Chasing Foxes

The election of Vicente Fox Quesada has ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI.  He carried two-thirds of Mexico’s 32 states, but opposition parties still dominate both houses of the national congress.  Admittedly, none has a majority, but in the case of the civil service, the PRI still holds sway.  It doesn’t follow, therefore, that the transition of power will be smooth and because it is in Washington’s best interests to support Vicente Fox’s apparent free-market stance, the President-elect is one fox that the United States should pursue and make every effort to work with.    Fox has promised to set new budget priorities and to separate the judicial and executive branches.  A new Ministry of Justice and Security is to be established that intends to attack corruption and improve cross-border collaboration on drug trafficking and crime.

The North American Free Trade Agreement should be bolstered by bilateral and hemispheric free trade initiatives.  The United States in 1998 gave up on its plans to establish a Free Trade Area of the Americas, allowing Europe and Asia to take up the slack, and efforts should now be made to resuscitate the process.    The departure of the PRI will make things less prickly because in the past the United States often sacrificed principles for the sake of stable relations.  In this new political atmosphere it will be much easier to discuss drugs and illegal immigration issues, two areas which are of great concern to the United States.  What is clear is that democracy has prevailed in Mexico, sweeping away the vestiges of a democratic process blemished with the hallmark of a dictatorship.  But untainted democracy places constraints on the President and Fox will have to be mindful of the wishes of his local constituencies.  It follows that Washington will not necessarily get all its own way in this new Mexico.

All things being equal, the U.S.-Mexico relationship should be similar to the one which the United States already enjoys with Canada in terms of which each trades with the other on equal terms and both share a peaceful common border.  But Mr. Fox and Mr. Clinton know that much has to change in Mexico before relationships can improve. 

The Root of the Problem

In March of this year the American government repeated the annual ritual of certifying those Latin American countries that are considered co-operative in the anti-drugs war.  Mexico passed muster, as did all the Andean countries, and whilst the main challenge for the new Mexican President will be to change the image of politics in his country, a more daunting task faces his Andean neighbours where the hardy coca shrub, from which cocaine is extracted, flourishes.  Although coca cultivation is down in Peru and Bolivia, the amount of land now used to grow coca in Colombia has more than doubled since 1995.  Successful attempts at eradication in Peru and Bolivia have caused this development and as a consequence the United States’ director of national drug policy has described Colombia as a disaster zone.  There are plantations of up to 10,000 hectares in southern Colombia, an area which is under the de facto control of FARC, the country’s main leftist guerrilla group.  It is estimated that FARC earns as much as $500 million a

year from what are euphemistically known as protection taxes.  This income has swelled the FARC ranks which now number 17,000.   The situation has caused such alarm in the United States that President Clinton has recently given over a billion dollars in aid to Colombia in order to help the government fight the guerrillas.  There are plans to raise 3 new army battalions, all to be equipped and trained by the United States in order to seize control in those areas that are presently under the military thumb of FARC.

The cash flows from the drug trade travel, like cocaine, along circuitous routes.   Whilst traffickers continually find new smuggling opportunities, so do the dirty money cleansers who continually find inventive ways to mask the origin of the profits generated and divided between the criminals behind the business.  Much of the criticism levelled at some offshore financial services centres has arisen because they are considered to be too accommodating towards illicit inflows and outflows of drug money into their jurisdictions.  But the solution lies in the soil and, literally, at root level.  Farmers must be given viable economic alternatives to planting coca which at present produces twice the profit coffee does and three times as much as bananas can. Eradication programmes must be improved also, which means that more funds and equipment have to be found from committed long-term international government donors.  They might be just as tough to find as the money laundering networks and the conspiring guerrillas.