Mexico

[scottdisco]

definitely applaud what you're saying here Padraig and would not wish it to be inferred that i have only just woken up to the plight of structural Mexican inequality, institutional corruption etc, the massively corrosive history of the PRI- from some US-centric position; i suppose my raising (you might say) semantics about a recent spike in violence are just that - the up-turn in the homicide stats are spectacular (sorry, poor choice of word), and so on.

how long would it usually take you to build one of those water tanks?

(that was a very impressive EZLN post of yours, and not long enough by half, i thought!)

 

[vimothy]

The state makes war

Keeping power is what drives governments -- all governments. As usual, institutions are the key.

"Gang war and international war have a lot in common. Nations and outlaws both lack enforceable legal systems to help them govern their affairs. Both engage in the ultimate in violence. Both have an interest in avoiding violence, but the threat of violence is continually on call. It is interesting that racketeers, as well as gangs of delinquents, engage in limited war, disarmament and disengagement, suprise attack, retaliation and threat of retalition; they worry about 'appeasement' and loss of face; and they make alliances and agreements with the same disability that nations are subject to - the inabelity to appeal to higher authority in the interest of contract enforcement."

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

^^that's an excellent paragraph Vimothy.

alright, so I have a question for the ppl who have actually studied all this stuff - the policy gurus & economists (not to lump you all in) - what is the exact definition of a "failed state"? how is it distinguished from states which are not failing? what does it look like when a state fails? because the picture I've been forming is of a collapse into utter chaos with Mad Max style gangs roaming the land & pillaging at will. is this totally wrong? when ppl say "failed state" do they actually mean the cartels operating more or less with impunity (which it seems has already been the case for a long time)? do they mean the central govt not controlling large swathes of the country (which has also already been a reality for a while)? do they mean the cartels actually performing a military style coup de etat (b/c frankly that doesn't make sense - why on earth would druglords want to deal with road maintenance & zoning laws & such)? help, please - the more I read about this the more confused I become.

 

[vimothy]

I don't know if there is a universally agreed upon definition of the term "failed state". By failed state, I mean a state that no longer solves the equation and monopolises the use of violence. However, in reality and as Mr BoShambles points out upthread, the authority of the state is always contested: its a scale, not a dichotomy. If the state doesn't monopolise the use of violence, what happens? Things fall apart. And if things are already falling apart? They fall apart faster.

EDIT: Is that a really shit answer? Can't tell, but I've already made my excuses!

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

definitely applaud what you're saying here Padraig and would not wish it to be inferred that i have only just woken up to the plight of structural Mexican inequality, institutional corruption etc, the massively corrosive history of the PRI- from some US-centric position; i suppose my raising (you might say) semantics about a recent spike in violence are just that - the up-turn in the homicide stats are spectacular (sorry, poor choice of word), and so on.

nah, I'm sorry, I think I've been coming off quite self-righteous & I don't mean to. I didn't mean to infer that at all.

how long would it usually take you to build one of those water tanks?

well just the tank, only a couple days, you could do it one long weekend trip as I recall - don't quote me tho I'm not an engineer the guys who ran it were I mainly just did grunt work. one thing, a lot of these places were remote (some morseo than others) and a lot of times we wouldn't be able to drive all the way there even on a beatup dirt road (like one village I went to was in the middle of the jungle on the opposite side of a river with no bridge for 50k in either direction - they had a dude who would pole us across on a raft - kept them safe from army harassment tho) so we'd have to haul the cement & rebar & stuff using "mecapals" which I dunno if you're familiar with:

for real, I've seen wizened old ladies & 8 yr old kids hauling around staggering loads of with those things. more than I could at any rate - actually every village I went to I got laughed at for trying to use it they said the gringos always wanted to carry stuff with their arms (like chopsticks vs. forks I guess) but I kept at it & by the time I left I could carry as much as like a 10 yr old boy so hey.

anyway ferrocrete's not super complicated you just have to know what you're doing. what really took a long time was digging the pipe for the trench cause sometimes the water source would be miles & miles from the village the water had to go to with all kinds of rugged terrain in between. proper UN engineers do this stuff too in like Nepal & places like that. also there was political stuff - like we had to meet with every community & set really clear agreements & rules for how stuff would go - I guess it's their way of staying on the up & up with foreign supporters. plus it depended on the time of yr - like during busy agricultural times, planting & harvest etc. all the men had to work so they couldn't spare anyone to dig trench & stuff (I mean we did the manual labor with them but we're talking about pretty massive projects here that require a lot of bodies) also it was tough to work during the heaviest parts of the rainy season as you might guess.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I don't know if there is a universally agreed upon definition of the term "failed state". By failed state, I mean a state that no longer solves the equation and monopolises the use of violence. However, in reality and as Mr BoShambles points out upthread, the authority of the state is always contested: its a scale, not a dichotomy. If the state doesn't monopolise the use of violence, what happens? Things fall apart. And if things are already falling apart? They fall apart faster.

EDIT: Is that a really shit answer? Can't tell, but I've already made my excuses!

no it's not bad - about what I expected. though what does "solve the equation" mean? sorry. and what do you mean by monopolizing violence - I reckon you mean like official armed forces & so on? cos here in the States we have all manner of gnarly violence going on pretty much around the clock.

really thought that's what I mean it's so vague (not your fault I realize), things "fail" or "succeed" faster. I mean I know what is meant by failing or succeeding it just seems kind of misleading to toss around such a grave term when no one can actually properly define it. just tbc clear I'm blaming the term not your valiant attempt to pin it down.

 

[vimothy]

All the King's horses

The equation is the problem of violence.

"Failed state" is obviously a problematic phrase on some levels. However, states are equilibria. What will be, shall be, and so it is with the state. "Failure" implies a trajectory -- beyond a certain point, it's hard to put the pieces back together again.

 

[scottdisco]

horse has bolted

nah, I'm sorry, I think I've been coming off quite self-righteous & I don't mean to. I didn't mean to infer that at all.

must admit Padraig i didn't really think you were inferring what i said, but i couldn't think of any way of phrasing myself just to be clear that i totally appreciated the intent behind your observations, than dragging the old 'inferring that' game into the thread, i am sorry about that!

the nearest i've even been to Mexico is LA and it has been several years since i paid attention to politics there (though i did go through a phase of a few years of paying close attention).

Vim totally OTM re the trajectories of (this messy, necessarily imprecise phrase) 'failed state' (though if Mr BoShambles is around, or one of the other IR heads, their definitions would interest me on the technical level).

my 2c. is that the monopoly of violence - reflexive violence, ie, when a non-state actor (gang, domestic abuser, whoever) commits violence on a citizen then the state is able to react to that and satisfactorily deploy violence/threat of violence in order for the wronged party to seek some form of redress etc (not all the time maybe, but most of the time, eg there may be a losing battle for the police in large urban centres in many wealthy economies but the police are still there, boots on the ground, quite often making a positive difference - granted, someone like was it Ivan Illich once saying about the police being involved in a conspiracy to arrest you from the pov of any inner-city dweller) - makes the state, really, to get down to brass tacks.
(well, there's public services and all the public good stuff, but to be very reductive, an anecdote from the part of England that is mine and Vim's manor, fire brigade crews have sometimes been attacked in parts of the urban northwest by youths stoning them, and the police respond to this, so in some parts of Merseyside and Manchester the fire services are able to respond to emergencies only under cover of police protection in some - fairly infrequent, it must be said - dispiriting instances.)

the fact that in some areas of Mexico the centre is losing control is not the same as Somalia (from a certain formal pov the exemplar of failed state), as Padraig already said, as the Mexican state is providing goods and services across the country (notwithstanding some of the egregious inequalities that exist there), and in parts of the country very much have the upper hand in maintaining law and order.

i guess i have a very basic view of what a failed state is, and it really is at the bottom of a scale, central govt efficacy and that.

of course Vim said all what i have just said, except he phrased it more eloquently and with more concision!

i suppose in the late 90's and the turn of the new century there were moments when Indonesia could arguably have been on the brink of toppling over into a state that had lost this monopoly definitively across vast swathes of its territory; the Asian financial crisis as a big headache coupled with long-running insurgencies across the archipelago, and from 1999 onward the inter-communal violence in Maluku becoming one more tragic rent in Indonesia.

though i know all the above is being read through my biases, there must be plenty of places where the centre has very little relevance for people, and the monopoly of violence (in certain rural parts of the world for eg) is wielded by local authorities, who may have a somewhat vague relationship with the centre (or may be patrons, have a sort of network relationship, rather than top-down).

and states that are committing the most heinous abuses against some of their own citizens (or neighbouring/regional citizens) eg Sudan or Ethiopia, well, i mean, i know Ethiopia is pretty good at monopolising violence on its territory (excepting the Ogaden insurgency, which they clearly respond to robustly from what we all know), well, i am now getting into moralising, and i think my sandals-wearing HRW-type approach is not the most helpful; i admit myself i want more clear-eyed Vim-style views on definitions (sorry Vim i think i just called you a heartless neo-con or something )

sorry for waffle!

also i am aware the above is full of a lot of lazy stuff, i just wanted to toss a few inchoate views out, and if we're talking anything about the Horn then the first person to go to on the board is Sufi, must be said

 

[Agent]

if you're looking to start an illegal drug cartel i'd go with the Phillipines over Mexico, just saying.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

Man i love this quote:

If protection rackets represent organised crime at its smoothest, then war risking and state making – quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy – qualify as our largest examples of organised crime. Without branding all generals and statesmen as murderers or thieves, I want to urge the value of that analogy. At least for the European experience of the past few centuries, a portrait of war makers and state makers as coercive and self-seeking entrepreneurs bears a far greater resemblance to the facts than do its chief alternatives: the idea of a social contract, the idea of an open market in which operators of armies and states offer services to willing consumers, the idea of a society whose shared norms and expectations call forth a certain kind of government.​

Historical sociologist Charles Tilly at his cynical best.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

News update: Mexican security forces enter Ciudad Juarez

BBC coverage

Reuters/AlertNet

 

[vimothy]

Fucking hell! Cheers for the link.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

Can Mexico learn from Colombia's drug war?

Mexico: State of War - from Foreign Policy.

Scary stuff:

The former U.S. drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, was in Mexico not long ago, and this is what he found:

The outgunned Mexican law enforcement authorities face armed criminal attacks from platoon-sized units employing night vision goggles, electronic intercept collection, encrypted communications, fairly sophisticated information operations, sea-going submersibles, helicopters and modern transport aviation, automatic weapons, RPG’s, Anti-Tank 66 mm rockets, mines and booby traps, heavy machine guns, 50 [caliber] sniper rifles, massive use of military hand grenades, and the most modern models of 40mm grenade machine guns.

These are the weapons the drug gangs are now turning against the Mexican government as Calderón escalates the war against the cartels.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

re: Mexican troops enter Cd Juarez

well I do have to admit this looks pretty badly f***ed. just to be clear tho there have been troops & a healthy does of PFP (the federal police) there for a long time. & it's generally quite a violent place. this sounds a lot worse, tho - 10 murders a day!!. I have a friend who's from & lives there - a REALLY outspoken punk/activist type who's always been equally clear in denouncing the govt & the cartels - he's a hard type to track down (& I hope he's alright - he's had a lot of trouble with the cops/military over the yrs) but if I do hear from him I'll let all know what his take on things is from Juarez itself.

 

[vimothy]

Can someone explain, what was the relationship like between the PRI and the cartels? Is it fair to read the current violence as having its roots in the transition to democracy? Ta.

 

[vimothy]

This paper is about Columbia, not Mexico, but it looks pretty relevant: A Question of Escalation - From Counternarcotics to Counterterrorism: Analysing US Strategy in Colombia -- Jason Vauters & MichaeL L. R. Smith, Small Wars and Insurgencies

Abstract
This analysis addresses whether US strategy has escalated the ongoing conflict in Colombia. The study examines the ways in which US policy towards Colombia has been affected both by global circumstances after 9/11, and local events on the ground such as the involvement of private military firms which operate alongside multinational corporations in the country. The evidence suggests that US strategy has escalated the conflict, sometimes unintentionally, as the policy has evolved from an initial emphasis on countering the narcotics trade to one of counterterrorism. This has occurred, however, at the expense of other reforms, in particular by hindering the implementation of an effective pacification strategy. The analysis concludes that such an unbalanced strategy does not, as a consequence, provide for greater security and stability.​

CFR Brief on Mexico, by Shannon K. O'Neil

 

[vimothy]

Yet more links; parked here for now...

A Contemporary Challenge to State Sovereignty: Gangs and Other Illicit Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) in Central America, El Salvador, Mexico, Jamaica, and Brazil -- Max G. Manwaring, SSI

The purposes of this monograph are to (1) introduce the gang phenomenon as a major nonstate player and a serious threat in the global and regional security arenas;( 2) examine the gang phenomenon in Central America in general and in El Salvador, Mexico, Jamaica, and Brazil more specifically; and (3) summarize the key points and lessons and make brief recommendations. These cases demonstrate the analytical commonalities of various types of gang activities as they contribute to the instabilities that lead to the erosion of national security, nation-state sovereignty, the processes of state failure, and the struggle between democratic and criminal values.​

Mexico Trip Report, December 2008 -- General Barry McCaffrey

General Barry McCaffrey (USA, Ret.) an Adjunct Professor at West Point, visited Mexico 5-7 December 2008 as part of an International Forum of Intelligence and Security Specialists.

In his report, General McCaffrey notes that drug-related violence in Mexico is as severe as terror-related violence in Afghanistan and calls on the new Administration to urgently focus on the growing security threat to the US southern border.​

The US Army on the Mexican Border: A Historical Perspective -- Matt Mathews, CSI

Since the mid-19th century, the United States has frequently employed the US Army on its southern border to perform various roles in support of the Nation—from outright war, to patrolling the border, to chasing bandits while securing persons and property on both sides of the border, and most recently to supporting civil law enforcement and antidrug efforts. Events since 9/11, such as the recent deployment of National Guard Soldiers to the Mexican border, are only the latest manifestation of this long tradition. This 22nd Occasional Paper in the Combat Studies Institute (CSI) Long War Series, The US Army on the Mexican Border: A Historical Perspective, by CSI historian Matt M. Matthews, reviews the lengthy history of the US Army on the Mexican border and highlights recurring themes that are relevant to today’s ongoing border security mission.​

The JOE 2008 - USJFCOM (The JOE is the Joint Operating Environment -- basically US security forces prediction of the near term future. Includes a section on Mexico).

A tale of two Mexicos -- dunno who it's by, The Economist

Time Bomb on the U.S. Border: Mexican Military Unable to Counter Insurgency -- COL Rex Applegate (Dunno when this is from. Some interesting stuff on Mexican armed forces).

The Next Disaster -- Jesse Bogan, Kerry A. Dolan, Christopher Helman and Nathan Vardi, Forbes

Good coverage of Mexico at the LA Times.

Also looking for good data on the Mexican economy and demographic trends...

 

[Mr BoShambles]

Good work Vim... keep it coming mate!!

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

thanks for the wealth of links Vimothy, working my way through them slowly.

A tale of two Mexicos -- dunno who it's by, The Economist

A self-styled Zapatista revolutionary army took over parts of Chiapas in 1994. It has not formally called off its rebellion, which involves some 20,000 people. But the federal government now quietly supplies electricity and water to the villages the Zapatistas still control, according to Xavier Abreu, an official at the federal government's agency for indigenous people.

yes, "self-styled". not sure where they're getting 20,000, which is way, way low unless you're only referring to the actual full-time fighers (the EZLN "army") which doesn't make sense cos it's not a traditional guerrilla force like the Sandinistas or whatever - you can't separate the fighters from the communities - they're not just lefty students from the city (except Marcos of course & perhaps a few of his old comrades from the 70s). also there's no external force "controlling" EZLN villages, the villages are the EZLN. & I like how the author makes it seem like the "rebellion" has failed cos they're accepting govt water/electric (also I'd like to know what villages specifically that govt official is referring). I think foreigners often make the mistake of conflating the EZLN w/trad lefty revolutionaries - which in fact they're not (to the occasional chagrin of some of their lefty foreign supporters), they've also been very clear that they want to be a part of Mexico, painting themselves as "true patriots" kind of thing, just with a fairer slice of the pie & respect for their way of life.

The city of Oaxaca, once a tourist magnet, is only slowly recovering from seven months of protests in 2006 calling for the ouster of the state governor, in which a score of people were killed.

just to be clear that aformentioned governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, is a fucking pig, a vicious old style PRI strongman who runs Oaxaca like his personal fiefdom.

Amerindian culture dictates maize as the staple crop; a smallholder farming a few acres with a hoe cannot compete with Iowa combines. Better infrastructure and education in the more urbanised north mean that the benefits of Mexico's membership of the North American Free-Trade Agreement have accrued there, while income in the south stagnates because of low productivity.

this is a point I was trying to make. Vimothy, you mentioned those (boring) agricultural policies that govts can encourage. is this anything beyond switching from subsistence to cash crops &/or updating with modern (e.g. machines/pesticides/etc.) techniques? or is it just that, pretty much?

Monterrey, Mexico's northern industrial capital, is starting to resemble south Texas.

sure, if you only stick to the parts of Monterrery where rich ppl live. which is generally true of northern Mexico.

Time Bomb on the U.S. Border: Mexican Military Unable to Counter Insurgency -- COL Rex Applegate (Dunno when this is from. Some interesting stuff on Mexican armed forces).

from reading it, shortly after Zedillo was elected, so late '94. so those #s are about 15 yrs out of date, here are some more recent ones - dunno how accurate they are. interesting that US military types were talking the EZLN so seriously back in '94, thinking that it could topple the govt or precipitate a general civil war - neither of which were likely, nor EZLN goals, nor things that would be in their interest. this:

Mexico's current armed forces cannot adequately handle the
magnitude of the problems they face. [...]

still true tho.

 

[vimothy]

Dunno if I read that economist piece in the same way. Didn't get the impression that they were trying to make it seem like the "rebellion" (is that the right word?) had failed. What would success look like? Think it is more directed towards whether or not there is still an insurrection. Anyway, point is supposed to be the income distribution.

The heart of growth is productivity increases. Small holder farms producing low cost crops are not a good idea from the perspective of development. To compete, Mexican agriculture needs to become more productive, and that means growing higher cost crops for less, which means moving away from small holder farms and towards mechanised high productivity agriculture, and increasing industrialisation (reducing the number of agricultural workers, thus increasing the return to labour in that sector).

What was the PRI's relationship with the cartels like?