Except, of course, that Clinton has the situation dead-to-rights... and frankly, she's far more qualified to comment on the subject than the President. For all his sterling qualities, Obama knows precisely jack about Latin America.
Citizens are being forced to flee their homes and the country due to the violence. Well over 20,000 people have been killed in four years as a direct result of the gang wars. The drug trade has spurred an unprecedented wave of bloodshed. The war between the narcos and the government, and between the various criminal organizations, has transformed it into one of the most murderous countries in the Western Hemisphere. The cartels intimidate and assassinate community leaders, journalists, politicians, and members of the police and military. They've committed retribution killings against cops and members of the armed services.
How, pray tell, is that not like Colombia in the 80's and 90's? Perhaps offense is being taken at the use of the word "insurgency" by Secretary Clinton, invoking images of the FARC, ELN, M-19, and the plethora of rebel groups that have cropped up in the Andean nation since the start of its internal conflict in the 1960's. It's a ridiculous semantics argument, though. Mexico might not have its own rebel group (except, of course, that it does ), but if we accept that the drug cartels are armed actors engaged in violent conflict with the Mexican government, most would agree that that constitutes an insurgency. Even Calderón himself has stated,
"This has 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."
....
"Their main business is not anymore even drug trafficking, sometimes...Their business is dominating other people." (Source: Associated Press)
In addition, to assume that the FARC was the only armed opposition to the Colombian government is to lack the most basic understanding of la violencia. Colombia's problem wasn't only the guerrilla; it was the drug trade on the whole, the drug cartels, the paramilitaries, and the eventual involvement of all armed groups in the international drug trade.
Perhaps Mexico's President Calderón doesn't find the comparison to be all too flattering, but everyone who has more than a lay understanding of the conflict concurs with it. (Note: A friend living in Oaxaca, Mex., begs to differ. Her read of the situation is that, like Peru with the Sendero Luminoso, half the population doesn't actually believe there's a war on.)
The Colombians agree; Colombia and Mexico signed an accord last year that included Colombian training of Mexican federal police and improved cooperation. (Update: The outgoing Colombian ambassador to the US, Carolina Barco, made the following comment to El Tiempo:
"Creo que hubo una mala interpretación de lo que dijo. Creo que la violencia que está viviendo México, de esos narcotraficantes tan terribles, si es comparable a la violencia de un Pablo Escobar. ....Estamos hablando es de unos grupos violentos, mafiosos, narcotraficantes que hay en México y eso es comparable a un Pablo Escobar y todo el dolor que este ocasionó.
[I believe that there was a misinterpretation of what she said. I believe that the violence that Mexico is experiencing, from such terrible drug-traffickers, is comparable to the violence of a Pablo Escobar. ... We are talking about some violent groups, mafiosos, drug-traffickers, that are there in Mexico and that is comparable to a Pablo Escobar and all the pain that this causes.]"
Mexican politicians might not like it, but that is one of Clinton's virtues: saying what everyone is already thinking, even if it means telling the President of the United Mexican States that he's got no clothes.
Send lawyers, guns and money,
J.
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