Human rights at heart of Merida Initiative debate

In anticipation of the scheduled debate around the controversial Merida Initiative aid package in the U.S. Senate this week, the British newspaper Financial Times urges President Felipe Calderon to accept the human rights conditions attached to the plan aimed at helping Mexico fight its drug barons:

"Mr Calderón should also accept the conditions. Co-responsibility is more than just sharing the financial and logistical burden of fighting the war against drugs. In its broadest expression, it encompasses many related spheres, including human rights. If he is to use the argument of co-responsibility as a way to get the US to pay more, he must also accept that it implies doing more to improve his country’s human-rights performance," writes the newspaper's Mexico correspondent, Adam Thompson.

The $1.6-billion Merida Initiative was approved by House lawmakers this month, and the Senate is expected to follow suit. You can read here about the controversial package, which is opposed by groups on both sides of the border and from all parts of the political spectrum, from Amnesty International and Friends of Brad Will (named for the journalist-activist who was shot dead in Oaxaca in 2006) to Republican groups.

The main worry is that the cash boost will place more arms and power in the hands of an already corrupt police and army in Mexico, and that the money should instead be spent on poverty-reduction programs or, as advocated by the Republicans, strengthening the border.

Meanwhile, as The Times' Ken Ellingwood reported this month, opposition is also coming from within Mexico. Senior Mexican officials have called the provisions a form of U.S. interference and threatened to turn down the first-year installment if the conditions survive in a final version yet to be worked out by the House and Senate. They want the human rights provisions on the initiative deleted.

The Minuteman border group already has a plan in case the Merida Initative doesn't pan out....

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Comments

[Rick Cadena]

Like someone else has already said, this whole Merida affair is absolute hypocrisy by the US government. Why?

1. Democracy, human rights, and habeas corpus, et al have been destroyed in our country, along with all of the pain and agony caused in Iraq. Just look at the mess in Guantanamo. The United States has lost whatever moral authority it used to have in the past over the last 8 years.

2. The hightest consumption takes place in the US. In other words, demand comes from the US. Mexico captures drug capos like the Arellano Felix brothers, but what equivalent American drug kingpins are being captured and brought to justice inside the US? People in Mexico and Latini America consider their countries as the diving board and the US as the swimming pool. The US trots around Latin America giving money laundering prevention courses and training, but what is being done to prevent money laundering inside the US?

3. The Second Amendment and its distortion promoted by the NRA are an incredible source of trouble for Mexico. Practically all of the weapons used by Mexican drug cartels come from the US. Illegal gun shows and lack of keeping a record or, better yet, a database of people who are eligible and not eligible to buy weapons are sorely lacking. One thing is for people to go hunting out in the forest somewhere, and another thing is for AK-47s to find their way into large urban areas. Criminals are better armed than city police departments.

4. When will the US change from a policy of interdiction to a policy of rehabilitation? How many American lives are ruined because of drug addiction. Furthermore, what has gone wrong with the very fabric of society in the US that drives people to consume drugs? What are they running away from? Is the American way of life in tatters these days? The United States has to confront itself as a society on this issue.

I completely disagree with the Merida initiative. Does the US want to convert Mexico into another Colombia and a Mexican version of the FARC? The US has to clean up its own house first and foremost.

As Porfirio Diaz once said, "Poor Mexico, so far away from God and so close to the United States - Pobre de México, tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos".

Native born & raised Angelino expatriate residing in Mexico City.

[durai]

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[durai]

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[Patricia]

According to the DEA's own statistics, about 80% of the drug traffic going across the border is just cheap, low potency Mexican marijuana -- the kind the hippies used to smoke.

Meanwhile, our government complains that the potency of American marijuana is too high.Imagine that.

We might have a chance at helping Mexico combat cocaine and heroin and meth trafficking if we would legalize marijuana and allow honest law abiding business farmers in Mexico to control that market.

It's stupid to let the drug war get this out of hand and this violent when it's really 80% about low grade Mexican weed.

After 35 straight years of Plan A failing, we need a Plan B.

[MLK]

What a joke that the US wants to give money to fight for a cause which they are mostly responsible for, then condition it with responsibility clauses. I find this totally offensive when people in Mexico are dying everyday to keep drugs off the streets in US and this is the message the US sends. What hypocrits.

[Jen]

Good writing again. I understand that the version the House passed actually eviscerated the alleged conditions anyhow. Any word from Amnesty and the other groups on that?