Narco-Mexico

Mexico is getting lots of attention in recent days from the respective Times, signaling that the ongoing problems are causing alarms to go off in the right places in Washington.

Condi Rice swings through Puerto Vallarta (rough choice) for a couple of days this week to meet with
Mexican officials to discuss cross-border cooperation, as Marc Lacey reports in today’s NY Times.

The Bush administration increasingly sees the violent clashes in Mexico as a threat to American security, and the lawlessness was high on the agenda when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Puerto Vallarta Wednesday for meetings with her local counterpart, Patricia Espinosa. The Mexicans had sought the high-level visit to press for greater coordination with Washington in their fight against the heavily armed cartels, but the world economic crisis is also being discussed.

“Increasingly.” Well, this has been happening for at least a year, with a rise in kidnappings not just in Mexico, but also in cities like Phoenix and San Diego. As the LA Times’ Rich Marosi wrote in June, wealthy Mexican nationals seeking to escape the violence in Tijuana and the omnipresent threat of kidnapping there have moved to San Diego suburbs like Chula Vista’s Eastlake section seeking a kind to affluent asylum.

As outlined in several places, including an op-ed piece in today’s LA Times, many are pressing for more to be done about the U.S.’s complicity in bloody Mexico. Specifically, Pamela Starr, a lecturer and fellow at USC, points to ATF’s an statistic that 97 percent of the arms used by the Mexi-narcos are purchased in the United States. ATF has an initiative in place, called Project Gunrunner, but Starr is saying it’s not enough, as the U.S. is “enabling the bloodshed in Mexico.”

Starr writes,

To give the problem appropriate priority, President Bush should initiate, and his successor fortify, a coordinated, Cabinet-level initiative to attack the illicit gun trade. The departments of Homeland Security, Justice, State, Defense and Treasury all need to be involved.

Many are saying this is a matter of national security, and highlight recent incursions and gunfire exchanges by Mexican military and law enforcement into the U.S. It’s also a matter of national self-interest, because with the increased violence, more people are seeking to leave Mexico, as Tony Payan, a University of T El Paso poly sci professor, told AFP in August.