each other, being conscious that drugs hurt and that they have consequences in the form of violence and death in exchange for fleeting moments of pleasure.  For this purpose there is nothing better than the good collaboration among the young to defend themselves, to restore the social status in their social circle of a drug-free and healthy life, which are as relevant and positive as the defense of the environment, the involvement in just social causes, or the taste for pop music that is so enthralling in those stages of life.

Drugs have both a homicidal and a suicidal logic.  They kill when they are produced and distributed, but they also do away with those who consume them.  They have the perverse potential of connecting the most vital forces of the nation, its children and its youth, with the worst elements of society.  Consumers generate a link with the criminals that distribute the drugs on the streets, the same thugs capable of using an automatic gun in any public place and shooting thirty blasts against an opponent.

The death and violence associated with drug distribution webs are real and dramatic.  They are suffered by the families that have lost one of their dear members to the bullets of crime, including the more than one thousand exemplary policemen, soldiers, and marines that have sacrificed their lives for Mexico, for its society, and for its values.

To restore peace to the Mexican people, we have worked hard to take peace away from the criminals, as well as their impunity, making solid and certain inroads to strengthen the rule of law.  The Mexican strategy is the right one and has a comprehensive perspective, which includes causes and trends as well as internal and foreign effects.  It acts in an orderly and simultaneous way on all fronts, combining and structuring the capacities of the government and the society through solid domestic and international coordination.

We decided to go after the criminals and to deprive them of the advantages of their business, to interfere with the freedom with which they move, and to take away their weapons, merchandise, transportation, and money, as well as to capture their paid assassins and their business managers and to dismantle their front corporations, their protection webs, and the assets of their criminal system.

The unprecedented results reached by these policies, followed by the Mexican government, and affirmed by the overwhelming support of its society, have led to the seizure of 176 thousand pounds of cocaine, 72,363 detainees, more than $337 million, and 44,490 weapons taken away from the criminals.

The results of the efforts and sacrifices of the Mexican citizenry have been reflected in the world supply and demand for drugs and in the control and operational webs of the criminal organizations, as has been acknowledged by the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

We have recovered important portions of our country’s territory and we are in the process of eliminating the drug cartels.  We are rebuilding our institutions, and in the ultimate and most complex phase of this battle, all Mexicans must reaffirm our essential nature as responsible citizens.

We want to attain a lasting peace for our country, a goal that will be possible to accomplish only in the long run by fostering strong moral and cultural barriers to the negative values that the criminals created and multiplied.  It is not possible to accept lawlessness and corruption as “normal” behavior.  To be indifferent when confronted with such delinquency and to accept that cohabitation with the criminals would represent a U-turn to an insecure, violent, and terrorized Mexico that nobody wants.

This is why President Calderón, the state governors, society in general, and every one of us are so distraught that the narco subculture and music attracts the eyes and ears of our young people.

We are concerned that the policies to contain the flows of money and the traffic of arms in the world are occasionally used merely as rhetorical schemes in international forums and that cooperation does not translate into concrete results.  We are worried that other countries of our continent have enormous structural weaknesses when confronted with the immense corrupting and intimidating power of organized crime.

The historic phase in which we live today offers us a clear lesson: organized crime attracts with “silver,” then with “silver or lead,” but in the end it resorts to only “lead and more lead.”  Crime, violence, and death are its fundamental rules.

As President Calderón has highlighted, we still have many things to do.  It will demand enormous effort, persistence, and time to arrive at a safe harbor, but our vision and strategy are the correct ones.  Only by persevering we will reach the supreme purpose of the Mexican State, which is to restore peace and wellbeing to our families.  Only then will we have a free and peaceful conscience and the satisfaction of having acted for Mexico’s good, as well as to deliver to the future generation, our children and youth of today, the option of being better human beings and living in a much improved country.