THE GOVERNMENT'S SURGE AT THE BORDER Obama administration's drive to militarize the U.S.-Mexico border.

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http://socialistworker.org/2009/04/02/surge-at-the-border

Analysis: Justin Akers Chacón
======== THE GOVERNMENT'S SURGE AT THE BORDER
================================

Justin Akers Chacón looks at the Obama administration's drive to
militarize
the U.S.-Mexico border, under the cover of combating drug violence.

April 2, 2009

AMID A media frenzy over the Mexican drug cartel's violence "spilling
over"
the border, the federal government has launched a "border surge"--and
more
violence and repression of immigrants will be the inevitable result.

In the next few weeks, the Obama administration will lay the
groundwork for a
new stage in the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, a plan
decreed by
then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in the final days of
the
Bush administration.

The military buildup is an extension of the 2008 Merida Initiative--
described
by the U.S. State Department as a program that "provides equipment
and
training in support of law enforcement operations and technical
assistance to
promote the long-term reform, oversight and professionalization of
our
partners' security agencies" in the Americas.

With this framework, Congress last year approved an initial $400
million in
aid to Mexico and another $65 million for Central America, the
Dominican
Republic and Haiti. The three-year plan could allocate up to $1.6
billion to
Mexico and Central American and Caribbean countries for security aid
to
design and carry out "counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism and
border
security measures."

Thus, the Merida Initiative is called Plan Mexico by its critics--an
allusion
to the notorious Plan Colombia, where internal violence and
displacement
increased as a result of the infusions of U.S. cash that funds the
Colombian
military's dirty war on the left under the banner of the "war on
drugs."

The U.S. is now rolling out the same strategy in Mexico, where
clashes
between rival drug cartels have cost more than 6,000 lives in the last
year.
As Laura Carlsen, writing for the Center for International Policy's
Americas
program put it:

>Although presented as an unprecedented effort to fight burgeoning drug
>trafficking and violence related to organized crime in Mexico, what the U.S.
>calls a "Regional Security Cooperation Initiative" goes far beyond stopping
>the flow of illegal drugs. It fundamentally restructures the U.S.-Mexico
>bi-national relationship, recasts economic and social problems as security
>issues, and militarizes Mexican society.
>
The Merida Initiative also allocates $48 million for "International
Narcotics
Control and Law Enforcement" to Mexico, and direct aid to the police
and
armed forces makes up over 40 percent of that spending. For its part,
the
Mexican government has deployed 45,000 troops across the country for
drug
interdiction, with the largest percentage of the total stationed in
border
cities such as Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana.

Carlsen points out that U.S. defense contractors will profit from aid
that
will mostly go to the most repressive parts of the Mexican state:

>Most of the $132.5 million allocated to Mexican law enforcement agencies
>also lines the pockets of defense companies for purchase of surveillance,
>inspection and security equipment, and training. The Mexican Federal Police
>Force receives most of this funding, with Customs, Immigration and
>Communications receiving the remainder.
>
>The rest of the 2008 appropriations request is comprised of $112 million in
>the "Rule of Law" category for the Mexican Attorney General's Office and the
>criminal justice system. This money is earmarked for software and training
>in case-tracking and centralizing data. The initiative would also give $12.9
>million to the infamous Mexican Intelligence Service (CISEN) for
>investigations, forensics equipment, counterterrorism work, and to other
>agencies including the Migration Institute for establishment of a database
>on immigrants. The U.S. government allots $37 million of the packet to
>itself for administrative costs..
>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHILE THE U.S. fortifies its side of the border, the Mexican
government of
President Felipe Calderón has already begun pouring armed forces into
the
region.

According to the Frontera NorteSur news agency, the Mexican government
has
designs for its own "border surge" through Operation Chihuahua, "a
plan to
deploy a total of 8,500 army troops and 2,300 federal officers in
Ciudad
Juárez, ultimately bringing the combined number of security
personnel
stationed in the violence-wracked city of 1.3 million people to
about
12,000."

Calderón has also moved to give the Mexican military authority over
local
police departments, municipal commerce departments and the state
prison in
Ciudad Juárez. Despite these efforts, the drug violence continues,
and
investigations into corruption of police and military agencies show
that many
are already on the cartels' payrolls..

For instance, a study published in the Mexico City daily newspaper /
La
Jornada/ in February revealed that an estimated 62 percent of
municipal,
state, ministerial and federal agents are suspected to be linked to
the
cartels. The increased corruption of state agents on both sides of the
border
shows that the $300 billion a year illicit drug trade--and the
cartelization
of production and distribution created by the "war on drugs" emanating
from
the United States--will not be solved by more militarization.

Furthermore, human rights organizations are concerned that the
militarization
of Mexican politics has as much to do with curtailing social protest
movements as interdicting illegal drugs.

For instance, the recently appointed police chief of Ciudad Juárez,
retired
Gen. David Julián Rivera Bretón, had built his reputation as a
participant
in the military crackdown of indigenous farmers in the state of
Chiapas
during the Zapatista National Liberation Army's revolt against the
destabilizing effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA).

As Laura Carlsen has reported, local leaders of community-based
organizations
were some of the first targeted by the Mexican military. "In
Chihuahua," she
writes, "when the army moved in, it arrested social leaders on five-
year-old
warrants for blocking the international bridges--a common form of
protest
there and often used to protest NAFTA measures."

According to a February 2008 report by the International Civil
Commission on
Human Rights, arrest, imprisonment, physical intimidation and torture
of
peaceful protesters, movement leaders and even family members of
activists
are commonplace by Mexican law enforcement agencies and the Mexican
military.

Moreover, there is a correlation between the destabilizing effects of
NAFTA
on Mexico's economy and the rise of the drug wars. Author and Mexico
analyst
Bill Weinberg explains:

>The privatization of Mexico's communal peasant lands--the ejidos--was
>another NAFTA-related measure that helped force hundreds of thousands from
>their traditional rural communities. In these same years, Mexico's
>narco-economy exploded, the trafficking of cocaine and growing of opium and
>marijuana filling the vacuum left by the evaporation of the market for
>domestic maize and beans.
>
Even with the growth of drug-related crime and violence, major
protests
continue against the effects of NAFTA on Mexico's producing classes,
such as
the "Sin Mais, No Hay Pais" (Without Corn, There is No Country)
campaign
opposing the final dismantling of most agricultural tariffs in 2008.
Yet even
before these last barriers were removed, the much of Mexican
agricultural
production had been displaced of by U.S. imports. Thus when U.S.
producers
diverted much of their Mexico-bound corn to biofuel production, store
shelves
in Mexico were left bare--and food riots were the result.

The commercial integration between the United States and Mexico
under
NAFTA--has facilitated the rise of the so-called Mexico-U.S. "narco
corridor."

As analysts for Stratfor have noted, the U.S. "war on drugs," by
concentrating on closing supply routes through the Caribbean Basin in
recent
years, has failed to cut drug supply lines into the U.S. Rather,
those
networks have simply shifted to the border region. A Stratfor report
points
out:

> From that point, the Mexican cartels transported them north and then handed
>them off to U.S. street gangs and other organizations, which handled much of
>the narcotics distribution inside the United States. In recent years,
>however, these Mexican groups have grown in power and have begun to take
>greater control of the entire narcotics-trafficking supply chain.
>
Increased commercial traffic between the two countries as a result of
"free
trade" has pushed most drug traffic through ports of entry on the
Mexican
border. Violence results primarily from cartels competing with each
other for
control of the trade, rather than clashes between the cartels and the
state.
Nevertheless, U.S. and Mexican authorities are responding as if they
are at
"war" with the cartels directly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THUS, AS drug violence flows northward along the corridors of
distribution
and consumption, so too does increased militarization on the U.S.
border,
meshing with efforts toward enforcement of immigration laws.

In a January interview, the ex-Homeland Security chief, Chertoff, told
the
/New York Times/, "We completed a contingency plan for border
violence, so if
we did get a significant spillover, we have a surge--if I may use
that
word--capability to bring in not only our own assets but even to work
with
the Defense Department."

The U.S. plan calls for aircraft, armored vehicles and special teams
to
converge on border trouble spots, with the size of the force depending
on the
scale of the problem. Military forces would be called upon in the
event that
civilian agencies like the Border Patrol and local law enforcement
were
"overwhelmed."

As a continuation of Chertoff's efforts, Obama's Department of
Homeland
Security recently announced plans to double the size of its Border
Enforcement Security Task Forces (BEST) operating along the U.S.-
Mexico
Border. According to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
BEST
"incorporates personnel from ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
(CBP);
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms
and Explosives; Federal Bureau of Investigation; U.S. Coast Guard; and
the
U.S. Attorney's Office along with other key federal, state, local and
foreign
law enforcement agencies."

Homeland Security also plans to increase ICE's "Fugitive Operations
Teams"
operating in the region, triple the number of intelligence analysts
and
quadruple the number of border liaison officers working with Mexican
law
enforcement officials. The department also allocates $700 million to
Mexican
police officials to purchase five helicopters, training and other
technologies.

Under this plan, as many as 500 federal agents from different
federal
agencies will be redeployed from various postings around the country
to the
Southwest border, and about $200 million will be redirected to fund
a
purported crackdown on the cartels and drug trade. These forces will
bolster
the force of 18,000 agents that already patrol the nearly 600 miles of
border
wall, looking for unauthorized crossers.

As President Obama summarized the efforts during a town-hall meeting
in
California, "I'm going to be working with President Calderón in Mexico
to
figure out how we get control over the border that's become more
violent
because of the drug trade. We have to combine that with cracking down
on
employers who are exploiting undocumented workers."

The timing of the border surge coincides not only with a startling
increase
in drug-related violence throughout Mexico and increased resistance to
the
policies of neoliberalism, but also the sharp plunge of the Mexican
economy
into recession. In February, Mexico's Economy Minister Gerardo Ruiz
Mateos
announced that Mexico would shed 300,000 jobs as a result of recession
and
the country's dependency on U.S. markets. Concurrently, the peso has
lost 25
percent of its value against the dollar since the summer of 2008,
raising the
cost of living for most Mexicans.

Falling oil prices will also exacerbate Mexico's already perilous
situation,
which accounts for 40 percent of all of the national government's
spending.
Already, Mexican auto production and exports have plummeted by more
than 50
percent by January, and factory owners in the city of Ciudad Juárez
had laid
off 40,000 workers by February.

As the Mexico sinks deeper into recession, Mexican workers and
peasants will
be squeezed even more as the economic crisis deepens existing
disparities of
wealth and opportunity brought about by "free trade" policies. While
the rate
of unauthorized border crossings has modestly slowed due to recession
and
increased enforcement, they are not likely to stop, and in fact will
likely
increase as the drug war and recession intensify.

It will be migrant workers who will continue to be the main
casualties. While
four deaths were reported on the U.S. side of the border in 2008 due
to the
drug war "spilling over," 318 migrant border crossers perished without
even a
fraction of the "outrage" now mobilizing the U.S. government into
action to
fight the cartels. The perpetuation of the "drug war" and the strategy
of the
"border surge" will only increase the violence and loss of life.