Washington Arms Mexico
$1,300 Million dollars in arms sales in one year
(Source: Witness for Peace)
The Mérida Initiative, aka Plan Mexico, was defined as a
“new security cooperation initiative” between Mexico and the U.S. to combat
drug trafficking and organized crime. While the stated goals are to “produce a
safer and more secure hemisphere and prevent the spread of illicit drugs and
transnational threats,” the reality of the initiative for the Mexican people
tells a different story.
• The Mérida
Initiative allocated over $1.5 billion to Mexico from 2008-2010. U.S. military
and police aid in each of these years marked nearly a 10-fold increase over
2007 levels. President Obama and the State Department continue to extend
military/police aid to Mexico beyond Mérida’s expiration date, requesting an
additional $310 million for 2011 and $290 million for 2012.
• Congress put
four human rights conditions on 15% of the funds: transparency and
accountability in law enforcement, civilian trials for military officials
accused of human rights violations, consultation with human rights groups, and
prohibiting testimony obtained through torture. In 2010, the U.S. State
Department decided to withhold about $26 million in Mérida funds until the
Mexican state passed human rights reforms to the constitution and the Military
Code of Justice. Mexico has yet to pass either measure.
• The funds
will go to military aircraft and drug interdiction equipment and training for
Mexican military and police. 108 Mexican soldiers were trained at the U.S.
Army’s Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly the
School of the Americas) in 2010. The Army “would like to see that number grow.”
Members of the Mexican Congress have complained about the lack of transparency
in how Mérida funds have been dispersed.
The Mérida Initiative ignores two major root causes of
drug trafficking: U.S. demand and poverty in Mexico.
• Widespread
drug use in the U.S. makes drug trafficking a lucrative venture. U.S.-designed
trade policies such as NAFTA exacerbate Mexico’s impoverishment. Currently 50
million people live in poverty in Mexico. Deeply impoverished and unemployed
people in Mexico have three options for survival: migration, tenuous and often
dangerous work in the informal economy, and crime. In such conditions,
organized crime and drug traffickers find easy prey amongst Mexico’s poor.
• Not one
penny of Plan Mexico money is dedicated toward drug prevention or
rehabilitation programs in the U.S., nor has there been complementary domestic
legislation to reduce demand in the U.S., although Hillary Clinton acknowledges
that the “insatiable demand for drugs” in the U.S. “fuels the drug trade.”
• It is
estimated that 90% of weapons used by drug cartels come from the U.S.
• A military
strategy similar to Plan Mexico has failed to produce results in Colombia.
Through Plan Colombia, the U.S. has spent over $5.6 billion on military aid and
coca fumigations. After a decade of trying to stamp out the coca supply, more
Colombian farmers are planting coca today than before Plan Colombia began.
Military solutions to social problems are proven to fail.
The Mérida Initiative affects all Mexican people by
threatening their human rights.
• The Mexican
military and police have historically been used to repress social movements.
For example, between 2006 and 2007 security forces violently repressed peaceful
demonstrations in Oaxaca. In 2006, police detained, beat and sexually assaulted
over 45 women flower vendors protesting in Atenco.
• Since 2007,
Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission has received 5000 reports of human
rights abuses. There was a six-fold
increase in human rights violations committed by soldiers during the first two
years of the Calderón administration, jumping from 182 to 1,230. There is no
evidence that any of these complaints have been prosecuted.
• Documented
cases of military human rights violations since 2009 include disappearances,
torturing two dozen municipal officials held captive in a military base,
arbitrarily opening fire on a bus of civilians, storming rural communities to
torture and threaten residents and injuring dozens of journalists and teachers
during President Calderon's most recent visit to Oaxaca. The Washington Post,
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have all documented torture, rape,
harassment, and other human rights violations committed by the police and
military without prosecution.
• There have
been almost 35,000 casualties of the war on drugs in Mexico. More than 15,000
of those deaths occurred in 2010.
Mexican civil society opposes the Mérida Initiative:
“[In 2007] the army committed severe human rights violations
in their supposed counter-drug operations. We are concerned that the funding
from the U.S. government will ultimately make this situation worse.” --Espacio
Civil (coalition of 52 Oaxaca civil society organizations)
“The Mérida Initiative, as we see it, is the U.S. implementation
of its broader security agenda. It is the visible manifestation of secret
negotiating under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America…It
is part of plans to further criminalize social protest, something that is
already a fact of life in Mexico.” --Miguel Pickard, Center for Economic and
Political Investigation for Community Action
"The Mérida Initiative is characterized by a lack of a
human rights perspective, a human security approach that mistakes the security
of states for the security of human beings...It is time for the international
community to stop supporting short-sighted policies such as this one."
--Miguel Agustin, Pro Juarez Human Rights Center
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Invoke the Leahy Amendment in Mexico
Los Comités de Defensa del Barrio
Human Rights Commission
TONATIERRAHuman Rights Commission
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