Mexico: Time for a Plan B
Mexico has longed complained about the ease with which drug lords can obtain high-powered weapons from the United States. Understanding the domestic political restraints to stricter gun control laws in the United States (Mexico’s gun laws are much stricter), Mexican and American officials seem to be opting for plan B: better monitoring at the border.
Following a high-profile visit from Hillary Clinton last week, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano both went to Mexico to meet with their counterparts and to discuss arms control and anti-narcotics cooperation. Sec. Napolitano announced plans to spend more than $400 million to enhance surveillance equipment and entry ports along the border. Mexico, for its part, will expand a pilot program launched in Matamoros that calls for greater inspections for trucks entering into Mexico. Sec. Holder tried to assure his Mexican counterparts that the loose American gun laws would not impede the United States from attacking the illegal trafficking of arms.
Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said that Mexico and the United States have decided to share information and to work together to investigate and fight arms smuggling. However, President Felipe Calderon, from the G-20 summit in London, emphatically rejected the possibility of any joint military operations with the United States. Mexicans remain highly suspicious of the American military, a view that goes back to the Mexican-American war from 1846-48.
Secs. Holder and Napolitano were greeted in Mexico on Thursday with the news that Mexican authorities had captured one of the top drug lords for the Juarez Cartel. Vicente Carrillo Leyva, 32, was captured while exercising in a park near his home in Mexico City. He is the son of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the former leader of the Juarez Cartel who died in 1997 during plastic surgery. Despite the success of Carrillo’s capture, Mexico’s message remains the same. If the United States continues to arm drug traffickers, then Mexico’s efforts will be in vain.
