Monday, May 18, 2009
Living with Mexico’s Trauma of Insecurity
By Sergio Aguayo Quezada
· The Mexican state’s routine failure to guarantee the safety of citizens eclipses
even the flu-virus emergency in importance, says Sergio Aguayo Quezada.
Mexico, since mid-April 2009,
has been the unaccustomed center of global attention. The sourcing of the H1N1 flu virus to the country triggered a national
and international health emergency that has led Mexico and its people to be regarded with a new kind of alarm and suspicion
in its neighborhood and far beyond.
This experience has brought
an unexpected dose of discomfort and unpleasantness to a people who are already living through a collective emergency of a
different kind: one that goes to the very heart of the state, and its ability – or rather inability – to ensure a minimum degree of safety to its citizens. When the "swine flu" emergency passes – and
current signs are cautiously hopeful in this regard – this deeper, endemic, structural crisis will remain (see Is Mexico Moving towards a State of Failure?, by Sergio Aguayo Quezada, 02/23/09).
This crisis is consuming
far more lives – and for every life it takes, its tentacles spread fear into the private spaces and hearts of many other
citizens. It affects the poor and the marginal, but it also touches those who by profession might wish to think themselves
inoculated against it. What follows is one such example of Mexico's trauma of insecurity.
The dust of life
The noise surrounding the "swine
flu" crisis has been deafening, but even at its loudest it never silenced the drumbeat of the "other" danger. On the very
day that the World Health Organization raised the status of the global health alert, 27 April 2009, news came through that eight police officers had
been "executed" by gangsters in the northern city of Tijuana
As the health story subsides, the killings continue.
To understand what is happening
in Mexico one fact must be recognized at the outset: very few government institutions are either committed to representing
the public interest, or even work with a minimum degree of efficiency. In particular, the security apparatus is a disaster;
only the armed forces, stretched beyond their limits, can be partially exempted from this judgment. This is a situation created
by the errors, the incapacities, and the outright corruptions of all Mexico's political forces – including President Felipe Calderón, his administration, and his party.
To live in Mexico is to suffer
the uncertainty of insecurity. In most cities around the world, 21st-century modernity means having twenty-four-hour access
to ATMs to get cash. In Mexico, it is dangerous to do so. The capital city is divided into boroughs, amongst which is Benito
Juárez, headed by the rightwing Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party). One of its officials, Jaime Slomianski Aguilar, made the following recommendation: "To safeguard the citizen's security it would be convenient not to make withdrawals
at banks. It is best to pay the commission [that banks charge to make online payments] than take risks by making withdrawals."
This flagrant confession of the state's obligation to ensure security to citizens is but one index of how serious –
yet how "normalized" – Mexico's crisis has become.
However, neither does a retreat
to the seclusion of home guarantee tranquility. In early April I received a telephone call from a person who – in the
characteristic tones of northern Mexico – introduced himself as my cousin Victor, son of my deceased uncle Pancho, who had migrated to and ended
his life in the United States. My cousin, with every evidence of joyful enthusiasm, announced that he would arrive at my home
the next day; he was carrying a lot of money from his own sojourn in the US, he wanted to set up a business, and needed my
advice. He expressed a wish to stay at my place ("I already have the address, cousin, see you there tomorrow.") The sacredness
of family in Mexico caused me to hesitate, but a sense of self-preservation (along with a sliver of guilt) led me to respond
that it was impossible for me to house my cousin; but I compensated by arranging a time to meet.
To live in Mexico is to be permanently
on alert. After the call, I rang my Aunt Lola, who half a century ago had married an American war veteran and gone with him
to live in California. My aunt is the family's walking encyclopedia: the one who knows the comings and goings, the ups and
downs, of the hundreds of relatives who make a living on the other side of the border. Among the obligatory recounting of
the latest tragedies and illnesses, she delivered a sad piece of news: my cousin Victor had passed away from diabetes a couple
of years earlier. The poor man "never took care of himself."
There were two possibilities:
either cousin Victor was communicating from the world beyond or we were facing an impostor who was preparing a robbery, a
scam or a kidnapping. On balance, we decided that the latter was more likely.
A long, worried discussion with
my Catalan wife followed. She instantly remembered a call received a few months earlier informing us – amid insults
and threats – that our son had been kidnapped. The fact that our progeny lives in Madrid meant that we could afford
(routine alarm at the invasion of our privacy and the threatening experience aside) to ignore this effort. But "Victor"
worried us more, because we could not be sure what information he possessed.
What could we do? We dismissed
the idea of notifying the police, even though the federal (conservative) government advertises a special program against telephone
extortions. When security is at stake, Mexicans do not call the police – their inefficiency is beyond belief, and there
is a chance that they are complicit with the delinquents (see Sam Quinones, "State of War", Foreign Policy, March-April 2009).
Every Mexican has a story in
this regard. Here is mine. In late 2008, burglars ransacked our flat (in a capital governed, since 1997, by Mexico's main
leftwing party). They tore down a bulletproof door, covered the floor with the scattered contents of drawers and closets,
and took everything they wanted. The city's attorney-general paid personal attention to the matter, and my house was filled
with waves of detectives and policemen. They took fingerprints of the suspects, but the case went no further because the city
police department lacks coordination with the federal government and has no access to the national databases.
To live in Mexico is to cease
to be a citizen. Such experiences are not extraordinary. They are a part of the everyday existence of this wonderful country filled with contrasts and extremes. After the robbery, we shared once more in the routine
defense strategy of millions of others who substitute themselves for the state by reinforcing doors and windows, setting up
alarms, and exchanging anecdotes of impotence and fear.
The elite of pals
The collapse of Mexico's security
institutions has many sources. An unavoidable one is the sheer ineptitude of a good portion of the high bureaucracy. A research
study by the civil-society organization Gestión Social y Cooperación (Gesoc) finds that – generous salaries and privileges notwithstanding – around 40% of the senior ranks
of the federal bureaucracy are unqualified for the position they occupy. No wonder: those in place simply hand out jobs to
their friends or accomplices. Felipe Calderón has participated, consciously and deliberately, in this game.
The Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Publica (SNSP) has the responsibility of coordinating actions by the federal, state and municipal governments. Hence,
it occupies a central role in the war against insecurity and its narco agents. If the system worked, the capital's police would (at a minimum) be able to learn the identity of those who robbed my flat, and
more broadly pursue the war against organized crime in a more effective way. But it can't work as long as Felipe Calderón
names one Roberto Campa as the SNSP's head – for no other reason than this political-bureaucratic functionary is a protégé of the teachers' union leader, Elba Esther Gordillo (who in turn granted the president huge favors during the controversial 2006 election). Mexico's president, in
short, plays with Mexicans' security to pay off his political debt.
Roberto Campa spent two years
(2006-08) and huge sums of money without improving security. The lack of results forced Calderón to remove him from office
in September 2008; it took six months, until March 2009, for the president to name Jorge Tello Peón (the president's national-security advisor since October 2008) as his successor. At last a professional had arrived
in the office. Would Mexico's federal agencies finally be able to coordinate with the country's state and municipal police
forces? Maybe, possibly, perhaps. To live in Mexico is to exist in doubt.
The law of one
Felipe Calderón is not a statesman
but a weak ruler incapable of freeing himself from the shackles imposed by the powers that helped
him become president. The health emergency is a spasm by comparison with the institutional failures of the governing class. Amid the corrosion
of the polity and civic order, Mexicans desperately need a strong democratic state to defend us. At present their daily survival
is in their own hands.
A postscript: the threat caused
by "cousin Victor" was resolved the Mexican way. Instead of confronting and facing the issue we decided to avoid it. We stopped
answering the phone for a couple of days and he got the message. Or at least that's what we wish to think….
——————————
Sergio
Aguayo Quezada is a professor at the Center of International Studies, El Colegio de México. Among his books is 1968:
Los archivos de la violencia (Grijalbo/ Reforma, 1998). His website is http://www.sergioaguayo.org. This article was originally published by Sergio Aguayo Quezada and openDemocracy.net (05/14/09) under a Creative Commons license.
This article was translated by
Alfonsina Peñaloza.
