Translated by Rachel Alexander
Currently, the Mexican state has gaps in its control of organized crime groups, which is why it needs a political pact, in which all levels of government and political actors would participate, to define a national security strategy, said Luis Astorga, an academic from the Institute of Social Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and an expert in subjects relating to drug trafficking. He was participating in the round table, 'Regional Security: Opportunities and Challenges', held recently at the School of Political and Social Sciences of the UNAM.
“Criminal organizations should be controlled in one way or another with what we have, but what we have today frankly isn’t much,” he said.Without this agreement, it will be difficult for a security policy to thrive, due to the power of criminal organizations in the country, said the researcher.
The challenges the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto faces in this area are the same ones faced by previous governments: predominance by State authority and governability, effective police, a strong justice system, ensuring the rule of law, respecting human rights (in particular regarding the participation of the armed forces), job creation and better income distribution.
He said that during the system of the one party State [Party of the Institutional Revolution, PRI], criminal organizations could accept the rules of the game or face three choices: leave the business, go to jail or die.
During the transition period [from rule by PRI to multi-party democracy in the 1990's], he added, the link between organized crime groups and the political sphere was transformed. Today, it is only politicians who have three choices: do nothing (which supports the undermining of authority), establish agreements with criminal gangs for mutual benefit (of not only the political powers, but also economic groups) or create a political pact to design a security policy.
In turn, Patricia Escamilla, a specialist from the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, said the relationship between U.S. and Mexican armed forces has improved in recent years. Today, there exists an unprecedented level of cooperation, strengthening of military ties and better mutual confidence between the armed forced of both nations, generated by the Mérida Initiative and the strategy against organized crime undertaken by Felipe Calderón, she said.
She said there is still much to be done in order to reach a “more substantial relationship and full cooperation”, provided that the objectives of each nation are not disrupted.
Celine Realuyo, another expert from the U.S. center, stressed the need to generate strategies against money laundering to counter organized crime, and highlighted some policies in this respect from her country.
Her arguments were questioned by Astorga, who reminded the academic of several money laundering cases, such as that of the HSBC bank, which, he said, had 7 billion dollars worth of these transactions in three years.
Finally, Alejandro Chanona, a professor at the School of Political and Social Sciences, said the government’s security strategy is still undefined. What has been presented, he said, is a reduction in the mass dissemination of media images showing the actions of organized crime. Spanish original