LOPEZ OBRADOR AND MEXICO’S NEW DREAM.

        

            Lopez Obrador has told the Mexican people for years how he would change Mexico, but then he won. He actually won the Presidential election. A few weeks ago, , I talked about this Mr. Obrador and his visions for Mexico. As I was reading Borderland Beat, a great site by the way, I came across another article about Obrador’s “plans”. The last I spoke of Mr. Obrador, I used a rather broad-brush approach to his vision of how he would change Mexico, but this time around, I’m going to address one specific topic in his “vision”, the Mexican Law Enforcement concept. With a “vision” that calls for removing the military from the streets, a plan that was born out of panic two Presidents ago, and allowing Mexico’s civilian Police, federal and state, to do the job they were hired to do, its ‘obvious Mr. Obrador doesn’t comprehend the current status of Mexico’s legal system, or worse, he does. Does he really believe the Mexican Military, as corrupt as even parts of it may be, can be pulled out of the day to day task of fighting the drug gangs? Where might this actually lead Mexico? At what point does the US’s Southern Border Neighbor become so dangerous, that things there can no longer be ignored? Yes, “Ignored”. If you think the US has not been ignoring the status of Mexico, then you have no true understanding of the two nation’s relationship.

The courts.

            Several years ago, the US and Mexico entered into an agreement to modernize the Mexican legal system. The plan was to build a true network of Courts, Prosecutors and legal procedures that might bring at least a more acceptable level of law to Mexico. A level of law that might actually  give the Mexican people hope and more importantly, trust.  Gains were achieved. Mexican Universities supported this reshaping of the legal system, but the reality is, the whole concept is still years away and that’s if it continues. The dream of the Mexican people is simple. They want to walk into a courtroom and believe that everything that led them to that point was legal and balanced. Yes, I know. The argument can be, “ How can the US help Mexico achieve this goal, if the US system cannot achieve the same level of balance”? Look, if you think the US legal system is no different than that of Mexico, then you have other agendas and you might as well stop reading this post. What the US was and is trying to achieve, is a stabilized form of law, one the people in Mexico can support. One the US court system can link with as the war on the drug gangs continue. As long as the Mexican government realizes the only way these gangs find justice is by extraditing them to the US, the Mexican people will never accept the process they live with. If you have an injustice committed against you and your family and or community and the people that did this simply walk away, Mexico will never be stable. Building a legal system in Mexico is nearly as monumental as nation state building in Iraq and we all know how well that went for the US.

Law Enforcement.

            Are there “Good Cops” in Mexico? Yes. Are there “Good Cops” at all levels? Yes, but, here is the reality. The ones that are “good”, live in fear. They often have to comply, compromise their integrity, just to stay alive or know their families will remain safe. How’s that for an incentive for getting up and going to work? What must it be like to live in fear, even when you have a gun on your hip, fear of the very people who are working with you? I can’t imagine looking into the eyes of the people I’ve sworn to protect and have them see you as part of the problem. Oh…..wait….I’ve been there and done that! Never mind.

            Mexico’s Civilian Police programs have had billions of US tax dollars invested in them and there have been tangible achievements, but nowhere near the level the Mexican people need to see. Corruption is still far more common than anyone can be expected to accept. People realize the good cops still live in fear. At the end of the day, for all that has been done, the civilian law enforcement process in Mexico is still broken.

            Training. Training and equipment have been the priorities for the concept of building a better program in Mexico. What training and equipment cannot prevent is the fear. If you are a Police Officer working the streets of Juarez and you come upon a group of drug gang members doing something you know you have to stop, who do you really count on? Who really has your back? Is it your fellow officers? Are the ones closest to your location honest? Are they going to come to help you when you call or are they going to stay away? Just what level of your job are you capable of doing? This scenario plays out every hour of every day in every town, city or state in Mexico. If your fellow Officer nearest you is like you, what about your supervisor? What about the Chief? What about the local Prosecutor, Judge, Mayor? As an honest Police Officer, just where does your confidence lie? What level of training provided by the US Department of Justice addresses your ability to trust everyone around you? When you wake up and get ready to go to work, what is your real goal? Yep….. stay alive. A goal that is not that much different than in the US, but in the US, Cops get up and go to work because they know they can make a difference. If a Supervisor is corrupt, they can go to Internal Affairs, they can go to the FBI or the state. Where does the honest Mexican Police Officer go? When you make the decision to confront that group of drug gang members in Juarez, what is your last line of defense? The Mexican Military, that’s who.

The Military.

            Most of their leaders don’t want to be in the streets of Mexico. That is not the job of any nation’s military. Some of Mexico’s most senior military leaders have openly made this point known. So why are they still there? Why were they put there in the first place? Everyone knows the answers to both questions. Failure and panic. Mexico’s lack of an effective legal system as well as corruption at all levels of government, just ask Fox’s Son’s In Law”, led to the panic that shoved the Mexican Military onto the streets of every state in Mexico. A force that was designed, trained and equipped for combat is now walking the streets of every major Mexican City or town. Gun battles with not only gang members, but uniformed Police Officers at the state and federal level became a daily event for the Mexica Military. Just when they thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. Rumors had been floating around for years about the corruption within the Mexican Military. Why would they be excluded when the corruption reached the highest levels of the Mexican government?  I remember the day I had to have a conversation with an old DEA friend about a group of Sedena Generals coming to visit my operation. He asked who was coming and when I told him, his words were crystal clear, “be carful what you tell them”. Sad, but true. As soon as the drug bosses saw the military take to the streets, they had only one answer, increase the level of corruption. Soon after my experience with the “briefing”, I was asked to attend a CODEL / A Congressional Delegation. One of the topics covered an incident on the Rio. An incident where it was alleged a Mexican Army unit provided cover as a drug shipment was recovered from the river. Photos where shown, and a few of us were asked what they told us. My answer was simple. Someone had access to a complete SEDENA HUMVEE lookalike, to include a whip Antenna on the lead vehicle, not to mention the unit flash on the front. The members along the Mexican side of the river seemed to be wearing SEDENA uniforms and were taking orders from someone in the lead HUMVEE. Did this mean SEDENA was guilty of supporting the drug gangs? I was not there to answer that question. The fact was, the perception to everyone on the US side of the river was, they believed it to be true. Well, with the exception of Border Patrol. They had no “official Opinion”. Is SEDENA a completely corrupted organization? No, at least not in my opinion. Are there levels of corruption in the Mexican Military? Yes. Has that level of corruption impacted the status of the military? Yes. Do the people of Mexico hold the military in the same regard they did before they were deployed into the streets? No. In fact, the stories of the “disappeared” in Mexico now have a nexus to the military. Sounds like Columbia all over again doesn’t it? Is there a reason why some of the uncorrupted, senior military leaders want out of the mission? Yes. If the public no longer trust the military, the one organization they did trust prior to the deployment, then at what cost is this mission taking place? More importantly, how many of the uncorrupted military leaders know the level of corruption? How many know where the highest levels of corruptions exist? President Elect Obrador plans on pulling the military out of the mission, but what happens when he does? What happens to those uncorrupted Law Enforcement Officers who worry about everyone around them? Obrador states he’s going to build a “new force”. Everyone knows that’s a pipedream years away, if at all, and no one knows this better than the honest Cops going to work every day. Obrador knows the dangers of leaving the military on the streets. He knows the perceptions that already exist. He knows the level of corruption inside every level of his government. The cancer of the drug money is not a tumor. The cancer is a blood cancer and is always the case, the treatment has become as deadly as the disease. In December, Obrador will get his chance to make a difference. The odds are against him and as usual, the US will be jumping up and down, focused on some other corner of the world. I just wonder what will happen in DC when someone suddenly hears a popular leader in Mexico shout from a podium…. “ Viva la Revolucion”!