Pubdate: Thu, 29 Nov 2012
Source: International Herald-Tribune (International)
Copyright: International Herald Tribune 2012
Contact:  http://global.nytimes.com/?iht
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/212
Author: Alan Riding
Note: Alan Riding, a former correspondent for The New York Times, is 
author of "Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans."

SAFETY FIRST IN MEXICO

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's outgoing president, Felipe Calderon, was never 
much loved. His election in 2006 was overshadowed by claims of fraud 
by a leftist challenger. He then struggled with a deep recession 
brought on by the global financial crisis. And throughout his term he 
sponsored an army-led "war on drugs," which has left a death toll 
variously estimated at between 65,000 and 100,000. Little wonder that 
most Mexicans are eager to see him leave office on Saturday.

But there also isn't much enthusiasm about what comes next. The 
incoming president, Enrique Pena Nieto, a former state governor with 
a pretty-boy image, represents a restoration of the Institutional 
Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled the country between 1929 and 
2000 through a mixture of repression, corruption, co-option and 
vote-fixing. The novelty is that Pena Nieto was fairly elected, 
albeit with only 38 percent of the vote in a three-way race.

The reality is that Mexicans voted less for the PRI candidate than 
against those of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or 
P.R.D., and of Calderon's conservative National Action Party, or PAN. 
A good many people on the left and right fear that the PRI's 
authoritarian instincts will soon resurface. Pena Nieto, 46, insists 
that his party has embraced the new rules of the game.

He has a few things going for him. The country's economy is again 
growing, with the combination of falling unemployment at home and 
fewer jobs in the United States bringing a dramatic drop in illegal 
migration to the north. And thanks to the North American Free Trade 
Agreement, instead of exporting people, Mexico is now a major 
exporter of cars, televisions, aircraft parts and other manufactured goods.

Pena Nieto may also be better able to govern than either Calderon or 
his PAN predecessor, Vicente Fox, whose reformist efforts were 
invariably blocked by the PRI and P.R.D. in Congress. Not only is the 
PAN backing the new government's plan to open the ailing oil 
monopoly, Pemex, to private capital, but the PRI's traditional 
subservience to its leader should also strengthen Pena Nieto's hand 
in negotiating with other centers of power.

There is much to be done. Corruption, long associated with PRI rule, 
has not abated over the past 12 years. Fiscal reform is urgently 
needed: Mexico has the lowest level of tax revenue in relation to 
G.D.P. of any O.E.C.D. member. Monopolies flourish, not least the 
telecommunications empire controlled by Carlos Slim, the world's richest man.

Labor unions, long allied to the PRI, are also now more independent. 
The Pemex workers' boss, Carlos Romero Deschamps, will expect big 
payoffs for his members in return for any energy reform. Elba Esther 
Gordillo, the teachers' union leader since 1989 (and recently 
re-elected unanimously until 2018), remains the principal obstacle to 
much-needed modernization of education.

Still, quite the biggest headache inherited by Pena Nieto is the "war 
on drugs." Calderon claims that a significant number of leading capos 
have been killed or arrested; he also argues that most of the tens of 
thousands of dead have been victims of a separate territorial war 
being waged by competing cartels. But even amid signs that violence 
may have peaked, domestic support for his strategy has long evaporated.

Today, Mexicans feel they are fighting an American battle on Mexican 
soil. Calderon estimated that Mexico's cartels earn $20 billion per 
year from American drug consumers, more than enough to buy 
sophisticated weaponry north of the border. And after voters in 
Colorado and Washington State approved recreational use of marijuana 
this month, it is hard to explain why Mexicans should die to prevent 
marijuana being smuggled north.

As a candidate, Pena Nieto expressed alarm over the price Mexico is 
paying for the war on drugs and suggested he could reduce the 
violence, but he has not spelled out how. (At their meeting in 
Washington on Tuesday, Pena Nieto and President Obama promised closer 
cooperation on security issues, but just what this means remains unclear.)

One favorite explanation for the rise of violence since the PRI left 
office 12 years ago is that party bosses were in league with the drug 
cartels and that, quite unnecessarily, Calderon stirred up the 
hornets' nest. In response, Pena Nieto's aides have dismissed any 
notion of a deal with the capos and have pledged to equip and expand 
the federal police for a more effective war.

A wiser approach might be to adopt the policy preferred by the two 
other countries engaged in the most profitable of the drug trades. 
Neither Colombia, one of the largest cocaine producers, nor the 
United States, the largest cocaine consumer, is being torn apart by 
drug-related violence. Both have learned to coexist with the problem, 
both have opted for containment, both have left Mexico to fight the war.

Pena Nieto's priority is to make Mexico a safer place - for its 
citizens, for tourists, for businesses - and this may only be 
possible by conceding that narcotics trafficking will continue so 
long as there is a lucrative market next door. Certainly, if the war 
slips out of the headlines in the coming months, this will not mean 
the cartels have been defeated. It will simply mean that the new 
government is placing Mexico's interests before those of the United States.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom