Bicentennial Understanding Replaces Merida Initiative for Security Agreement Between US & Mexico

[Judi Lynn]

By Socalj 10/08/2021 07:54:00 PM
"Socalj" for Borderland Beat



Arms, fentanyl, migrants, financial intelligence and the dismantling of criminal networks are part of the agreement between Mexico and the United States.

The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador redirected its security policy to abandon the Mérida Initiative, which sought a frontal fight against drug cartels, but even with the replacement of that agreement through the Bicentennial Understanding, it must change its strategy to attack insecurity and violence with a more complex approach.

Marcelo Ebrard, Secretary of Foreign Relations, has argued that the Bicentennial Understanding contemplates more actions than just arresting drug lords, due to components in public health or financial networks. However, the specialist in United States-Mexico security relations, Raúl Benítez Manaus, commented in an interview that the agreement is an update of the Merida Initiative.

“The plan has nothing new, it is to reaffirm things that the two governments have already been saying and doing. What is new is the reaffirmation of the political will of the two parties. "This helps a lot to the economic stability of the country because the government is reaffirming its commitment to the United States because companies are always afraid that the president is making half-Bolivarian decisions," the sociologist and researcher at the National University commented in an interview. Autonomous of Mexico (UNAM).

Bicentennial Understanding
As two nations with an enduring relationship based on sovereignty, mutual respect, and the extraordinary bond of family and friendship, Mexico and the United States must and want to face security challenges together. Both countries have suffered the effects of substance addiction, firearm violence, illegal drugs, weapons, human trafficking, and smuggling, as well as organized crime in our communities. To face the complex threats of the 21st century, it is necessary to work in a coordinated manner, with a regional vision and a modern approach to public health and development as part of a comprehensive cooperation strategy between our countries. With full respect for our sovereignties.

Transnational organized crime has claimed too many lives in our countries. For this reason, both countries recognize that we have a responsibility to work together to achieve our shared goals of security and peace. We need to address violence, dismantle transnational criminal organizations, and focus on prevention, in order to create the conditions for a culture of peace, while working hand in hand to address the root causes of crime. We heed the lessons of past efforts and we adapt to new threats. Our vision of security cooperation must expand to protect all of our people, especially the most vulnerable. In addition, We will be emphatic in serving communities that need support to change the conditions that allow crime to take hold. With this framework of cooperation on security matters between Mexico and the United States, we are committed to granting maximum respect for human rights, without tolerance for corruption. We will maintain a holistic view of security and rely on new methods and tools to address this challenge.

More:
https://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/10/bicentennial-understanding-replaces.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Older article: 'Plan Mexico' was militarized drug war policy at its worst

An effort to replace the Merida Initiative is a welcome relief, as many blame US guns and money for increased violence and corruption.

ANALYSIS | GLOBAL CRISES
Global Crises Drug War
AILEEN TEAGUE
OCT 20, 2021

“Goodbye Mérida, welcome Bicentennial agreement,” proclaimed Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, earlier this month following talks between cabinet-level U.S. and Mexican officials on the future of bilateral security cooperation.

For some time now, policymakers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border have urged replacing the 2008 Mérida Initiative, the security cooperation agreement between the United States, Mexico, and countries of Central America to secure the region against drugs, crime, and violence. But the Mérida Initiative was cut from the same cloth as all of the militarized enforcement measures the United States has championed in Latin America in its decades-long “war on drugs.” From Mexico south through the Andes, the results haven’t been promising. Transnational crime groups continue to dominate parts of Mexico and Central America, and the drug trade continues to thrive, as hundreds of thousands of displaced migrants make their often-perilous way northward to the U.S. southern border. Either too weak or too corrupt, governments that they leave behind struggle to address the multi-faceted phenomena that continue to destabilize the region.

The new Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities — so named to commemorate 200 years of U.S.-Mexican diplomatic relations — is a badly needed revision of Plan Mérida. To constitute a major step in the right direction, however, that agreement must be focused on recovery and development as much as — if not more than —law enforcement and policing.

Rhetorically, it is becoming quite popular in the United States to call the “war on drugs” a failure. Yet despite that, Washington continues to pump millions of dollars into complex transnational agreements designed to combat the illicit drug trade, such as the Mérida Initiative. Policymakers developed the Mérida Initiative nearly 15 years ago as former Mexican President Felipe Calderón was prioritizing the use of force in taking on the country’s drug cartels. Calderón overhauled local and state police forces, put the military in charge of policing crime, and increased penalties for corruption on federal authorities. The results were disastrous. Bloody turf battles among cartels and against the Mexican state itself destabilized border cities such as Ciudad Juárez, which gained notoriety in 2010 as the “murder capital of the world.” Indeed, the civilian death toll of Mexico’s drug war has exceeded those of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

U.S. media attention to drug violence in Mexico began to wane following Calderon’s costly campaign against the cartels, in part due to a deliberate effort by his successor Enrique Peña Nieto, who wanted to make it less visible outside of Mexico. By 2018, homicide rates again began to approach numbers resembling 2010. By then, Washington had directed more than $1.6 billion to Mérida Initiative programs, much of it devoted to training and arming the Mexican military and security forces with, among other things, helicopters and other aircraft.

More:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/10/20/plan-mexico-was-militarized-drug-war-policy-at-its-worst/

[Judi Lynn]

2. Older article: The Staggering Death Toll of Mexico's Drug War

JULY 27, 2015
by
Jason M. Breslow
Over the course of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the number of civilian deaths has been staggering. In Afghanistan, more than 26,000 civilians are estimated to have died since the war began in 2001. In Iraq, conservative tallies place the number of civilians killed at roughly 160,500 since the U.S. invasion in 2003. Others have put the total closer to 500,000.

But as U.S. involvement in each nation has dropped off in recent years, killings much closer to home, in Mexico, have steadily, if quietly, outpaced the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

Last week, the Mexican government released new data showing that between 2007 and 2014 — a period that accounts for some of the bloodiest years of the nation’s war against the drug cartels — more than 164,000 people were victims of homicide. Nearly 20,000 died last year alone, a substantial number, but still a decrease from the 27,000 killed at the peak of fighting in 2011.

Over the same seven-year period, slightly more than 103,000 died in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to data from the United Nations and the website Iraq Body Count.

To be sure, the homicides documented in Mexico cannot all be linked directly to the drug war, and distinguishing drug-war violence from the raw totals can be fraught with challenges. Many murders are never investigated, and the Mexican government has not issued annual figures on organized-crime-style homicides — those believed to be the work of cartels — since 2010. Even when it did, such data was often knocked for being untrustworthy.

More:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-staggering-death-toll-of-mexicos-drug-war/