Benitez - Organized Crime as the Highest Threat to Mexican National Security and Democracy

7/24/2019 Benitez - Organized Crime as the Highest Threat to Mexican National Security and Democracy

1/25

149

Introduction

During the authoritarian governments of the Institutional RevolutionaryParty (PRI), from the 1930s to the 1990s, the security agenda and the secu-rity decision-making process in Mexico hardly changed. The effects of ille-gal activities, particularly those of drug trafcking, went largely unnoticedby Mexican society. By the end of the twentieth century, however, orga-nized crime was becoming a serious concern, but not yet a priority in thenational political agenda. The rst opposition government in seventyyears, the Vicente Fox administration (20002006), did not fundamen-tally alter the basic Mexican security framework either, nor did it modify

the organizational structure of the two military departments, the Depart-ment of National Defense (SEDENA) and the navy (SEMAR).2Inevitably,however, some changes were afoot. The Fox administration did seek tobroaden the concept of national security by adding to it a set of social issues,including immigration. The security agenda during this administration alsogrew to include the problem of public safety, due to the citizenrys demandfor greater safety in streets and neighborhoods.3At the same time, the Sep-tember 11 terrorist attacks parachuted international terrorism onto the Mexi-

can security agenda, a factor that would be the foundation for a new era ofunprecedented security cooperation with the United States.Before taking ofce, in December 2006, Felipe Caldern visited Wash-

ington, D.C., and outlined Mexicos new security challenge, the powerof organized crime syndicates. He also stated that this threat could not be

Organized Crime as the HighestThreat to Mexican NationalSecurity and Democracy1

Ral Bentez Manaut


2/25

150 Current Strategies and Casualties

confronted with the countrys institutional capabilities alone. He called onhelp from the United States, a call that marked the beginning of a new era

of binational cooperation on security issues, particularly against organizedcrime. What came out of that visit came to be known as the Mrida Initia-tive, a $1.4 billion pledge from the United States to ght organized crimein both Mexico and Central America.4The implications were clear; dur-ing the Caldern administration, the number-one security priority cameto be combating drug cartels. It will be an all-out war, because the possi-bility of co- existing with drug trafcking organizations is no longer via-ble, Caldern stated. There is no turning back. Its us or them.5At the

end of the Caldern administration, in 2012, much public discussion inMexico involved controversies such as whether the government was win-ning or losing this war, as former president Caldern himself had calledit; whether the cartels had evolved from drug trafcking organizations intomore versatile and sophisticated criminal groups, which could endangerthe countrys stability and its democratic consolidation; and whether thenew Pea administration should continue this war on drugs. Today, in 2013,these key issues are not yet resolved.

The Ascent and Consolidation of Drug Trafckingin Mexico

The Mexican cartels originated with the advent of a market for marijuanaand heroin in the United States soon after World War II. In Sinaloa state,the main illegal drug producer, drug trafcking, trade, and politics be-came closely intertwined. In response, from the 1950s to the 1990s, the

governments policy toward the drug business went from tolerance to con-trol. Along that line, since the 1970s, growing but modest binational coop-eration with the United States on the issue of drug control began to takeplace.6This cooperation had some lows, including the murder of the DrugEnforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena in Guada-lajara in 19857and the 1997 arrest of the Mexican general Jos de JessGutirrez Rebollo on corruption charges. In 2001 an army court convictedGeneral Gutirrez of illicit enrichment.8These incidents conrmed the

links between law enforcement agencies and the armed forces and crimi-nal organizationssomething that fueled American suspicion throughoutthis cooperation. Mexico, in response, maintained that General Gutir-rezs corruption case was an isolated incident and did not signify systemiccorruption in Mexican institutions.


3/25

Organized Crime as the Highest Threat to Mexican Security 151

Through the 1990s, however, Mexican drug trafcking groups increasedtheir power and inuence and came to replace the Colombian Medelln

and Cal Cartels in the supply of illegal drugs to the U.S. market, after thesewere wiped out by U.S.Colombian efforts through Plan Colombia, anaid and advising agreement between the U.S. and Colombia to curb drugsmuggling and ght the leftist insurgency in the 1990s. The results of PlanColombia and American success in closing the Caribbean as a cocaineshipment route and the defeat of the Colombian cartels only led Mexicandrug trafcking organizations to grow and gain control of the cocainetrade through Central America, Mexico, and now the Pacic Ocean.

Perhaps the most disturbing consequence of the aggressive attacks onColombian drug trafckers is that the Mexican trafcking organiza-tions became the beneciaries. . . . Mexican trafckers beneted fromthe disruption of the cocaine trade in the Caribbean as the Colombianssought an alternate route to the United States via the Southwest border.Successes in the early 1990s associated with the results of the king-pinstrategy in Colombia created new opportunities for Mexican narco-trafckers to get into the cocaine wholesale and distribution business inthe United States.9

An added consequence of this success was that drug trafcking be-came even more globalized by the transborder relationship among pro-duction (Andean countries), commerce (Mexico and Central America),and consumption (U.S. market).

During the latter half of the 1980s, the role of trafckers based in Mex-

ico and the use of Mexican territory increased dramatically. Mexicosstrategic location, midway between source and consumer nations, and anincreasingly powerful international drug maa headquartered in Mexicomade it an ideal transit point for South American-produced cocaine.Mexicos topography offered several seaports along its Pacic and Gulfcoasts, and countless airstrips scattered across its interior allowed ves-sel and aircraft refueling to be quickly and easily accomplished. Equallysignicant was Mexicos 2,000-mile land border with the United States,

over 95 percent of which had no fences or barricades. Moreover, the re-moteness of many border areas made patrolling and surveillance ex-ceedingly difcult. Cocaine trafckers from Colombia expanded theirtrafcking routes to include Mexico and increasingly used Mexico as ashipping point.10


4/25


By the beginning of the twenty-rst century, the major Mexican cartelsbecame consolidated: (1) the Sinaloa Cartel, led by El Chapo Guzmn,

considered by Forbesmagazine as one of the worlds richest and most pow-erful men;11(2) the Tijuana Cartel, headed by the ArellanoFlix family,considered in 2000 as Latin Americas most important criminal organiza-tion; (3) the Gulf Cartel, with Los Zetas as their armed force, controllingthe route that goes from the GuatemalaMexico border to Tamaulipas andTexas; (4) the Los Zetas group, which split from the Gulf Cartel in 2007and is responsible for the gruesome violence in the northeastern part ofMexico; (5) the Beltrn Leyva Brothers Cartel, whose leader, Arturo, was

killed in Cuernavaca in December 2009, and its splinter, the South Pa-cic Cartel; (6) the Jurez Cartel, founded by Amado Carrillo Fuentesand led today by his brother, Vicente; and (7) a recently created criminalorganization, La Familia Michoacana.12

In the beginning, the power of the cartels was exercised quietly. Whenthey became stronger, however, they started a war among themselves forthe control of shipments, transit routes, warehouses, and points of entryinto the United States. A level of violence never seen before in Mexicowas unleashed and transformed some Mexican cities bordering theUnited States into some of the most dangerous places in the world, withhigh numbers of violent homicides. Cities such as Ciudad Jurez, Tijuana,Reynosa, Matamoros, and Nuevo Laredo were occupied by the cartels. Inthese places, municipal police corporations became institutions at theservice of organized crime. The federal government was incapable ofstopping it. Between 2003 and 2004, the sole option was the deploymentof the army. The incorporation of the armed forces proceeded apace, andin 2007 the navy entered the drug war too. This led to the militarization

Table 5.1. Number of members of Mexicos police forces,20092010

Police corporations Number of agents

Public Security Secretariat (2010) 35,386Attorney Generals Ofce of Mexico (2010) 10,533State Preventive Police (2009) 198,897

State Ministerial Police (2009) 26,495Municipal Preventive Police (2009) 160,967

Source: Department of Public Safety (SSP) and Attorney Generals Ofce(PGR) 2010. See also Enfoque Reforma (2011, 7). For state, ministerial andmunicipal corporations, see Reforma(2010, 6).


5/25


of the ght against drugs. This strategy was the last resort by Caldernsgovernment. This decision was made because state police forces did nothave the wherewithal to face the cartels power.13It should be noted alsothat the armed forces became an option because law enforcement inMexico is highly decentralized, making it largely incoherent and frag-mented into small, easily corruptible, and vulnerable agencies. In early2009 the total number of police elements in the country was 432,278individuals (see table 5.1), most of them in small state and localdepartments.

The temptation to use the highly centralized 200,000 members of thearmy and the 50,000 members of the navy was high.14Table 5.2 shows thenumber of military personnel involved in the drug war.

The War on Drugs: A Key Element of theGovernments Strategy

The security relationship between Mexico and the United States is achain that begins with the demand for drugs in the United States, even ifthe last link is the spiral of violence in Mexico. The bloodshed in Mexicocannot be understood without considering the enormous drug market thatis the United States. Table 5.3 shows a small consumption comparativeamong some countries in the Americas.

Faced with an insatiable market and the determination of many crimi-nal groups to supply it, many analysts hold that the Mexican governments

strategy is afailedstrategy. Two high-level ofcials of the Fox administra-tion assert this and suggest the need for a radical change in the strategyand invite a debate on the legalization of drugs as an option. Others main-tain that the government can win the war and that the results are barelystarting to show. They point to the crushing of a number of criminal

Table 5.2. Mexicos military members involved in the war ondrugs, 20062010

Period Engaged in combat and totals

December 2006August 2007 45,723 196,710 (total)September 2007August 2008 45,000 202,355 (total)September 2008August 2009 48,750 206,013 (total)September 2009August 2010 70,864 206,013 (total)

Source: Caldern 2011, 3645.


6/25


cartels and the arrests of their most important leaders. The debates are erce.Some argue that legalization as an option does not take into account thedifferences between different types of drugs and whether this policy would infact resolve the outbreak of violence among the criminal groups. Others ar-gue that consumption does not necessarily imply violence per se, because inconsumer countries the levels of violence are lower, and so forth. In this, theU.S. position is clear. Former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton had evenpointed out that Mexico faces a narcoterrorist offensive: These drug car-tels are showing many of the attributes of terrorist groups and insurgents inthe world. For the rst time, they are using car bombs. You see them orga-nized as paramilitary.15Others talk about a criminal insurgency. Follow-

ing this line of reasoning, a counterinsurgency strategy should be designed,they argue, in particular one that adapts to the nature of the enemy and is ledby the intelligence services and the armed forces.16President Caldern hasinternalized this rhetoric and has implemented a military strategy that hasmore to do with ghting a war than with law enforcement.

The strategy has two horizons: one in the very short term, which con-sists of repositioning the authority and jurisdiction of the State through

the mobilization of public force and the Army. We cannot lose territo-ries, states in which the rule of law has broken down. The second is along-term strategy, which implies the reconstruction of our institutions,not only the police but also the rest of the governmental structures.This means purging and strengthening police corporations, generating

Table 5.3. Consumption: Drug abuse (in relation to total population)

Central America Cocaine Marijuana Methamphetamines Ecstasy

Panama 1.2 (2003) 4.0 (2003) 0.6 (2003) 0.4 (2003)Guatemala 1.2 (2003) 9.1 (2003) 0.7 (2003) 0.2 (2003)Belize 0.7 (2002) 6.7 (2003) 0.2 (2003)Honduras 0.9 (2005) 1.6 (2002) 0.6 (2003) 0.2 (2003)Nicaragua 1.0 (2003) 2.2 (2002) 0.8 (2003) 0.1 (2003)El Salvador 2.5 (2004) 5.0 (2004) 0.6 (2003) 0.1 (2003)Costa Rica 0.4 (2000) 1.3 (2001) 1.0 (2000)

North America

United States 2.8 (2004) 12.6 (2004) 1.5 (2004) 1.0 (2004)Canada 2.3 (2004) 16.8 (2004) 0.8 (2004) 1.1 (2004)Mexico 0.4 (2002) 1.3 (2002) 0.1 (2002) 0.01 (2002)

Source: Adapted from the UNDCCP (2007, 38590).


7/25


new systems of information and intelligence and creating a new legalframework, such as the one we have presented to Congress. First there

is a constitutional reform and then a legal reform. And also, of course, anew orientation focused on prevention that we havent had yet in thiscountry, something worth noting.17

Nonetheless, the onslaught of violence that has followed the war ondrugs is seen as the weakening of the Mexican state and has led some ana-lysts to say that Mexico is on the brink of becoming a failed state.

Discounting Mexican public concerns and tacit admissions to that end,many indicators point to the beginning of what could be consideredfailing state and local governments in northern Mexico, particularly inthe State of Tamaulipas. The criteria that dene the tipping point . . .or in this case, the point at which credible authority is lost and a fall to-ward anarchy . . . can occur, are an abstract jumble of social factors, se-curity considerations, political outcomes, and political will at all levelsof government.18

Moreover, military analysts in the United States suggest that the Mexi-can government cannot stop the ascent of the criminal organizationspower, which is why the United States must act more forcefully.

Now is the time during the opening months of a new U.S. administrationto jointly commit to a fully funded, major partnership as political equalsof the Mexican government. We must jointly and respectfully cooperateto address the broad challenges our two nations face. Specically, we

must support the government of Mexicos efforts to confront the ultra-violent drug cartels. We must do so in ways that are acceptable to theMexican polity and that take into account Mexican sensitivities to sover-eignty. The U.S. government cannot impose a solution. There is politicalwill in Mexico to make the tough decisions that are required to confronta severe menace to the rule of law and the authority of the Mexican state.Where our assistance can be helpful, we must provide it. The challengeis so complex that it will require sustained commitment and attention at

the highest levels of our two governments. We cannot afford to fail.19

The diagnosis on Mexicos security crisis necessarily involves its capacityto ght organized crime at different levels. Mexicos political organizationis complex. There are federal, state, and municipal governments, and


8/25


Mexicos fragility is more evident at the municipal level, since criminalorganizations have a presence in more than 50 percent of Mexicos mu-

nicipalities in the states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Michoacn, Guerrero,Durango, and Tamaulipas. Caldern and his advisers refer to this as a lostterritory. For the rst time in many years, territorial control has been lostand, what is worse, government institutions have also been weakened.20At the municipal level, due to the nancial and political weakness, crimi-nal organizations have been able to nance electoral campaigns, achiev-ing inuence seen in the past only in some municipalities in Sinaloa andGuerrero. One case was emblematic: former Quintana Roo governor Ma-

rio Villanueva had a protable relationship with cartels that trafckeddrugs from Colombia to Mexico, via several Caribbean and Central Amer-ican countries.21

In a number of municipalities located in the north and in Sinaloa andMichoacn, local governments lost control. A diagnosis by the federalgovernment pointed out that of the 2,438 municipalities, 400 had no po-lice force. At the same time, 90 percent of law enforcement agencies hadfewer than 100 members, with low education levels and receiving salariesof less than 350 U.S. dollars a month. Due to this, the federal government,backed by some state governments, proposed a project to build a new po-lice force with a unied command (mandos nicos).22A journalistic in-vestigation pointed out that the local governments crisis centered on thesenumbers. Forty-two percent of all drug-related murders between January2007 and May 2011 occurred in ten municipalities, with Ciudad Jurezat the top of the list, with 6,437 executions; then Culiacn, with 1,890;Tijuana, with 1,667; Chihuahua City, with 1,415; Acapulco, with 661;Gmez Palacio, with 553; Torren, with 524; Mazatln, with 518; No-

gales, with 442; and Durango City, with 390. Rival gangs were most ofthe perpetrators.23

In all, the presence of the state was weak. The local police ed manyplaces. Some of the traditional tasks, such as supplying basic services inthe community, were abandoned, and in some cases these were suppliedby drug trafcking groups. The case of Michoacn is an example. La Fa-miliahad citizens support networks, where protection was provided by thegang. The cartels ability to build such networks is worrisome, as this en-

ables them to successfully evade security and intelligence apparatuses.They can replace the state with their own ideology and even their ownreligion. Similarly, organized criminal groups deployed a novel communi-cation strategy. They sent messages to the general public through banners


9/25


unfurled in public places (narcomantas) and even through the Internetand YouTube. They learn to react quickly, spreading terror or assurances

among the population, further exposing the weakness of the government,and spreading perceptions that they were winning the war.Since Caldern took ofce on December 1, 2006, and until the end of

2011, the number of drug-related murders had risen to nearly 50,000. In 2010alone, there were 15,273 murders. Between December 1, 2006, and July29, 2010, 81,128 members of criminal groups were arrested. Of those,19,714 belonged to the Sinaloa Cartel; 22,138 to the Gulf and Zeta Car-tels; 12,847 to the Jurez Cartel; 11,769 to the BeltrnLeyva Cartel;

10,012 to the ArellanoFlix (Tijuana) Cartel; 3,015 to La Familia Micho-acana; and 1,632 to the Milenio Cartel. Among these arrests, the govern-ments offensive damaged the Gulf and Zetas Cartels the most, followedby the Arturo BeltrnLeyva Cartel. Notable among the arrests were sevenhundred government ofcials accused of complicity with drug trafckingorganizations. Still, investigations show that the most powerful organiza-tion, led by El Chapo Guzmn, is responsible for 45 percent of all drugtrafcking activity.24

Success is relative. A condential document from SEDENA, releasedin January 2010, points out that the eight most powerful cartels have dividedthemselves into two mega cartels in order to compete for shipments and thecocaine transportation routes into the United States. These two blockswould allegedly be as follows. Mega cartel 1 is led by El Chapo Guzmn(Sinaloa). His allies are La Familia Michoacana, the remnants of the Mi-lenio Cartel, and a splinter group from the Tijuana Cartel (led by El Teo).SEDENA calls mega cartel 1 the Polo Sinaloense. Mega cartel 2 includesthe BeltrnLeyva Cartel (splintered from Sinaloa), the CarrilloFuentes or

Jurez Cartel, Los Zetas, and the remnants of the ArellanoFlix or TijuanaCartel. According to the report, these alliances would explain the increasein violence, due to a major battle for control of routes to the United Statesand Europe. What is more, these two blocks branched into other activitiessuch as kidnapping, extortion, arms trafcking, human trafcking, andsmuggling. The report points out that during the rst three years of theCaldern administration, 16,923 persons were executed, of which 12 per-cent were capos, 17 percent were cell operators, and 71 percent were deal-

ers.25

The report says that eighty-one individuals did not belong to anyorganization and were victims of crossre episodes between rival gangs. It isalso claimed that between twenty thousand and thirty thousand youngpeople constitute the operational structure of these cartels.


10/25


The Geopoliti cal Links ColombiaCentralAmericaMexicoUnited States

According to UN sources, in 2007, 88 percent of the cocaine coming fromColombia and Venezuela to the United States transited through the Cen-tral America and Mexico corridor50 percent through the Pacic Ocean,and 38 percent through the Atlantic coastal regions of Central Americaand the Gulf of Mexico.26The supply of drugs now exceeds the demand.Because of this, drug trafcking organizations are trying to create newconsumer markets in Mexico and Central America. Demand is also a

crucial motivator, but supply plays a role. While demand is still basicallylocated in the United States and, on a smaller scale, in Canada, it is grow-ing in Latin America. Add to this the drug cycles. The latest fad, metham-phetamine, pushed new organizations to enter the fray, some dedicated toimport precursor chemicals from China which arrive in Mexican Pacicports (Manzanillo). This is one of the main businesses of La Familia Mi-choacana. Similarly, in Central America, criminal groups have appearedin every country. The homicide rates are the highest in the continent. Forexample, during 2010 in Honduras the rate was 80 per 100,000; in El Sal-vador, 68; and in Guatemala, 40.27Besides organized criminal gangs suchas the Maras, cartels linked to the Colombian and Mexican groups havealso appeared. The South American supply routes make Central Americaan ideal corridor to Mexico, to the United States, and to Canada. In 2010nearly 60 percent of the cocaine that arrived in the United States camefrom Central America. Honduras was the main transit country, sendingdrugs to the GuatemalaMexico border. Cocaine was often carried byspeedboats.28This activity is mainly dominated by Mexican cartels, but

local Central American cartels increasingly participate.

Weapons Flowing South

Arms trafcking to Mexico, as a threat to national security, was not in-cluded in any of the governments documents. Since the 1980s, arms trafck-

ing had been detected on the southern border of Mexico, due to the CentralAmerican armed conicts and to the growing Mexican criminal organiza-tions. After that, small-time weapons trafcking (trco hormiga) devel-oped on the U.S.Mexican border. The Mexican 1972 Federal Law onFirearms and Explosives regulates the sale and use of rearms. SEDENA


11/25


is the agency in charge of enforcing it. However, this law has not been ableto stem the ow of illegal rearms through Mexicos northern and south-

ern borders. The enforcement of the law is simply too lax in the areas ofgun transportation and possession. Drug trafcking organizations take ad-vantage of this and are the main users of illegal rearms in Mexico. Fur-thermore, during the past ten years, the cartels have been adding to theirweapons arsenals semiautomatic machine guns such as the AK-47 and theBarrett .50 and even missiles. According to SIMO, a polling consultancy,15 percent of the people interviewed in a survey in Mexico said they havea gun in their home.29This means that some four to ve million households

have rearms. SEDENAs Firearm Destruction Program conscated anddestroyed 79,074 rearms captured in military roadblocks during the lastten years (20002009). Of those, 44,000 were conscated during the lastthree years.30For all of these reasons, arms trafcking has become a seriousproblem, one that feeds the Mexican national security crisis.

In Central America, 70 percent of violent deaths are perpetrated withrearms. As in Mexico, there is a growing appeal to self-defense becausepeople do not trust the government. According to the International ActionNetwork on Small Arms (IANSA), There are an estimated 1.6 millionhandguns in Central America, of which approximately 500,000 are legallyregistered. Many of these guns are remnants of military conicts that tookplace in the region during the 1980s, especially in El Salvador, Guatemalaand Nicaragua. After these conicts were over, thousands of military re-arms were sold in the black market. From there, they began to ow to otherCentral American countries with less of a history of generalized armedviolence, such as Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama.31gure 5.1 showsthese numbers.

In 2000 there were 509,826 registered rearms in Central America,most of which were in El Salvador (170,000) and Guatemala (147,581).

Figure 5.1. Number of registered rearms in Central America


12/25


During the last seven years, this amount, difcult to quantify accurately,has at the very least doubled. According to the Arias Foundation of Costa

Rica, this country went from 43,241 to 100,000 rearms, and El Salvadorincreased its legal rearms to 300,000.32If the increase in legal arms is anyindicator of potential sources of violence, it is even more serious that ille-gal rearms apparently exceed registered guns. In El Salvador there arepossibly 224,000 illegal weapons, while in Guatemala the gure couldbe more than one million. In Nicaragua, illegal rearms were double theamount of registered ones by 2006. Estimates show that illegal rearms inCentral America increased to 2,300,000.33 These gures show that the

threat to Mexicos security by the problem of illegal rearms in CentralAmerica is considerable. If the Cold War fed the conict in Central Amer-ica by a steady ow of weapons, these can now generate a new type of socialconict just as violent, or even more violent, than the armed confronta-tions experienced by those countries in the 1980s.

This concern became part of the Mrida Initiative as Mexico insisted,and the United States nally agreed, on the creation of a special task forceon rearms trafcking and the implementation of nonintrusive inspec-tions on the border. Numerous agreements of judicial coordination havebeen signed in order to strengthen the intelligent borders agreementssigned in 2002,34and some were added in the 2005 Security and Prosper-ity Partnership of North America (SPP).

Public Insecurity in Mexico

The most comprehensive measure of drug violence, homicides per

100,000 inhabitants, shows that in Mexico there was a considerable down-trend between 1990 and 2007. The national average decreased from 3,451homicides in 1990 to 1,218 in 2007. Among the states that had a signi-cant decrease was Chiapas (from 274 in 1990 to 101 in 2007) and MexicoCity (from 1,273 in 1990 to 838 in 2007) but also others such as Micho-acn, Oaxaca, Veracruz, and Zacatecas. This was due to various factors,including the reduction of political violence in rural areas. These guresclash with the publics perceptions, as violent deaths have increased sig-

nicantly in the last ten years and have become the main concern of thegeneral population.35Interestingly, Mexico had seen a downward trend inviolent crime up until 2007, when the number of crimes jumped dramati-cally as a result of the actions perpetrated by the criminal groups begin-ning in 2008. That year alone, the number of victims of violent crime


13/25


increased by 50 percent and by another 50 percent in 2009.36The statisticsfor 2010 show a very important concentration of criminal violence in the

state of Chihuahua, primarily in Ciudad Jurez. We have to understandthe issue of federalism in Mexico as well. Ninety-three percent of crimesreported fell within state and local jurisdictions and were mostly thefts orrobberies. Seven percent of reported crimes fell within federal jurisdictionand included drug trafcking (see gure 5.2).

In this analysis one has to take into account the so-called black data(cifra negra),37which would be the number of nonreported crimes, whetherbecause of fear or negligence. This number is large, since the general

population does not trust the justice system and considers it a waste oftime to report a crime. See table 5.4 for this important number.In those states where violence has increased among drug trafcking

groups, homicides have increased markedly. Mexicos northern states thathave a border with the United States, where the war between cartels hasbeen concentrated in order to centralize the drug trade into the UnitedStates, register the highest homicide rates in the country, something thathas also led to an increase in other types of crimes. In Ciudad Jurez, par-ticularly, in addition to violent homicides there are also serial murdersof women, which have caused panic among the general population.38The number of homicides increased from 2,013 in 1990 to 2,365 in 2007

Figure 5.2. Reported crimes by state andfederal jurisdiction


14/25


(17.49 percent). Among them, the murders of government personnel dedi-cated to security tasks, military servicemen, and policemen went from 68in 1990 to 149 in 2007, registering a rise of 119.12 percent, due to theso-called war on drugs. Figure 5.3 shows how the number of executionsincreased signicantly from 2001 to 2009 and rose again in 2010.

Table 5.4. Reported crimes and black data, 20002008

Year Reported crimes

Federal, State, and Local

Black data

Federal, State, and Local2000 1,420,251 3,319,9192001 1,512,450 3,529,0502002 1,516,027 3,537,3962003 1,517,925 3,541,8252004 1,505,844 3,513,6362005 1,505,223 3,512,1872006 1,580,742 3,688,3982007 1,715,974 4,003,939

2008 1,540,789 3,594,941Source: Adapted from the Second Special Report by the National Human RightsCommission (2011) on the actual exercise of the fundamental right to public secu-rity in Mexico. Figures through November 31, 2008.

Figure 5.3. Executions in Mexico, 20012009


15/25

Table5.5.Nu

mberofhomic

idesinthenorthwesternregion,199020

07

Year

Civilians

(Criminalsand

Innocents)

Security

andDefense

Personnel

Tota

l

Deat

hs

PercentageofDea

thsofSecurity

andDefensePers

onneloverthe

TotalNumbero

fHomicides1

Perce

ntageof

Deathsof

Civilians

1990

1,945

68

2,01

3

3

97

1991

2,399

90

2,48

9

4

96

1992

2,918

101

3,01

9

3

97

1993

2,485

110

2,59

5

4

96

1994

2,743

107

2,85

0

4

96

1995

2,926

120

3,04

6

4

96

1996

2,732

119

2,85

1

4

96

1997

2,591

105

2,69

6

4

96

1998

2,845

107

2,95

2

4

96

1999

2,682

118

2,80

0

4

96

2000

2,296

93

2,38

9

4

96

2001

2,337

80

2,41

7

3

97

2002

2,301

91

2,39

2

4

96

2003

2,256

103

2,35

9

4

96

2004

2,141

67

2,20

8

3

97

2005

2,429

101

2,53

0

4

96

2006

2,528

103

2,63

1

4

96

2007

2,216

149

2,36

5

6

94

199020072

13.93%

119.12%

17.49

%

1T

hepercentageofdeathsisproportionaltothe

totalpopulation.

2Percentagevariationofdeathscalculatedfor1990,comparedto2007.

Source:Polanska2009.


16/25


Table 5.6. Drug-related murders, 20062009

Month 2006 2007 2008 2009

January 181 204 247 480February 164 198 251 633March 155 275 378 508

April 113 255 270 546May 184 279 493 510June 216 244 505 769July 144 217 509 854

August 220 284 555 748September 253 236 448 826

October 179 202 669 840November 252 183 701 682December 170 196 635 859Total 2,231 2,773 5,661 8,255

Source: Milenio. January 1, 2010.

From this data, it is possible to draw a hypothesis. There is a percep-tion among the general population, even in the international commu-nity, and transmitted through the press, that Mexico is at war.39Thisassertion is not sustainable if one analyzes the crime gures, which havein fact decreased. Nevertheless, in some Mexican states where drug traf-cking activities are concentrated, there has been an exponential rise inviolence, homicides, and state jurisdiction crimes.40As table 5.5 shows,from 1990 to 2007, homicides rose approximately 17 percent in the north-western region.

Nonetheless, the great crisis in drug trafcking homicides and execu-

tions begins precisely in early 2007 (coincident with President Caldernsmilitarized strategy), as shown in table 5.6.

Ciudad Jurez: War Zone

To argue that Mexico is a failed state or that it is heading that way is a fal-lacy. However, there are Mexican cities and states where that argument

could be made. That is the case of Chihuahua state and particularly Ciu-dad Jurez. In November 2009 the president of the Twin Plant Association(Asociacin de Maquiladoras) and the leader of the local chamber of com-merce called on the United Nations to send in the Blue Helmets (UNpeacekeeping troops) due to the seriousness of the situation. They claimed


17/25


that because of the high levels of violence, approximately six thousandbusinesses had already closed and moved to areas outside of Ciudad Jurez

and the rest of Chihuahua (many of them to El Paso, Texas).

We are asking that a group be formed to request the Inter-AmericanHuman Rights Commission to intervene, as well as that a group of UNPeacekeeping troops be sent to put a stop to this uncontrollable situa-tion of violence. Jurez has not received any kind of attention from theauthorities, which is why it is thought of as the most violent city in theworld, with [the] worlds highest death rate. With a rate of more than

10 deaths per day, it is considered a war zone.This statement demonstrates the distrust that the citizens of Ciudad

Jurez have toward the government authorities (municipal, state, andfederal), which for years had not been able to reduce, much less stop, thelevel of impunity and the confrontations between rival criminal groups.The Mexican government replied that the request was absurd and out ofplace. For his part, the president of the Citizens Council for Public Se-curity and Penal Justice of Jurez compared his city to the most danger-ous ones in Latin America:

In Jurez, the number of homicides increased dramatically in a veryshort period of time, more rapidly than in any region of Mexico andeven any part of the world. Between 2007 and 2009, homicides in-creased more than 800 percent. During 2009, in Jurez, there were191 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. In second place is the Hondu-ran city of San Pedro Sula, with 119 homicides, and then San Salvador,

with 95.41

When Felipe Caldern took ofce, violence between cartels had notyet arrived in Chihuahua. In December 2006 there was only one personexecuted; in December 2007, 11; in December 2008, 173; and in Decem-ber 2009, 231. The level of violence in the entire state during 2007 re-sulted in 148 executions. In 2008 there were 1,652. In 2009 there were2,082. These gures become disturbing if we consider that in the 1990s, the

most violent years of the drug war in Colombia, the homicide rate wasnever higher than 100 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in the cities ofMedelln and Cal. The most recent national statistics of drug-related hom-icides reveal that January 9, 2010, was the most violent day of Caldernsadministration, with 52 murders.


18/25


In the case of Ciudad Jurez, the Caldern administrations strategy tocontrol crime was not very successful and barely showed positive results.

Since 2007 the Mexican federal government deployed 5,500 army per-sonnel to Ciudad Jurez. By mid-2009, that number had grown to 6,000.In January 2010, 2,000 federal police were deployed in the city. All opera-tions were to be directed by the Federal Police. The militarized strategyproved unable to diminish the violence, which is why it can be stated thatthe increase in the use of the military forces has not produced any positiveresults. Tony Payan dened this phenomenon as the perfect storm.42Thisis a city where it has been frequently reported that the federal forces have

been violating human rights in a signicant way. The government of Ciu-dad Jurez was compelled to open an ofce where the citizenry could lecomplaints and report violations of human rights by the armed forces andthe Federal Police. In general, the use of the armed forces has led variousinstitutions, both national and foreign, to point out that the immunity thatthe military enjoys, derived from military law or tradition, allowed them totake actions in conditions of impunity, particularly because the justice sys-tem favors the military when in conict with the civilian population.

Military authorities routinely assert jurisdiction to investigate and pros-ecute Army abuses. As a result, the vast majority of Army abuse casesare never successfully prosecuted. The military justice system lacks theindependence necessary to carry out reliable investigations and its opera-tions suffer from a general absence of transparency. The ability of militaryprosecutors to investigate Army abuses is further undermined by a fear . . .which inhibits civilian victims and witnesses from providing informationto military authorities.43

Final Reections: Is the Mexican GovernmentWinning or Losing the War?

The current debate on national security in Mexico centers on this ques-tion: Is the government winning or losing the war on drugs? The RandCorporation asserts that Mexico simply lacks a strategy to protect national

security.The lack of a cohesive security strategy in Mexico has led to shiftingresponsibilities, the duplication of services in a number of agencies, andgeneral instability in Mexicos security structure. In addition, this has


19/25


created a situation in which the military is more involved in internalsecurity than is the case in most countries. The Mexican military is gen-

erally viewed to be less corrupt than the police and is seen as the institu-tion of last resort when all others have failed. These ambiguous, shifting,and overlapping responsibilities have also led to uncoordinated efforts(and often animosity) across federal, state, and local security forces (par-ticularly among police forces).44

These weaknesses in the functioning of Mexican institutions of nationalsecurity are utilized by criminal organizations. One of the most notable

elements in favor of drug trafcking organizations is the lack of coopera-tion among police bodies, the military, and the justice administration sys-tem. The Mexican governments critics point out that the federal politicalstructure is the major vulnerability of the Mexican state. To respond,Mexico has begun to implement two strategies to transform the capabili-ties of the federal government. First are the deep reforms to the nationalsecurity, defense, intelligence, justice, and police systems at all three levelsof government. Second is the acceptance of U.S. aid. This aid is utilized tosupport these structural reforms and equip the Mexican security and jus-tice agencies with technologies generally not available in the marketplace.These strategies are designed to tackle the fragmented security infrastruc-ture, the lack of interagency and intergovernmental coordination, the lowlevels of professionalization in the bureaucracy, and the high levels of cor-ruption that favor drug cartels. This strategic turnaround was also a re-sponse to the fact that in spite of the successes, which included capturing,killing, or extraditing the highest leaders of the main cartels, weakeningmany criminal organizations, the violence did not abate. Even the Mrida

Initiative had to be retooled to include more comprehensive tools to ad-dress social issues.

In spite of the violence, President Caldern had strong support from thegeneral population because it felt unprotected, and therefore, the use of thearmy was not seriously questioned by public opinion. With the implementa-tion of the Mrida Initiative, Mexico temporarily surpassed Colombia as theprincipal recipient of U.S. aid in the hemisphere.45Notwithstanding thefact that some of its cooperation programs are important to strengthen

the institutional capacities of intelligence and justice services, as well as toimprove the technology employed by the armed forces and the FederalPolice, this aid has not been very effective to enhance the capacities ofthe Mexican government in its ght against organized crime syndicates. Itis worthwhile mentioning that the 1.4 billion U.S. dollars of assistance


20/25


between 2008 and 2010 were insufcient in relationship to the size of thesecurity, justice, intelligence, and defense agencies.

One of two assertions could be made, depending on ones stand vis--vis the war on drugs. First, the declaration of war against drug cartelsmade by former president Caldern; the increase in executions; the expo-nential increase in U.S. aid; the increased presence of the armed forces inthe combat against narcotrafcking and in the public security strategies ofthe high-risk cities; the conversion of Jurez into the most dangerous cityin the world; the increased consumption of cocaine; and the perceptionsthat Mexico could become a failed state would allow one to assert, on the

one hand, that the Mexican state is losing the war on drugs and that, con-sequently, the strategy should be radically revised. The change in strategy,according to some of the most important critics of the war on drugs,should include decriminalization and even drug legalization. On theother side of this divide are those who argue that the governments strategyof direct confrontation with organized crime and hammering away atdrug trafcking organizations is correct, and they advocate staying thecourse all the way to victory. They assert that the strategy will be victoriousin the end because the built-in advantages that it contains are barely be-ginning to become active in the overall scenario. This group asserts that inthe end staying the course will produce results favorable to the govern-ment, even if only in the medium and long run. For this group, the pricein violence and death is worth paying for the sake of establishing a morepeaceful, law-abiding society.

The so-called war on drugs in Mexico can be assigned to the categoryof the so-called asymmetrical conicts, low-intensity wars, irregular wars,and borderless wars. It is clear that it is a transnational conict, because

Mexico is a country of cocaine transit, geographically situated betweenthe American consumers, where the prots are made (the U.S. govern-ment conscates very little of the money that is generated by this criminalactivity), and the countries where cocaine is produced. This leads one toposit that the confrontation is not only Mexican and that the coherenceof the strategies should be multinational. It is also a prolonged war or con-ict. Its origins go back to the 1950s, with the production of marijuana andheroin to satisfy American consumers, and later, to the 1980s, with the

entrance of cocaine into the production-trafcking-consumption cycle,adding Colombia, which built very powerful criminal networks.Many asymmetric, irregular, or low-intensity conicts were classied

and analyzed as part of a situation of strategic draw or tie, in which onecannot assert that the war is won or lost. This was the case of the civil war


21/25


of El Salvador (19801992), where the draw or tie was resolved throughnonmilitary means, since both military strategies, that of the Farabundo

Mart Front for National Liberation (Frente Farabundo Mart para la Lib-eracin NacionalFMLN) and that of the government backed by theUnited States, had become bogged down, had been at an impasse, andhad been provoking severe geopolitical tensions.

In the confrontation between the Mexican governmental forces andthe cartels, the social impact of violence damages the government, be-cause it gives off an image of the loss of the so-called legitimate monopolyof force and the requisite territorial control that all states should exercise.

The perception that Mexico is a state headed for failure is based on thewrong assumption that what is happening in the city of Jurez is a reec-tion of what is happening in the whole country.

Overall, it is difcult to categorically state that the government is win-ning the war but also to assert that the government strategy has failed.Because of this, the current situation could be dened as a strategic mo-rass that will prove to be right or wrong according to the degree of success(or failure) of the governments military campaigns. At the same time, thenal result will be determined by the degree of progress in the implemen-tation of the reforms within the rest of the national security agencies. Withregard to the cartels, their power will depend on the outcome of the con-frontations among them and their capacities to survive the offensive of thegovernment.

Notes

1. Translated by Rafael Nez and Tony Payan.

2. In Mexico, there is no civilian defense ministry. The decision-making processbegins with the president, and, under his command, there are two military depart-ments: (1) SEDENA, which includes the army and the air force, and (2) SEMAR, thenavy (see Guevara 2011, viii).

3. Manaut 2010, 181. 4. Silke and Finklea 2010.5. Caldern 2009, 17.6. Astorga 2005, 87. 7. According to the DEA, On May 3, 1985, a new DEA investigative team was

established to coordinate and investigate the abduction of Camarena and CaptainZavala. This investigation was given the name Operation Leyenda (the Spanish wordmeaning legend). Through evidence gained from cooperating individuals and relent-less investigative pursuit, this team was able to ascertain that ve individuals abductedSpecial Agent Camarena and took him to a house at 881 Lope de Vega Street in Gua-dalajara on February 7, 1985. Ultimately, the agents were successful in securing the


22/25


indictments of several individuals connected to the abduction and murder. . . . Inretrospect, Operation Leyenda was a long and complex investigation, made more dif-

cult by the fact that the crime was committed on foreign soil and involved majordrug trafckers and government ofcials from Mexico. It took several years to developthe facts, to apprehend the perpetrators, and to nally bring them to justice. SeeUnited States Drug Enforcement Administration 19851990.

8. Camp 2005, 263. 9. Flynn 2001.10. United States Drug Enforcement Administration 19851990.11. Forbesonline.2011.http://www.forbes.com/prole/joaguin-guzmen-loera/. Ac-

cessed June 17, 2013.12. Stratfor 2009, 157.

13. Bailey 2010, 332.14. It is important to note also that there are some 150,000 private security agents inMexico, raising the national total to 800,000, or 0.7 percent of the countrys population.

15. Clinton 2011.16. Sullivan and Elkus 2008.17. Caldern 2009, 18.18. Hale 2011.19. McCaffrey 2008.20. Pen 2009, 22.21. Governor Villanueva was indicted in 1999 but not captured until May 24,

2001. He is the rst high-ranking Mexican politician who was requested for extradi-tion to the United States. In 2008 he was convicted and sentenced to thirty-six years inprison for drug trafcking. See El Universal2008.

22. Garca Luna 2011, 91.23. Enfoque Reforma2011, 6.24. The numbers are controversial all around, and there are many different

counts. In this book, other numbers are also mentioned.25. Excelsior2010a, 1 and 89.26. UNDCCP 2007, 14.27. UNDCCP 2011, 23.

28. Latin American News2010.29. Mexican National Poll 2009.30. Excelsior2010b.31. IANSA 2007.32. Fundacin Arias Para la Paz y el Progreso Humano 2007.33. Ibid.34. U.S. Government, Mexican Government, Alianza para la Frontera Mxico-

Estados Unidos. Declaracin a favor del fortalecimiento tecnolgico y la cooperacinpara promover un ujo seguro y eciente de personas y bienes a lo largo de la fron-tera, Monterrey, Mexico, March 22, 2002.

35. Gonzalbo 2009.36. See table 7 in Gonzalbo 2009. Evolution of drug-related murders, 1990

2009. Escalante, Fernando. op. cit., 41.37. The so-called black data (cifra negra) refer to those crimes that are not regis-

tered in the ofcial records and include crimes that were not reported to the relevant


23/25


authorities; those that are not subject to preliminary investigation after being re-ported; several crimes committed in a single event against one or several victims that

are registered in a single preliminary investigation; and crimes that are not registereddue to problems with the ofcial statistical system.38. Monarrz Fragoso 2011, 43; also see Monrrez Fragoso 2009.39. Several government ofcials consider national media irresponsible due

to the fact that they contribute to an increased perception of insecurity and fearamong the population. At the same time, they consider international media respon-sible for transmitting the impression that Mexico is a failed and corrupt state; thishas led credit rating agencies to assign the country very low rankings due to theconditions of insecurity prevailing in several areas of the Mexican territory. Never-theless, due to the lack of systematization, opacity, and partiality in the reporting of

ofcial information, national and international media become the main sources ofinformation.40. This perception is also transmitted by credit rating agencies that place Mexico

at the same level as Colombia, Per, El Salvador, and Guatemala. See Control Risks,Risk Map 2008, http://www.controlrisks.com/RiskMap/Pages/Security.aspx.

41. Jurez, la ms violenta del mundo, Reforma, January 11, 2010.42. Payan 2011, 127.43. Human Rights Watch,World Report 2010, 238.44. Shaefer, Bahney, and Riley 2009, 15.45. In 2008 U.S. aid to Mexico was approximately $440 million, while Colombia

received $395 million; in 2009 Mexico got $672 million, and Colombia received$400 million.

Bibliography

Astorga, Luis. 2005. El Siglo de las Drogas. El narcotrco del Porriato al Nuevo Mi-lenio. Mexico City: Plaza y Jans.

Bailey, John J. 2010. Combating Organized Crime and Drug Trafcking in Mexico:What Are Mexican and U.S. Strategies? In Shared Responsibility: U.S.MexicoPolicy Options for Confronting Organized Crime, edited by Eric Olson, David A.Shirk, and Andrew Selee, 327250. Washington, DC, and San Diego, CA: Univer-sity of San Diego.

Bentez Manaut, Ral. 2010. Reforming Civil-Military Relations during Demo-cratization. In Mexicos Democratic Challenges, Politics, Government and Society,edited by A. Selee and J. Peshard, 16286. Washington, DC: Woodrow WilsonCenter Press; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Caldern, Felipe. 2009. La guerra al crimen organizado. InAtlas de la Seguridad yla Defensa de Mxico 2009, edited by Ral Bentez Manaut, Abelardo RodrguezSumano, and Armando Rodrguez, 1721. Mexico City: CASEDE.

. 2011. Quinto Informe de Gobierno. Gobierno de Mxico. September 1. MexicoCity: Gobierno Federal; 3645. http://quinto.informe.gob.mx/archivos/informe_de_gobierno/pdf/1_4.pdf. Accessed September 1, 2011.

Camp, Roderic A. 2005. Mexicos Military on the Democratic Stage. Westport, CTand Washington, DC: CSIS-Praeger Security.


24/25


Clinton, Hillary. 2011. Mexican Narco: Terrorists and Insurgents, Says Hillary Clin-ton. January 22. http://www.uyxnotices.com/mexican-narco-terrorists-and-insur

gents-says-hillary-clin/. Accessed October 4, 2012.Comisin Nacional de Derechos Humanos. 2008. Segundo Informe Especial de laCNDH Sobre el Ejercicio del Derecho Fundamental a la Seguridad en NuestroPas. Mexico City: CNDH. http://www.cndh.org.mx/sites/all/fuentes/documentos/informes/especiales/2008_segpublica1.pdf. Accessed October 4, 2012.

Control Risks. Control Risks Map. http://www.controlrisks.com/RiskMap/Pages/Security.aspx. Accessed April 22, 2013.

El Universal. 2008. Sentencian a Mario Villanueva a 36 aos de prisin. June 4.http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/512316.html. Accessed April 22, 2013.

. 2010. Rcord de muerte: Diario matan a 28. August 7. www.eluniversal.com

.mx. Accessed October 4, 2012.Enfoque Reforma. 2011. Combate al narcotrco. June 23. http://www.reforma.com/. Accessed October 4, 2012.

Escalante Gonzalbo,Fernando. 2009. Homicidios 19902007. Nexos. September 1.http://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=leerarticulo&Article=776. Accessed June 17, 2013.

Excelsior. 2010a. Anlisis Condencial del Ejrcito. Se agrupan narcos en 2 mega-crteles. January 24. http://www.excelsior.com.mx/. Accessed October 4, 2012.

. 2010b. Destruyen armas incautadas en los ltimos 10 aos. January 19. http://www.excelsior.com.mx/. Accessed October 4, 2012.

Forbes. 2009. Drug Lord El Chapo Guzmn on Forbes Most Powerful List.

March 11. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/10/billionaires-2009-richest-people_Joaquin-Guzman-Loera_FS0Y.html. Accessed May 3, 2013.Flynn, Stephen E. 2001. U.S. Support of Plan Colombia: Rethinking the Ends and

Means. Strategic Studies Institute. Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College. www.dtic.mil /cgi -in /GetTRDoc ?Location=U2 & doc=GetTRDoc .pdf & AD=ADA390538.

Accessed October 4, 2012.Fundacin Arias Para la Paz y el Progreso Humano. 2007. Reunin heptanacional

sobre transferencia y control del trco de armas. Panam(December 67).Garca Luna, Genaro. 2011. El nuevo modelo de seguridad para Mxico. Mexico

City: Nostra Ediciones; 91. http://www.cies.gob.mx/pdf/Nuevo%20Modelo %20de

%20Seguridad%20para%20Mexico.pdf. Accessed October 4, 2012.Gonzalbo, Fernando Escalante. 2009. Homicidios 19902007. Nexos, September.

http://www.nexos.com.mx/?P=leerarticulov2print&Article=776. Accessed October4, 2012.

Guevara, igo. 2011. Adapting, Transforming, and Modernizing under Fire: TheMexican Military 200611. The Letort Papers. Strategic Studies Institute. Car-lisle, PA: U.S. Army War College.

Hale, Gary J. 2011. A Failed State in Mexico: Tamaulipas Declares Itself Ungovern-able. James A. Baker II Institute for Public Policy, Rice University. July 26. http://bakerinstitute .org /publications /DRUG -pub -HaleTamaulipasFailedState -072611.pdf. Accessed October 4, 2012.

Human Rights Watch. 2010. World Report 2010. Events of 2009. http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/les/reports/wr2010.pdf. Accessed October 4, 2012.

IANSA. 2007. International Action Network on Small Arms. http://www.iansa.org/regions/camerica/camerica.htm. Accessed October 4, 2012.


25/25


Latin American News. 2010. Cocaine Smugglers Using High-Tech Boats. www.lamnews.com/cocaine_smugglers_using_high-tech_boats.htm. Accessed Octo-

ber 4, 2012.McCaffrey, Barry R. 2008. Memorandum of 29 December. West Point, N.Y. (March)http:// www .mccaffreyassociates .com /pdfs /Mexico _AAR _ - _December _2008 .pdf.

Accessed October 4, 2012.Mexican National Poll. 2009. Encuesta Nacional en Vivienda. SimoMexico. http://

www.seguridadcondemocracia.org/biblioteca.seguridadnacional3.pdf. AccessedOctober 4, 2012.

Monarrz Fragoso, Julia E. 2009. Trama de una injusticia. Feminicidio sexualsistemtico en Ciudad Jurez. Mexico City: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

. 2011. Feminicidios en Mxico. Aproximacin, tendencias y cambios, 19852009.

Mexico City: ONU-Mujeres.Payan, Tony. 2011. Ciudad Jurez: La tormenta perfecta. In Migracin y Seguri-dad: Nuevo Desafo en Mxico, edited by Natalia Armijo, 12743. Mexico City:CASEDE.

Pen, Jorge Tello. 2009. La seguridad pblica en Mxico. Sntesis social. InAtlasde la Seguridad y la Defensa de Mxico 2009, edited by Ral Bentez Manaut, A.Rodrguez Sumano, and A. Rodrguez, 214. Mexico City: CASEDE.

Polanska, Malgorzata. 2009. Homicides by State and Regions, 19902007. InAtlasof the Security and Defense of Mxico 2009, edited by Ral Bentez Manaut, Abe-lardo Rodrguez Sumano, and Armando Rodrguez. Mexico City: CASEDE. 354.

Reforma. 2010. Jurez, la ms violenta del mundo. January 11. http://www.reforma.com. Accessed April 22, 2013.. 2011. Las otras policas. June 23. http://www.reforma.com. Accessed October 4,

2012.Shaefer, Agnes Geriben, Benjamn Bahney, and K. Jack Riley. 2009. Security in Mexico.

Implications for U.S. Policy Options. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.Silke, Clare Ribando, and Kristin M. Finklea. 2010. U.S.Mexican Security Coopera-

tion: The Mrida Initiative and Beyond. Washington, DC: Congressional ResearchService.

Stratfor. 2009. Mexico in Crisis: (Addendum) 2008 Cartel Report. In Mexico inCrisis: Lost Borders and the Struggle for Regional Status, edited by Michael Mc-Cullar, 265271. Austin, TX: Stratfor.

Sullivan, John P., and Adam Elkus. 2008. State of Siege: Mexicos Criminal Insur-gency. Small Wars Journal. http://www.smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/84-sullivan.pdf. Accessed October 4, 2012.

UNDCCP. 2007. World Drug Report 2007. United Nations Ofce for Drug Controland Crime Prevention. New York: United Nations Publications.

. 2011. Global Study in Homicide 2011. United Nations Ofce for Drug Controland Crime Prevention. New York: United Nations Publications.

United States Drug Enforcement Administration. DEA History Book. 19851990.http://archive.is/1wF5. Accessed October 4, 2012.

Documents

Benitez - Organized Crime as the Highest Threat to Mexican National Security and Democracy