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The Mexican Government

Photo of President Vicente Fox, taken from TIME photo essay by Christopher Morris- 2001
 

President Vicente Fox is a member of the PAN, the National Action Party in Mexico.  He was elected in December of 2000, ending 71 years of institutional rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (the PRI), and the latest President, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon. Before Fox was elected, the PRI ran all of Mexico, and created what Al Giordano, writer for Narco News, called "a narco-police state with support, funding and tacit endorsement of the United States, which praises Mexico as a global leader in the war on drugs" (in Part One of, "The Narco-State of Chiapas", June 5, 2000).

With the increased pressure on the Mexican government to decrease the flow of drugs to the U.S., the government increasingly relied on their military in anti-drug efforts.

The following statistics have been taken from Al Giordano's report, "The Narco-State of Chiapas"- June 5, 2000

  • The Mexican military has expanded both its size and its budget since the 1990s
  • In Mexico, there are 275,000 police officers and 300,000 military officers utilized for internal conflicts 
  • Mexican population is 96 million people- allowing 1 cop or soldier for every 165 Mexicans
  • the FEADS- the special prosecutor's office on drugs has 2,800 elements compared the the 7,000 DEA agents in the U.S., and more than a 1/2 a million police and military agents in the Mexican republic

The illegal drug trade produces such a large amount of money to be made in the process of trafficking and the production of drugs.  Thus, the attractiveness of such large profits has  corrupted much of the Mexican police force, military and government offices, and with the protection of the government it is far easier to pass drugs into the United States.

Corruption:

According to an IMECO report (the Mexican Institute for Organized Crime), "the experience of organized crime in Mexico is singular enough: it is articulated and protected by the state.  In the heart of the government exists the most powerful and extensive mafias, to the point where the majority of the police corps have been transformed into criminal organization."

  • On February 2, 2001, Peter Greste writing for BBC World News, documented the purge of the Mexican customs agency as 43 of the 47 heads of departments were fired for collaborating with criminal bosses. An excerpt from the article:
    "The customs service is generally seen as one of the most corrupt institutions in a corrupt country, but the last straw came earlier this week when it was revealed that a circus elephant had somehow managed to cross the border without customs officially being aware of it." 
    In Al Giordano's report, "The Narco-State of Chiapas, Part II", he details in length the path of illegal drugs as they pass through Mexico, changing hands, often with several members of the government, before they make it to the United States... for more on this take a look at the article at: http://www.narconews.com/chiapaspart1.html

    In the same way that the United States government is using the 'war on drugs' to police the anti-drug policies of foreign nations, the Mexican government is using the military and their anti-drug laws to police insurgents in the rural south.
     
     

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