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...
We lead off this week’s summary with two articles related to the Merida Initiative. The first looks at the U.S. drug czar’s comment to a Spanish news agency in support of demilitarization of the counternarcotics struggle in Mexico--a comment ‘clarified’ the next day by the Obama administration. The second is the appointment of the new U.S. ambassador to Mexico, whose swearing-in remarks include explicit support for Merida Initiative.
The following two articles report on statements by Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary that Mexico expects an acceleration of...
For the first time in a couple of years, the U.S. government has come up with new estimates of the average price and purity of a gram of cocaine sold on U.S. streets.
Since 2007, Bush and Obama administration officials had been...
We start this weekly summary with two analytic articles about the drug war. One looks at how Plan Colombia has turned out not to be such a success and is, thus, not a model to be applied in Mexico. The second looks at the Mexico drug cartels from the point of view of being rational actors in a business market. The Mexico drug war also demonstrated this week how it is interwoven with three other major issues in Mexico: freedom of speech, government corruption and violence against women. Two ordinary Mexicans tweeted rumors of cartel violence in Veracruz that proved to be false. This led...
This week has brought with it big changes for the Colombian defense establishment, in what may be an attempt to quell rising perceptions that the guerrilla groups are reversing gains made during the previous administration. On Monday, September 6, Juan Carlos Pinzón was sworn in as the new Minister of Defense, to whom President Juan Manuel Santos pledged an additional 1.5 trillion pesos ($838 million) to fund a “decisive step”...
On Wednesday, September 7th, Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) sent a letter to four Obama Administration officials requesting a "comprehensive accounting of U.S. assistance to the Colombia government's Department of Administrative Security (DAS) during the period of August 7, 2002 to August 7, 2010." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and CIA Director David Petraeus were all addressed in the letter, which asks specifically for detailed information on all "funds, training, lethal and non-...