The Merida Initiative, Washington's new security program for Mexico and Central America, was immediately dubbed "Plan Mexico" by its critics-implying it is a new version of Plan Colombia. Mexico is now poised to supersede Colombia as the hemisphere's top recipient of U.S. security aid. From its origins 10 years ago, the multibillion-dollar aid package and militarized anti-narcotics program known as Plan Colombia was understood by its proponents as a model to be applied elsewhere in the hemisphere, and it was-first in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, through the Andean Regional Initiative. More recently, Pentagon planners have been explicitly evoking Plan Colombia as a model for the war in Afghanistan, where counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics efforts have likewise become inexorably entwined.
By Bill Weinberg, for NACLA (North American Congres on Latin America)
The Merida Initiative and the specter of intervention
In March 2007, 22 people were arrested and several injured in protests against George W. Bush's visit to the southern Mexican city of Mérida. Meeting with Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, and Central American leaders in the historic Yucatán city, Bush won agreement for a regional security program to be known as the Merida Initiative.^1
The Bush administration called the initiative "a new paradigm" of bilateral cooperation in the war on drugs and terrorism, calling for a $1.4 billion, multiyear "security cooperation package."^2 About 40% of the funds were slated for new helicopters and surveillance aircraft for the Mexican army, with large chunks for the federal police and the security forces of the Central American republics. Mexican leaders were quick to emphasize that, in contrast to Plan Colombia, the initiative did not call for stationing U.S. military troops and advisers south of the border.^3
The Merida Initiative made its way through Congress in 2008. In May of that year, as part of an emergency appropriations bill, the Senate approved the first installment: $350 million in drug war aid to Mexico, with an additional $100 million for Central America, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. Reducing the Bush administration's request for $500 million to Mexico and $50 million to Central America, the Senate also adopted language that would hold up a quarter of the funds until the State Department ruled that Mexico meets human rights markers. The House approved $400 million for Mexico, with similar provisions.^4
But at the 47th U.S.-Mexico Interparliamentary Commission, held the following June in Monterrey, Mexican politicians from all of the three leading parties protested the imposition of human rights conditions on the aid package as patronizing and hypocritical.^5 Senator Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) stuck up for their position. "Our friends in Mexico needed to vent and explain how this issue was not handled well," the senator told a reporter. "Anything that smacks of certification is a nonstarter."^6 Dodd was likewise a champion of Plan Colombia back in 2000, and critics point out that he received big donations from United Technologies, the Connecticut-based company that produces the Blackhawk helicopter-several of which were provided to Bogotá.^7
Later in June, the House and Senate worked out a compromise that reduced the human rights conditions to a consultative process between Mexico and the United States. The "conditions" were downgraded to "guidelines." Concretely, this meant that the amount of the aid that can be withheld was reduced from 25% to 15%.^8 Under pressure from U.S. human rights and labor activists, Congress officially expressed concern about specific claims of rights abuses, such as the harsh repression in 2006 of protests in Oaxaca.^9
In a propaganda piece plugging the Merida Initiative, Ray Walser of the right-wing Heritage Foundation was quick to dismiss the analogy with Plan Colombia: "Unlike Plan Colombia, which helped to rescue Colombia from the throes of a narco-war, the Merida Initiative will provide assistance in equipment, technology, and training without a significant U.S. military footprint in Mexico."^10
The RAND Corporation took a more distanced view, writing in an analysis after the passage of the Merida Initiative:
In Colombia, strategic cooperation and large amounts of U.S. aid failed to stem the production of narcotics. Nearly two-thirds of global cocaine continues to be produced in Colombia. Yet it is undeniable that Plan Colombia, an eight-year strategic initiative providing $6 billion in U.S. aid, succeeded in depriving the FARC rebels of drug profits by strengthening the Colombian military and police to target violent traffickers. While trafficking itself remains a problem, Colombia is no longer in danger of becoming either a "failed state" or an anemic, low-growth quasi-democracy-an outcome that is yet possible for Mexico.^11
Yet there was no doubting the urgency of Mexico's crisis. The near daily assassinations, along with the cartels' growing habit of decapitating their victims and issuing threats using posters and the Internet, "have a clear objective to intimidate, frighten, paralyze society and, with that, force the federal government to retreat," said Government Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino. He hailed the Merida Initiative's approval as "a concrete expression of the principle of shared responsibility" in the drug war.^12
The United States disbursed the first $197 million of the $400 million package in December. At a signing ceremony in Mexico City, U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza called the package "the most significant effort ever undertaken" by the two countries to fight drugs. Carlos Rico, Mexico's undersecretary for North American affairs, expressed his confidence that the Obama administration will remain committed to the program, and that any human rights concerns will be resolved.^13
But U.S. leaders were soon discussing the initiative in terms certain to alarm Mexican nationalists. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, returning from his first official visit to Mexico, told reporters: "They have an urgent need." He added that tactics and intelligence support used against militant networks in Iraq and Afghanistan need to be employed in Mexico. "There are an awful lot of similarities," he said.^14
During his meetings with Mexico's military leadership, Mullen said, he discussed how Washington could help in battling the cartels, emphasizing "ISR" (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance)-a term that often refers to the use of unmanned drones.^15 Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), the top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, speaking in back-to-back hearings of his committee and the Homeland Security Subcommittee March 10, said the Defense Department must make Mexico as big a priority as Afghanistan. "One of our problems is that the Department of Defense somehow puts Afghanistan ahead of the challenges on the Mexican border," he said.^16
Officials from Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection bureau defended the success of border security measures. Officials, including Border Patrol chief David Aguilar, said the escalating cartel violence in Mexico is evidence that the U.S. border security plan is working.^17 Representative John Culberson (R-Texas) thanked Aguilar for his service. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate what all of you do," Culberson said. "You truly are in our prayers on a daily basis. You're on the front lines of an undeclared war unlike any we've ever seen on the southern border probably since 1916."^18
Elaborating on the 1916 reference, Culberson added: "I think we are at the point today that we need to send the Black Jack Pershing into the Southern United States and put it in command of a true, fast-reaction military force that can move up and down that border on the U.S. side."^19 Brigadier General John J. Pershing led an expedition into Mexico with 10,000 troops to hunt down Pancho Villa after the famous revolutionary had carried out a raid across the U.S. border.
Meanwhile, some 7,000 Mexican soldiers and federal police arrived in Ciudad Juárez in a bid to restore order amid an escalating bloody turf war between rival drug cartels. In what some called Mexico's internal "surge," masked soldiers patrolled the streets in long convoys of military vehicles, throwing up checkpoints.^20 Weeks later, a delegation of political leaders from Juárez and the state of Chihuahua visited Colombia, where they won commitments from the Colombian government to send National Police officers to train the Chihuahua police.^21
As in Colombia, where the military's collaboration with the supposedly outlawed paramilitaries is well-known, there appears to be a degree of inter-penetration between Mexico's security forces and drug cartels. The notorious May 16 jailbreak at a state prison in Zacatecas was but the latest in a strong of incidents in which apparent cartel paramilitary forces wore the uniforms of elite federal police agencies. Footage from security cameras show that a convoy of 17 vehicles, backed by a helicopter, approached the Cieneguillas state prison, meeting no resistance from guards. About 30 men-some in the uniforms of the Federal Agency of Investigation and Federal Preventive Police-entered the facility, rounded up 53 prisoners, loaded them into the cars, and sped away. Most of the escapees were said to be affiliated with Los Zetas, a paramilitary group that works on behalf of the cartels.^22
Perhaps for these reasons, a 2008 year-end report by the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command identified Mexico, together with Pakistan, as a likely candidate for a "rapid and sudden collapse."
"In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world," said the report, code-named "JOE 2008" (for Joint Operating Environment), "two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico. The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state."^23
Meanwhile, in a RAND study released nearly simultaneously with the Pentagon report, "Could Mexico Fail?," analyst Brian Michael Jenkins explicitly invoked the memory of the Mexican Revolution:
The Mexican Revolution, from 1910 to 1920, engulfed the entire border region, and political turmoil in Mexico precipitated a crime wave in the United States. Thus, current concerns about the growing lawlessness in northern Mexico and its consequences for U.S. national security are not without precedent.^24
As Obama and Bush met January 12 in Washington with Calderón, retired general Barry McCaffrey, who as Bill Clinton's drug czar was a key architect of Plan Colombia, held a press conference to issue dire warnings. "Mexico is on the edge of the abyss-it could become a narco-state in the coming decade," he said, later adding that "Calderón and Mexico's senior leadership have launched a serious attempt to reclaim the rule of law from the chaos of the drug cartels." McCaffrey called for increased U.S. military aid to Mexico, calling the Merida Initiative's budget "a drop in the bucket" compared with spending on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We cannot afford to have a narco-state as a neighbor," he said.^25
Mexican officials were quick to deny the ominous claims. Calderón called the talk of his country's collapse "false, absurd," and challenged the United States to clean up its own act by curbing drug use and arms trafficking.^26 U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, speaking to reporters in Washington March 26, also downplayed the notion that narco-violence has brought Mexico to the brink of collapse: "Mexico is in no danger of becoming a failed state. Repeat that. Mexico is in no danger of becoming a failed state. The violence we see now is the result of Mexico taking action against the drug cartels. . . . The Mexican campaign is our campaign."^27
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also clearly had mending fences in mind on her trip to Mexico that week. In Mexico City, at a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa, Clinton said: "We know very well that the drug traffickers are motivated by the demand for illegal drugs in the United States, that they are armed by the transport of weapons from the United States to Mexico. We see this as a responsibility to assist the Mexican government and people." Clinton also joined Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna for a visit to the Federal District's new Iztapalapa headquarters for Mexico's Federal Preventative Police, where she was briefed on missions undertaken by U.S.-supplied Blackhawk helicopters.^28
The Obama administration has requested $66 million in additional 2009 assistance to Mexico through the State Department's International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement program (INCLE). The bill passed by the House of Representatives in May actually goes well beyond this request. It would provide Mexico with $470 million: $160 million in INCLE funding and $310 million in military and police aid through Foreign Military Financing (FMF). If the House version of the bill is approved, Mexico would surpass Colombia as the Western Hemisphere's top recipient of U.S. military and police aid.^29 A Conference Report reconciling the House and Senate versions of the bill was released in mid-June, with a figure of $420 million-a figure that still places Mexico ahead of Colombia.^30
The Andean Regional Initiative: Bolivia and Ecuador break ranks
There is a sense of déjà vu here. Upon taking office in 2001, George W. Bush inherited the $1.6 billion five-year Plan Colombia aid package, which had been passed the previous year. But he immediately expanded the program to include coordinated aid packages for Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Dubbed the Andean Regional Initiative, this program incorporated Plan Colombia.^31
Speaking to a House subcommittee in 2004, Robert B. Charles, assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, called the Andean Regional Initiative "a bulwark against the threat of terrorism in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru . . . with direct implications for homeland security and for our well-being here in the continental United States."^32 But before the Colombian model could be replicated throughout the Andes, Washington's design succumbed to the wave of change sweeping the South American continent-especially the 2005 election in Bolivia of an Aymara coca grower as South America's first indigenous president: Evo Morales.
In 2008, Morales expelled the DEA from Bolivian territory, charging that the agency was actually involved in the drug trafficking and "did not respect the police, or even the [Bolivian] armed forces."^33 In January, Bolivian voters approved a new constitution that explicitly recognizes coca leaf as a cultural heritage of the country's indigenous peoples.^34 Morales, in Washington for an OAS meeting in November, drew parallels between himself and Obama, and said he looked forward to improved relations-but added: "The DEA will not return while I am still president."^35
The 2006 election of the populist Rafael Correa similarly drew a halt to that country's integration into the ARI. Correa quickly made it clear that he would not renew the U.S. Southern Command's 10-year usage rights, set to expire November 12, for the air base near the coastal city of Manta.^36 In September, Ecuadoran voters approved a new constitution expressly forbidding foreign military bases.^37 Bolivia and Ecuador are slated to receive $30 million and $7 million, respectively, under the State Department's Andean Counterdrug Initiative in fiscal year 2009-but with a greater emphasis on non-military aspects of the program than in previous years.^38
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its 2008 annual report found a "shock" rise in coca production in Colombia of 27% in the previous year. By contrast, coca cultivation was up 5% in Bolivia and 4% in Peru. In contrast to the situation 20 years ago, when Bolivia led world production, Bolivia was now the third producer after Colombia and Peru. This was, to say the least, counterintuitive news for Plan Colombia's supporters.^39 In the UNODC's annual report for 2009, the agency did register an 18% decline in Colombian coca cultivation-partially offset by continued rises in Bolivia and Peru.^40 But this still represents a significant net gain since Plan Colombia took effect.
Fears that the United States would seek to replace the Manta base with an installation in Colombia were confirmed in May, when the Pentagon budget submitted to Congress included a $46 million request to develop an airbase at Palanquero, in the central Andean department of Cundinamarca. A Southern Command statement on the plan said the Palanquero base would have "air mobility reach on the South American continent" through 2025.^41
Peru follows the militarized model
The turn-around that brought the post-populist Alan García back to power in Peru after 16 years out of office in 2006 has done nothing to slow Peru's advancement on the militarized ARI model. With Peru and Colombia now the only full-fledged members left, the ARI name was dropped after 2004, although aid to Peru continued to be administrated through the Andean Counterdrug Initiative.^42
Indeed, in Peru's Andean interior, a new counterinsurgency campaign has emerged in the past year, redolent of the dark days of the 1980s and early 1990s, when the nation was convulsed by brutal struggle with the Shining Path guerrillas. In March, local human rights groups reported that more than 300 families were displaced from their lands by the armed forces' Plan Excelencia 777, an operation launched earlier that month to take control of Vizcatán zone, considered a stronghold of narco-trafficking and "terrorist" organizations-meaning resurgent Shining Path remnants-in the Valley of the Apurímac and Ene Rivers. The reports were denied by the armed forces. But Nolberto Lamilla of the Asociación Paz y Esperanza in Ayacucho, the regional capital, told the local media that arbitrary detainments and even "disappearances" by the military had residents in a state of fear.^43
Guerrillas killed at least 26 people in Peru in 2008, including 22 soldiers and police officers-the bloodiest year since the late 1990s. In 2007, the latest year for which data is available, coca cultivation in Peru increased by 4%, the highest level in a decade. Estimated cocaine production rose to a 10-year high of some 290 tons.^44 In October 2008, forensic examinations determined that five bodies found in Ayacucho's remote Río Seco village were relatives of a peasant woman who reported the disappearance of 11 family members after the National Police had conducted a "counter-subversive" operation in the area. The bodies are reportedly those of the woman's husband, brothers, and a sister-in-law, who had been pregnant. Two children and four adults remained missing. Ironically, some of the disappeared were apparently members of the /rondas/, a peasant self-defense militia established to defend local communities against Shining Path attack at the height of the insurgency.^45
Peruvian opposition Congress members called for a special commission to investigate the disappearances, and the national human rights ombudsman has sent a team of investigators to Río Seco. The disappearances took place while U.S. troops were in Ayacucho on an ostensible "humanitarian" mission, building clinics and schools. This occasioned much speculation in Peru's press that Washington is seeking to establish military bases in the country which was denied by the U.S. embassy.^46
Ominously, the violence is re-emerging just as forensic investigations are under way in the Ayacucho region, investigating atrocities carried out by the security forces in the 1980s and early 1990s. An exhumation in the village of Huanta in March revealed the remains of 49 people from a mass grave-victims of a massacre carried out by the Peruvian armed forces in 1984.^47
The United States provides Peru with some $100 million in aid each year, and the DEA maintains vigorous operations in the country.^48 However, Peru could follow Bolivia and Ecuador out of the U.S. orbit. At a People's Summit in Lima in May, the country's indigenous organizations launched a new alliance to defend their collective rights-and win power in the 2011 presidential elections. The National Association of Peruvian Coca Producers has already launched a political party, Kuska ("united" in the Quechua language), with a support base in the in the Apurímac and Ene river valley, where it has won mayoral elections in seven municipalities.^49
The Merida Initiative thus closes a grim circle. In the years since NAFTA was passed, the narco-economy and its attendant violence have exploded horrifically in Mexico, with the drug trade filling the economic vacuum created by the dropping of traditional public supports for the country's campesino sector.^50 Meanwhile, just as Mexico is adopting a militarized "anti-drug" program based on Plan Colombia, Colombia is moving toward a free trade agreement with Washington based on NAFTA. Peru signed a similar agreement last year.^51 It remains to be seen if the Obama administration will wake up to the vicious cycle seemingly at work here.
Plan Colombia as a model for Afghanistan
Despite obvious differences between Afghanistan and Colombia-an arid rather than lush terrain, and the ultra-conservative Taliban insurgency versus the ostensibly leftist FARC guerrilla movement-there is a clear parallel between them. In both, illicit crops, opium in the case of Afghanistan, provide an insurgency with a source of funds and a means of winning peasant loyalties: protecting growers from government eradication efforts. In both countries, the United States has nonetheless aggressively pushed for eradication.
In 2007, the United States brought in a corps of Colombian National Police to train the Afghan police force's National Interdiction Unit (NIU) in counter-narcotics tactics. The exchange was worked out after Afghanistan's counter-narcotics minister, Habibullah Qaderi, visited Bogotá in 2005-with U.S. encouragement. A spokesperson for the U.S. embassy in Bogotá told the BBC that the "educational exchanges had fostered greater co-operation and understanding in countering global drug-trafficking."^52
Just as the training program got under way, the Washington appointed its ambassador in Bogota, William Wood, as its new envoy to Afghanistan.^53 General Peter Pace, then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, commenting on the exchange, said Afghanistan could learn from Colombian social projects aimed at dismantling the rural narco-economy and "demobilizing" illegal paramilitaries. "I think those kinds of outreach programs by the Colombian government are good models for [Afghan president Hamid] Karzai to consider as he looks at how to reduce the amount of drug trafficking in his country and promote instability," he told reporters in Bogotá.^54
But the United States applied more pressure for Afghanistan to adopt a more controversial aspect of Plan Colombia-the aerial spraying of herbicide to eradicate drug crops. Even as the Colombian training program in Afghanistan was beginning, Karzai rebuffed Washington's proposal for a program to spray poppy fields. Karzai voiced his concern for the health impacts and the destruction of legal crops.^55 Karzai's Counter-narcotics Ministry issued a statement that "traditional techniques" would be used for eradication-that is, sending teams of laborers backed up by NIU agents to manually destroy the crop. However, an unnamed U.S. official told Reuters he believed Karzai would agree to spraying if manual eradication failed to cut production.^56
In 2004, U.S.-contracted aircraft apparently did a test run for the fumigation program, secretly spraying a placebo of plastic granules over poppy fields in Afghanistan to gauge public reaction. The test spray sparked angry protests from poor farmers and tribal chiefs; government officials also expressed their dismay, including Karzai, who demanded to know details of the incident. U.S. officials up to the level of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad denied any knowledge.^57
Speaking to McClatchy news service, U.S. officials declined to identify the agency that oversaw the test spraying, but noted that the State Department oversees counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan (as well as the spray program in Colombia). The department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement declined to comment.^58
Today, there are signals that the Obama administration is reconsidering an aggressive eradication strategy for Afghanistan. Special envoy Richard Holbrooke, speaking at the opening of the G8 meeting in Italy in June, said the eradication policy has been "a failure" and that crop-substitution programs should be pursued instead. "Spraying the crops just penalizes the farmer, and they grow crops somewhere else," Holbrooke said. "The hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on crop eradication has not had any damage on the Taliban. On the contrary, it has helped them recruit."^59
But aggressive eradication and (largely ineffectual) crop-substitution programs have co-existed in Colombia for years; peasants in inaccessible regions have no means of getting legal crops to market, while drug lords helpfully pick up illicit harvests themselves. The White House Drug Czar's office admits: "The remote location and rugged terrain of poppy growing areas are major obstacles to establishing crop-substitution programs."^60
Meanwhile, the Colombian government's recent gains against the FARC-coupled with the current U.S. reversals in Afghanistan-have led Pentagon leaders to return to the theme of replicating Plan Colombia in the Hindu Kush. "I think many of us from all over the world can learn from what has happened with respect to the very successful developments of Plan Colombia," Admiral Mullen said in March. "As in all plans, there are parts of it that would be very applicable in other parts of the world and specifically to Afghanistan. . . . "^61
Unfortunately, "success" against the FARC in Colombia has not been reflected in an improvement in the country's human rights climate. Amnesty International, in its most recent annual report on the country, noted: "All parties to the 40-year-old conflict committed violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. . . .Fewer people were killed by paramilitary groups than in previous years. However, reports of killings of civilians by the security forces rose. . . . The number of people forced to flee their homes by the conflict also rose."^62
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Bill Weinberg is author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso, 2000) and editor of the website World War 4 Report. He is working on a book on indigenous movements in the Andean nations.
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1. Fabiola Martínez, "Protestas antibush dejan 22 detenidos," /La Jornada/ (Mexico City), March 14, 2007.
2. Guy Taylor, " 'Merida Initiative' Would Provide Counter-Drug Aid to Mexico, but Congress Remains Skeptical," /World Politics Review/, December 13, 2007; Thomas A. Shannon, assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, testimony before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, November 15, 2007.
3. Laura Starr, "Does the Mérida Initiative Represent a New Direction for U.S.-Mexico Relations?" Council on Hemispheric Affairs, December 14, 2007.
4. Marc Lacey, "Congress Trims Bush's Mexico Drug Plan," /The New York Times/, May 23, 2008.
5. Ricado Gómez, "Rechazan en Reunión Interparlamentaria Iniciativa Mérida," /El Universal/ (Mexico City), June 7, 2008.
6. The Associated Press, "U.S. to Review Language of Drug Aid Plan for Mexico," June 8, 2008.
7. Tim Golden, "Colombia and Copters and Clash Over Choice," /The New York Times/, March 6, 2000.
8. Marc Lacey, "Mexico: Antidrug Aid's Strings Intact," /The New York Times/, June 11, 2009.
9. "Congress OKs 'Plan Mexico,' " /Weekly News Update on the Americas/, Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, June 29, 2008.
10. Ray Walser, "Mexico, Drug Cartels, and the Merida Initiative: A Fight We Cannot Afford to Lose," The Heritage Foundation, July 23, 2008.
11. Benjamin Bahney and Agnes Gereben Schaefer, "Assessing Mexico's Narco-Violence," /The San Diego Union-Tribune/, May 14, 2009.
12. Tracy Wilkinson, "6 Mexico police officers killed in ambush," /Los Angeles Times/, June 28, 2008.
13. The Associated Press, "U.S. Releases First Part of $400 Million Anti-drug Package to Mexico," December 4, 2008; "U.S. Frees Up $197 Million in Aid for Mexico's Drug War," Reuters, December 4, 2008.
14. "Obama, Mullen Discuss Mexico's Drug War," Voice of America, March 8, 2009.
15. Agence France-Presse, "U.S. Military Speeding Help to Mexico: Admiral," March 7, 2009.
16. Penny Starr, "'Undeclared War' on Mexican Border Greater Challenge Than Afghanistan, Congressmen Say," CNSNews, March 11, 2009.
17. The Associated Press, "Lawmaker Challenges Border Security Priorities," March 10, 2009.
18. Starr, " 'Undeclared War.' "
19. Ibid.
20. Frontera NorteSur news service, "Ciudad Juárez Militarized," March 17, 2009.
21. Frontera NorteSur, "The 'Colombianization' of Chihuahua," May 27, 2009.
22. "Liberan 'agentes' a reos," /La Reforma/ (Mexico City), May 21, 2009.
23. Diana Washington Valdez, "U.S. Military Report Warns 'Sudden Collapse of Mexico Is Possible," /El Paso Times/, January 13, 2009.
24. Brian Michael Jenkins, "Could Mexico Fail?," /Homeland Security Today/, February 2009, available at rand.org.
25. "Mexico Close to Being a Narco-State," Robert Weiner Associates press release (via NewsBlaze.com), January 15, 2009.
26. Ken Ellingwood, "U.S. Shares Blame for Mexico Drug Violence, Clinton Says," /Los Angeles Times/, March 26, 2009.
27. Warren P. Strobel, "Hillary Clinton to Mexico: The U.S. Feels Your Pain," McClatchy Newspapers, March 26, 2009.
28. Ibid.; Silvia Otero, "Hillary visita centro de mando de la PFP," /El Universal/ (Mexico City), March 26, 2009.
29. "U.S. Military and Police Aid: Summary Table," Center for International Policy, Colombia Program website, May 20, 2009.
30. Abigail Poe, "Mexico to Surpass Colombia as the #1 Recipient of U.S. Aid in Latin America," Just the Facts, June 17, 2009, available at justf.org.
31. "Andean Regional Initiative: Fact Sheet," Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, U.S. State Department, May 2001.
32. Testimony before House Government Reform Committee Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, March 2, 2004.
33. Agence France-Presse, "DEA Complicit in Drug Trade, Says Morales," December 11, 2008.
34. Texto del Proyecto de Constitución Política del Estado, available at Bolivian National Electoral Court website, cne.org.bo.
35. Pamela Constable, "Morales Diplomatic, Defiant in Visit to D.C.," /The Washington Post/, November 20, 2008.
36. Simon Romero, "Ecuador's Leader Purges Military and Moves to Expel American Base," /The New York Times/, April 21, 2008.
37. "Ecuador: Easy Win for New Constitution," Weekly News Update on the Americas, September 28, 2008.
38. "2009 Aid Nears Approval in Congress," Just the Facts website, February 27, 2009, available at justf.org.
39. The Associated Press, "UN: 'Shock' Rise in Colombia Coca Growth," June 18, 2008.
40. "Colombia Coca Growing 'Declines,' " BBC News, June 19, 2009.
41. John Lindsay-Poland, "New Military Base in Colombia Would Spread Pentagon Reach Throughout Latin America," IRC Americas Program, May 28, 2009.
42. Andean Regional Initiative (ARI): FY 2003 Supplemental and FY 2004 Assistance for Colombia and Neighbors, Library of Congress, August 2003.
43. "Ayacucho: Detenidos por el Ejército en Vizcatán no serían terroristas," Coordinadora Nacional de Radio (Lima), March 23, 2009.
44. Simon Romero, "Cocaine Trade Helps Rebels Reignite War in Peru," /International Herald Tribune/, March 17, 2009.
45. "Cuatro desaparecidos pertenecían a rondas ," /La Primera/ (Lima), October 6, 2008.
46. Prensa Latina (Havana), "Peru to Investigate Disappearances," October 2, 2008; "U.S. Ambassador Speaks on U.S. Military Base in Peru," Living in Peru website, October 6, 2008.
47. Agence France-Presse, "Peru Exhumes Mass Grave From Maoist War," March 11, 2009; "Mass Grave Exhumed in Peru," Free Speech Radio News, March 10, 2009.
48. Congressional Budget Justification for Peru, FY 2009.
49. Miagros Salazar, "Peru: Indigenous Organizations Aim for the Presidency," InterPress Service, May 29, 2008.
50. Bill Weinberg, "Could a Sudden Collapse of Mexico be Obama's Surprise Foreign Policy Challenge?" AlterNet, February 19, 2009.
51. David Stout, "Bush to Force Vote on Colombia Trade," /The New York Times/, April 7, 2008.
52. Luis Fajardo, "A Colombian Model for Afghanistan?" BBC News, July 8, 2007.
53. "Colombia 'Good Model' for Afghan Drug War, U.S. Says," Reuters, January 19, 2007.
54. Ibid.
55. "Afghanistan Won't Spray Heroin Fields," Reuters, January 26, 2007.
56. Ibid.
57. Jonathan Landay, "U.S. Ignores Angry Reaction to Secret Poppy Spraying Test," McClatchy Newspapers, October 26, 2007.
58. Ibid.
59. Duncan Kennedy, "U.S. Changes Tack on Afghan Poppies," BBC News, June 27, 2009.
60. "The International Heroin Market," U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, available at whitehousedrugpolicy.gov.
61. Jim Garamone, "Lessons of Colombia Can Be Applied Elsewhere, Mullen Says," American Forces Press Service, March 5, 2009.
62. Amnesty International 2008 Report: amnesty.org/en/region/colombia/report-2008.