House Subcommittees Discuss the Merida Initiative Share This /

On Tuesday, September 13, 2011, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere and Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight held a hearing entitled “Has Mérida Evolved? Part One: The Evolution of Drug Cartels and the Threat to Mexico’s Governance.” The webcast is available online from the Committee’s website.

The witnesses called to testify at the hearing were Dr. Gary M. Shiffman, an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies, Dr. Andrew Selee, the Director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Dr. Robert J. Bunker, a Senior Fellow at Small Wars Journal El Centro, and Dr. Pamela Starr, an Associate Professor in Public Diplomacy and the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California, and the Director of the U.S.-Mexico Network.

The two subcommittees convened to discuss the viability of the Mérida Initiative, a State Department initiative aimed at providing equipment and training to support law enforcement operations and technical assistance to support reform in Mexico and Central America. In his opening statement, Representative Connie Mack (R-FL) stated repeatedly that the Mérida Initiative is not the way forward for the United States’s and Mexico’s mutual fight against organized crime. Mack instead proposed a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy, “to combat the evolution and resilience of Mexico’s transnational criminal organizations. The United States should support a targeted yet comprehensive strategy that works with Mexico to secure one key population center at a time in order to build and support vital infrastructure and social development for lasting results.”

After encountering a bit of trouble in the pronunciation of the Mérida Initiative, Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) focused his statement on the issue of border security. He was very vocal about the necessity for heightened security on both sides, stating that the Mexican government has shown little cooperation with U.S. border security policies and officials and claimed that Mexico wants to “keep the border open at all points.” Rep. Rohrabacher believes that more must be done at the border before we should attempt to reform Mexican law enforcement and the judiciary.

Both Representatives Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Russ Carnahan (D-MO) kept their opening statements fairly short, and expressed a concern about drug use being a driver. Rep. Engel especially emphasized the need to look at domestic policies that could be enacted to work on demand-side elimination of the drug trade, rather than continue focusing on supply-side eradication.

While the different Representatives present had varying ideas of where the real issue lies with Mexico, from the border to drug use among U.S. citizens, one tendency was noted throughout – that of referring to the cartel violence as an insurgency.

Witness Testimony

• Gary Shiffman agreed with Representative Mack’s usage of the word “insurgency” in defining the acute problems facing Mexico today. He reduced the seemingly complex violence in Mexico to a broad battle between state forces and illegal “outlaw” forces both competing for the hearts and minds of the population. In his opinion, once the conflict is understood through the insurgency framework, better and more successful policies could be enacted.
• Andrew Selee presented four ways in which we should shift the Mérida Initiative to improve the strategy. He called for a strategic intelligence sharing plan, better mapping of how these organizations operate in the United States and the need for the U.S. Department of Treasury to start tracking cartel money, the continued support of those persons who are trying to (re)build and reform law enforcement and the judiciary in Mexico, and finally, to work to reduce drug consumption at home.
• Robert Bunker was very blunt in declaring that the United States needs to reprioritize its national security and see that the cartels and “narcogangs” of Mexico and Central America are the number one strategic threat to the United States. He sees the cartels and gangs evolving towards war-making entities and criminal and “spiritual” insurgencies instigating societal warfare.
• Pamela Starr’s testimony gave a much-needed historical introduction to the problem that unfortunately came at the end of the round of witness’ opening statements. She sees the current strategy as transforming what was a national security problem into a law enforcement problem, which is positive, but has also revealed the weakness of law enforcement, and their inability to deal with the violence and local problems.

Follow-up Questions

• Representative Mack began by asking if Mexico’s governance and rule of law is threatened more so today than in 2007, when Mérida was signed. He also asked for a clarification of “insurgency.” Somewhat predictably, Dr. Shiffman responded by saying that due to the large amount of money that is at stake today, a new threat exists to Mexico’s government that did not exist in 2007. He explained the transformation of violence from cartel versus government (2007) to cartel versus cartel, which means the government is not relevant. Selee added to this by claiming that we are misdiagnosing the problem by focusing solely on the 6-7 large cartels, and instead need to target the smaller emerging criminal groups and networks.
• There was a lot of emphasis placed on the ATF’s “Fast and Furious” scandal-- with Representative Rohrabacher using it as a reason to not further institutionalize intelligence sharing with Mexico. The leaking of intelligence given to Pakistani sources was also referenced--raising the concern that the same could happen in Mexico.
• Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX) noted that he would like to see the Mérida Initiative be modeled much more after Plan Colombia, and also said that he would like to introduce a bill declaring the cartels as terrorists. Ms. Starr promptly responded with concerns of policy mishaps that could arise by mislabeling the Mexican crime syndicates.

This blog was written by CIP Intern Jessica Lippman.