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Drug trafficking, corruption, and violence in Mexico: mapping the linkages

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Abstract

Drug trafficking, drug-related violence and drug-related corruption have come to dominate Mexican politics in the late 2000s. Most consider corruption central to both the illicit trade and to the government’s war on it. But such relationships have yet to be fully examined and raise a number of questions. This paper explores the links among these variables. The opening section grapples with the theoretical puzzle. It lays out the different types of drug-related corruption and violence and explores in detail the three binary relationships with particular attention to plomo o plata and the possible inverse connection between corruption and violence. Noting that corruption was once associated with relatively peaceful drug trafficking under the PRI but today is tied to violence, the second section addresses the historical puzzle and asks how the complex relationship among these variables has changed in recent years. The final section explores the various dynamic linkages between drug-trafficking violence and corruption. The theoretical discussion is supplemented by examples from Mexico during the current period.

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Notes

  1. All translations are by the author.

  2. Despite the almost axiomatic connection tying drug-trafficking and corruption, the direction of causality remains unclear and may move in both directions. One view, perhaps the more commonly-held position, is that organized crime corrupts state officials through the seductive power of bribes (that organized crime ➔ corruption). The 1967 Task Force Report on Organized Crime was quite explicit on this point: “all available data indicate that organized crime flourishes only where it has corrupted public officials” (cited in Kelly 2003, 128–129). Examples from Mexico are (too) abundant. Operación Limpieza in October 2008, for example, uncovered payments, some as high as US $450,000 a month, to over 30 officials of SIEDO (Subprocuraduria de Investigacion Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada) in return for providing confidential information on law enforcement operations to the Sinaloa cartel, including those of the DEA (Latin American Mexico & NAFTA Report, November 2008; Padgett 2008).

    But as Peter Andreas (1998, 161) points out, corruption is a two-way street and “involves not only the penetration of the state, but also penetration by the state.” Indeed, a second type of linkage reverses this causal error and depicts corruption as an independent variable that produces and hence promotes drug trafficking operations (corruption ➔ organized crime). Rather than envisioning organized crime exerting its influence and control through payoffs, this pattern finds state officials using (and abusing) their authority to largely control and influence the activities of organized crime, enjoying a portion of the business’ profits in the process. Though at times difficult to distinguish bribery from extortion, as we see later, this sort of theoretical linkage seems to have great historical significance to Mexico. A third way of linking the two envisions them as largely indistinguishable. This includes instances where police directly engage in criminal activity, but not in a way that most would call corruption (see SourceMex June 26, 2006 and September 3, 2008). Citing statistics from the SSP, Excelsior reported, for example, that 56 of the 897 kidnappers arrested from 2001 through the first half of 2008 were active or former members of a police department or the military (SourceMex September 24, 2008). Indeed, initial investigations into the high-profile Fernando Marti kidnapping and killing in August 2008 pointed to the involvement of federal agents and judicial police from the Federal District (Milenio August 18, 2008; Latin American Mexico & NAFTA Report, September 2008 RM-08-09). This blurring of the lines can also be seen in revolving-door corruption where state officials leave office to work for the companies they had been policing. Indeed, many former police and military officers in Mexico have gone on to pursue careers with DTOs, including the infamous Zetas drawn largely from the ranks of the Mexican military special forces (Grayson 2008, 2010). The irony here, of course, is that the purging of police as part of an anti-corruption effort can bolster the ranks of DTOs, providing personnel already trained in the areas of security and the use of violence.

  3. John Ackerman (2009) cites an independent study showing that only 17 % of suspects arrested for drug offenses were actually brought to court in 2008.

  4. Franklin Zimring (2008) contends that drug violence is contingent in part on the degree of violence within the culture. Enrique Serna (2009, 20) makes a similar argument with regards to corruption and illegality. Portraying the government as a reflection of society, he contends that “No civic sermon has been able to eradicate from the national soul the propensity to view the state coffers as spoils…No official loses friends when they enrich themselves from one day to the next; on the contrary, their social success increases at the same rate as their bank account.” In the end, he posits, the culture applauds delinquent activity.

  5. Unfortunately, it is difficult to quantify violence along these lines. It is known that despite the high number of violent deaths in the past few years, only a small fraction involves state officials. One report noted an average of 508 police killed between 2008 and 2012 and a total of 45 mayors and ex-mayors murdered from 2006 to 2012 (Justice in Mexico, December 2012, p.2). The government contends that only 7 % of killings are law enforcement. Of the 34,612 murders from 2006 to January 2011, for instance, 30,913 were registered by the government as “execution-style killings,” 3,153 were considered the result of “shootouts between gangs,” and only 546 deaths involved “attacks on authorities” (Justice in Mexico, January 2011). But the extent to which this involves officials refusing to participate in corruption (the classic plomo o plata scenario) or who are targeted for being in the corrupt pay of rival organizations, or for betraying the trust purchased through a bribe is not known. If the situation is indeed one of plomo o plata, then apparently most officials act rationally and accept the latter.

  6. On the surface, at least, the plomo o plata choice makes sense. And yet, a number of questions arise which I believe help highlight the distinction of the triangular relationship linking drug trafficking, violence, and corruption. First, why does the choice include the threat of violence (plomo)? Rarely do bribery exchanges involve the threat of violence or actual violence. Surely Wal-Mart’s numerous extra-legal payments to local officials in the mid-2000s to expand their stores in Mexico at breakneck speed did not include any explicit threat of violence. Of course, the case of drug trafficking is different in that the public official has the legal responsibility of confronting the DTO using state-sanctioned violence if necessary. And even though the DTO might prefer to buy-off the official and prevent that confrontation from occurring, if unsuccessful in buying off the state official the DTO would then face a situation of perhaps having to resort to violence in order to protect the business against state enforcement. But this suggests a more implicit and diffuse threat of violence, whereas plomo o plata seems to point to a more specific and explicit form. It suggests that rather than the uncooperative official facing DTO violence during the normal course of enforcing the law at some point in the future, that the official is actually targeted by those offering the bribe and sanctioned for not accepting it. The violence, then, is more targeted and offensive rather than the sort of defensive violence that might occur during a confrontation between law enforcement and DTOs.

    Second, if the threat of violence is sufficiently strong then why would the choice not simply be cooperate or plomo? If the threat of violence is strong and compelling enough it should ensure compliance without even having to pay a bribe which cuts into profits. This scenario is somewhat akin to simple extortion, used by state officials to extract “bribes” from citizens or businesses by threatening the use (or abuse) of state violence (i.e. depravation of freedom). Of course, for the DTOs, bribes provide predictability, fundamental to operating any business enterprise including an illicit one, which might explain the payoff in part. According to Dal Bó’s et al. (2006, 46) model, threats provide greater profits than bribes alone in that threats effectively lower the price of bribes. Even so, this point raises a third query: is it the seductive appeal of the bribe that shapes the decision of the state official faced with plomo o plata or the nature and perceived seriousness of the threat? Are public officials faced with plomo o plata really being bought-off, or are they merely selecting the lesser of two evils? Observers frequently point to either the low pay of cops (particularly municipal level police) and/or the huge bribes offered by DTOs to describe the situation behind drug-related corruption, suggesting that it is the bribe that holds sway (with an implicit hint of greed involved, perhaps, depending on the level of the public official). Yet in some ways, plomo o plata represents a Hobson’s choice and accepting the bribe simply means survival. In the first narrative, the threat of violence plays at best a secondary role, but in the latter scenario, it drives the decision. But in order for the threat of violence to drive the decision that threat must be credible. This suggests that at an aggregate level at least some violence against the state officials must occur in order to make the threat credible enough to convince an official to accept the bribe and avoid the sanction. Coupled with the earlier points, this once again suggests an inverse relationship between the two components of the equation that goes beyond the simply binary form to focus more on the specific quantities of each. In other words, it may not merely be plomo or plata, but rather the greater the credibility of the threat of plomo, the less plata needed and vice versa (see Dal Bó et al. 2006).

    A final question in this brief detour: to what extent does plomo o plata move in the opposite direction: from state to DTO? Intelligence operations require information from the inside, and the state often acquires this information through the threat of violence (i.e. legally, higher prisons terms, extradition; illegally, torture) and/or bribes (cash payoffs to informants, immunity from prosecution, immunity and a new life [protected witness program]). Indeed, much of the information surrounding some of the big cases in Mexico in recent years stems from captured DTO members turning states evidence (see Aponte 2011; Hernández 2008, 2010, 2012). Of course, the government can use this form of bribery to “convince” or “coerce” members of DTO’s to provide false testimony against rivals within the state itself. According to Hernández (2012, 115–162), such was the case against General Tomás Ángeles Dauahare, among others, who was arrested in 2012 and accused by two protected witnesses, Jennifer and Mateo, of receiving payoffs from the Betlran Leyva brothers. In many ways, this form of corruption seems to operate by a similar logic depicted earlier and suggests a direct inverse relationship between violence and corruption. The greater and more credible the threat of violence by the state, the more likely that the captured DTO member will accept the payoff, engaging in a form of corruption by violating the norms of her/his formal role within the organization or as an agent disobeying his responsibility to the principal.

    Even so, despite the rhetoric, in some cases plomo o plata does not seem to adequately capture the nature of the corrupt arrangement linking DTOs to the state. Part of the arrangements between DTOs and public officials find the DTO’s not only promising not to use violence against the state official in return for a payoff, but a mutual commitment to help one another. The DTO might provide the state official strategic information about the operation of rival organization, facilitating the enforcement efforts of the state. This, of course, helps the DTO in its turf war against rivals.

  7. By contrast, it is much easier to conceptually separate corruption from impunity since corruption is just one of many factors influencing impunity. Of course, impunity, arguably, in turn, would influence the level of corruption, but at least the two are analytically distinct.

  8. Former President Ernesto Zedillo called it foolish (“una tontería”) to think that earlier governments had made pacts with the cartels, claiming that what is occurring today has nothing to do with what happened 15 to 20 years ago (Milenio October 8, 2011) (http://impreso.milenio.com/node/9040114).

  9. The largest spikes in violence took place in response to splits among former allies. The first major spike occurred in 2008 when El Chapo, El Mayo, El Azul and Ignacio Coronel broke with Beltran Leyva following the arrest of Alfredo Beltran Leyva E. This prompted Arturo Beltran Leyva to align in turn with the Juarez cartel, the Zetas, and the Valencias. This, in turn, prompted the Calderón administration to attack the Beltran Leyva group, killing Arturo in December 2009 (Hernández 2012, 232). Executions also spiked rose in 2011 following the split in Nuevo Leon between Gulf cartel and the Zetas and the escalation of violence in Guerrero, Jalisco and Coahuila due to the fragmentation of the Beltran Leyva and La Familia cartels (Justice in Mexico News Monitor December 2012, p.2).

  10. This view certainly fits the historic patterns. One problem, however, relates to Calderón’s efforts from the beginning to federalize the fight by empowering the military and federal police, eclipsing the role of local and state police, and thus try to reverse the degree of decentralization. If decentralization broke the link between corruption and non-violence, these efforts to concentrate and recentralize power have the potential of reducing violence. Many believe that this may be the strategy of current president Enrique Peña Nieto. Of course, perhaps at this point it has become too late to return to the patterns of the past.

  11. More troubling, the deployment of military forces to contain drug trafficking have wrought an increase human rights abuses. “Troops dispatched to try to wrest control of states where the drug trade has escalated are also accused of violations against the very civilians they are sent to protect” (SourceMex March 4, 2009).

  12. Aguilar and Castañeda (2009) question Calderón’s strategy and reasoning for launching the war. They present data that fail to confirm the supposed increase in the use of drugs in Mexico or even a dramatic increase in violence. What has changed, they contend, is the perception of violence. One reason for launching the war, they note, is for the state to regain control: that the state has lost its monopoly control over the legitimate use of force, to collect taxes, etc (Aguilar and Castañeda 2009, 51; see also Escalante Gonzalbo (2011).

  13. Though I have seen little evidence to support this allegation, given the weakness of the judicial system to process and prosecute criminals, it seems plausible.

  14. These charges, to be sure, are aggressively and summarily dismissed by the former administration. At times, the administration challenged the thesis by pointing to its strikes against the cartel’s interests, like the arrests of Noel Salgueiro, ‘El Flaco,” in October 2011, of Jose Manuel Garcia Simental, or Raydel Lopez Uriarte in February 2010 (Justice in Mexico News Report, February 2010, October 2011). At other times, however, the administration suggested that it did differentiate and strategically target its limited resources at the more violent cartels like the Zetas and La Familia.

  15. This point was suggested to me by John Bailey.

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Correspondence to Stephen D. Morris.

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This is a revised version of a paper delivered at the XXX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, San Francisco, California, May 23–27, 2012. I want to thank Robert Bunker and the anonymous reviewers at TIOC for the help on the revisions.

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Morris, S.D. Drug trafficking, corruption, and violence in Mexico: mapping the linkages. Trends Organ Crim 16, 195–220 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-013-9191-7

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