Parallel States in Mexico

Via Alex Olesker of Insurgent Consciousness (see his excellent entry here), it seems that someone has been reading John Robb lately. Mexican President Felipe Calderon stated that "[cartels] have become an activity that defies the government, and even seeks to replace the government. They are trying to impose a monopoly by force of arms, and are even trying to impose their own laws." While this is not totally true (the cartels are not marching on Mexico City, nor would they want to or be capable of doing so anyway), it does reflect the fact that the Mexican government has effectively conceded some areas of governance to cartels.

The interesting thing is, though, for all of the comparisons to Colombia the situation is fundamentally different. While aggressive criminal actors who created parallel states was certainly a part of the problem, Colombia also faced a major internal security issue: the FARC and several smaller groups. While Colombia eventually chose a path of noncompromise with the FARC, it did in some ways give the cartels room to scale down their activities after their organizations were decapitated. The FARC is still out there, receiving (rather blatant) backing from Colombia's neighbors.

Which goes to show things could be quite worse for Mexico. Imagine if they were dealing with the cartels as well as a major insurgency with strategic bases in El Paso or Guatemala.

Comments

[Alex @ I-Con]

Appreciate the shout-out. I think part of the problem in Mexico is not only facing a parallel state, but one that overlaps and invades the legitimate one. The cartels definitely penetrate and corrupt the government more than vice versa.

I'm glad you mentioned the FARC, because I think they are relevant to Mexico too. Colombia got very effective at infiltrating and exploiting rebel networks and using informants. We did an analysis of Operation Jaque that offers some examples of this (http://insurgentconsciousness.typepad.com/insurgent_consciousness/2008/12/operation-checkmate.html). More than drug and arm seizures, this is the sort of thing I'd like to see against the cartels.