More aid to Mexico
On May 13, the Senate Appropriations Committee “marked up” (agreed upon a draft of) a bill making $58.8 billion in new, or “supplemental,” appropriations for 2010 U.S. government spending. The Senate’s version of H.R. 4899 includes $2.8 billion to support relief efforts in earthquake-devastated Haiti and $25 million to help El Salvador recover from the effects of Hurricane Ida.
It also includes something not foreseen in the Obama administration’s original March 24 supplemental funding request to Congress (PDF): $175 million in additional aid to Mexico. The assistance, which would be channeled through the State Department’s International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement program, would support “judicial reform, institution building, anti-corruption, and rule of law activities.”
While some of this assistance would likely go to security-force units, especially police, much is likely intended to support Mexico’s judicial system. This follows discussion of a move away from overwhelmingly military support and toward civilian institution-building aid, as part of what some observers are calling “Mérida Initiative 2.0,” the next phase of an aid program begun in late 2007. This shift is among the topics on the agenda of Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s two-day state visit to Washington, which begins tomorrow.
If the House accepts the Senate’s $175 million proposal, we estimate that total U.S. aid to Mexico in 2010 - both military/police and economic/social aid - would add up to $935 over $800 million: the second-largest one-year amount ever appropriated to a single Latin American country. (Colombia in 2000, the year the “Plan Colombia” appropriation was approved, still holds first place.)
Meanwhile Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), the Republican minority-party leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a detailed report evaluating U.S. aid to Mexico since the 2007 launch of the “Mérida Initiative.” The report, timed to coincide with President Calderón’s visit, advises staying the course.
The chief conclusion is that the Mérida Initiative is delivering results but must be bolstered in order to achieve its aims. While the dramatic surge in violence is an expected upshot of the aggressive campaign against DTOs, the risk is that political support for expanded cooperation may not survive daily news re- ports of brutal homicides and kidnappings. The Mérida Initiative is thus entering a critical period, with important implications for the national security of both the United States and Mexico.
Particularly notable is Appendix III of the report, a very detailed table of aid that has been delivered — or, quite frequently that still remains to be delivered — from past years’ appropriations. Though aid to Mexico totals well over a billion dollars since 2008, as of May 11, the total amount of Mérida Initiative aid to Mexico that had actually been delivered to Mexico was only $159 million.