{"id":228325,"date":"2016-03-02T01:57:47","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T01:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/hillary-clintons-dark-drug-war-legacy-in-mexico\/"},"modified":"2016-03-02T01:57:47","modified_gmt":"2016-03-02T01:57:47","slug":"hillary-clintons-dark-drug-war-legacy-in-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/hillary-clintons-dark-drug-war-legacy-in-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillary Clinton\u2019s Dark Drug War Legacy in Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"soa-watch-drug-war-mexico-merida\"<\/p>\n

(Image: SOA Watch \/ Flickr)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Mexico, John M. Ackerman wrote recently for Foreign Policy<\/em>, \u201cis not a functional democracy<\/a>.\u201d Instead, it\u2019s a \u201crepressive and corrupt\u201d oligarchy propped up by a \u201cblank check\u201d from Washington.<\/p>\n

Since 2008, that blank check has come to over $2.5 billion<\/a> appropriated in security aid through the M\u00e9rida Initiative<\/a>, a drug war security assistance program funded by Washington. Negotiated behind closed doors in the last years of the Bush administration, the plan was originally proposed as a three-year program<\/a>. Yet Hillary Clinton\u2019s State Department pushed aggressively to extend it, overseeing a drastic increase of the initiative that continues today.<\/p>\n

Much of this aid goes to U.S.-based security, information, and technology contracting firms, who make millions peddling everything from helicopter training to communications equipment to night-vision goggles, surveillance aircrafts, and satellites.<\/p>\n

This aid comes in addition to the direct sales of arms<\/a> and other equipment to Mexico authorized by the State Department, as Christy Thorton pointed out in a 2014 New York Times<\/em> op-ed. Those sales reached $1.2 billion<\/a> in 2012 alone, the last full year of Clinton\u2019s tenure. Indeed, as the M\u00e9rida Initiative has grown, Mexico has become one of the world\u2019s biggest<\/a> purchasers of U.S. military arms and equipment.<\/p>\n

But while sales have boomed for U.S.-based contractors, the situation in Mexico has badly deteriorated. The escalation of U.S. counter-drug assistance in the country has paralleled a drastic increase in violence, fueling a drug war that\u2019s killed more than 100,000 people<\/a> since 2006.<\/p>\n

State Complicity<\/strong><\/p>\n

High-profile human rights cases \u2014 such as the kidnapping and disappearance of the 43 students<\/a> from the teacher-training college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero in September 2014 \u2014 sparked renewed attention to the devastating effects of the U.S.-funded drug war in Mexico. Yet, they didn\u2019t come out of nowhere.<\/p>\n

Forced disappearances like these were ballooning even as Clinton was pushing M\u00e9rida Initiative programs forward, with official records reaching upwards<\/a> of 3,000 to 4,000 people a year in 2011 and 2012. According to the United Nations<\/a>, these widespread kidnappings and disappearances often involve state authorities, and the problem is worsened<\/a> by the government\u2019s failure to investigate.<\/p>\n

U.S. laws explicitly prohibit the delivery of aid to foreign individuals and units implicated in systematic human rights violations. But files released by WikiLeaks revealed that Clinton\u2019s State Department regularly received information on widespread \u201cofficial corruption<\/a>\u201c in Mexico, even as they were bolstering the flow of equipment, assistance, and training that ended up in the hands of abusive and compromised<\/a> security forces.<\/p>\n

Indeed, in 2009<\/a> and 2010<\/a> \u2014 the middle years of Clinton\u2019s tenure at State \u2014 U.S. embassy cables boasted that intelligence and military cooperation between the two countries had never been better. Such cables, and the full archival orbit of declassified and leaked U.S. and Mexican records, demonstrate that Clinton\u2019s State Department repeatedly cleared the delivery of U.S. assistance training and equipment to security forces implicated in corruption or abuse.<\/p>\n

One document from June 2011<\/a> recorded a visit of U.S. officials to the northern state of Tamaulipas in May 2011 to assess training needs for state security forces. The visit came as Mexico\u2019s federal authorities were trying to cover up the discovery of mass graves<\/a> from the recent San Fernando massacres in the region. Even as U.S. officials were reporting on the Mexican government\u2019s complicity and cover-up of the massacres, the U.S. embassy recommended further training for Tamaulipas security forces.<\/p>\n

The same document<\/a> also reports that Mexican immigration agents had been fired for kidnapping migrants. Yet the delivery of biometric data equipment to the same agency continued unimpeded.<\/p>\n

In the southern state of Guerrero, meanwhile, records from 2009 to 2010 show that the U.S. embassy cleared local<\/a> and federal<\/a> police, military<\/a> officials, and investigative agents<\/a> for training and assistance from units implicated in human rights violations. Even then, the U.S. embassy \u2014 and not to mention reputable human rights groups \u2014 knew about the direct involvement of government officials in abuses there.<\/p>\n

Human Rights Watch reported<\/a> in 2011, for example, on widespread cases of torture in Guerrero going back to 1994. The group noted regular abuses by police and military forces, including \u201ccases of homicide, torture, and extortion\u201d overseen by the judicial police chief in the northern part of the state. The same report highlighted strong evidence of the involvement of military officials from Chilpancingo in cases of kidnapping and disappearances in 2010, as the U.S. embassy was clearing officials for training<\/a> from the same military base.<\/p>\n

After government security forces killed two students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training school during a protest in December 2011, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Earl Anthony Wayne sent a cable reporting<\/a> that \u201cthe evidence of heavy-handed police tactics is strong and disconcerting.\u201d It was the same school where, less than three years later, 43 students would be disappeared \u2014 and six others killed \u2014 after being attacked by local police forces.<\/p>\n

The Beneficiaries<\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition to training Mexico\u2019s security forces, Clinton\u2019s State Department bolstered Mexico\u2019s wiretap<\/a> capabilities, provided communications systems<\/a> and computers, and installed information sharing software<\/a>, biometric databases<\/a>, and radar systems. It also peddled Blackhawk helicopters, surveillance aircrafts, satellites, and all-terrain vehicles, and built joint-intelligence fusion centers<\/a> for targeting<\/a> high-value cartel leaders.<\/p>\n

The implementation and delivery of this equipment took place hand-in-hand with private contractors. Major players like General Electric, Honeywell, Motorola, Sharp, IBM, and Dell appear throughout records of these transactions, along with scores of others \u2014 including Science Applications International, Rapiscan, American Science and Engineering, RCA, and many more.<\/p>\n

Several contractors benefited significantly from helicopter deliveries and services in particular. These played a prominent role in both the conduct and the promotion of the broader drug war effort.<\/p>\n

Three Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, for example, were sent to Mexico\u2019s federal police in November 2010. Just two weeks after their handover, they were deployed in the largest aerial operation conducted to date against the La Familia de Michoac\u00e1n<\/em> drug cartel. The U.S. embassy boasted in a secret cable<\/a> that the operation \u2014 which reportedly led to the killing of drug kingpin Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, or \u201cEl Chayo\u201d \u2014 was a \u201cneeded win<\/a>\u201c for then-president Felipe Calder\u00f3n in his increasingly unpopular war against the cartels.<\/p>\n

El Chayo\u2019s killing was the first clear evidence the State Department could highlight to show Congress that Calder\u00f3n\u2019s strategy \u2014 and the U.S. intelligence and security aid behind it \u2014 was leading to results. Yet the operation, which also caused large-scale civilian deaths, appeared to be in vain: The Mexican government reported that El Chayo was killed again<\/em><\/a>, years later, in an operation carried out against the cartel in March 2014.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the 2010 operation provided the justification to further ratchet up U.S. support. In May 2011, embassy staff accompanied Mexican federal police representatives to review an aircraft project in North Carolina and receive presentations from the AMCOM missile command and industry representatives. More aircrafts were subsequently delivered<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sikorsky, along with other companies such as General Electric, continued to reap the benefits of the drug war in Mexico even after Clinton left the State Department. In March 2015, the department approved the sale<\/a> of three Black Hawk helicopters to the Mexican military for $110 million. This followed a larger deal<\/a> in April 2014 for 18 Black Hawks at $680 million.<\/p>\n

Notably, several of the contractors that profited from U.S. security assistance in Mexico \u2014 such as General Electric, Lockheed Martin, and United Technologies Corporation, which owns Sikorsky \u2014 reportedly contributed to the Clinton Foundation<\/a>. And according to the transparency group Open Secrets, Clinton currently tops the list of all 2016 presidential candidates<\/a> in campaign contributions from the military contracting industry.<\/p>\n

Back to Business as Usual<\/strong><\/p>\n

Naturally, Clinton herself was aware of how her department\u2019s support for the Mexican drug war would look in light of the revelations about corruption and human rights abuses.<\/p>\n

In January 2011, shortly after the release of a huge tranche of leaked diplomatic cables, Secretary Clinton apologized<\/a> to her Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa for any \u201cembarrassment\u201d caused by the WikiLeaks documents, announcing her intention to get<\/p>\n

\u201cbeyond WikiLeaks\u201d and reaffirm the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Clinton expressed optimism that they could create a better \u201cnarrative\u201d than the waste, fraud, and abuse revealed in the cables and regular media accounts and \u201cexplain to Congress why foreign assistance money under \u2018Beyond Merida\u2019 should continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting beyond WikiLeaks, of course, meant getting back to business as usual \u2014 and back behind closed doors.<\/p>\n

While thousands of Clinton\u2019s own emails have since been released, the secrecy continues \u2014 with much of the important information still heavily redacted. For example, the emails contain potentially important documents, such as a memo<\/a> to President Obama with a report on Clinton\u2019s trip to Mexico City and Monterrey. This document, however, is completely redacted, except for one line.<\/p>\n

In his piece<\/a> for Foreign Policy<\/em>, John Ackerman argued that Clinton\u2019s defense of the status quo in Mexico is \u201cgrounded in a vicious cycle of complicities between economic and political elites on both sides of the border.\u201d Indeed, the record available for public scrutiny shows that Clinton\u2019s State Department \u2014 rather than addressing human rights concerns over the M\u00e9rida funding \u2014 focused on ensuring that security assistance continued in the face of abuse, cover-ups, and ongoing impunity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This piece was reprinted from Foreign Policy In Focus<\/a> by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Image: SOA Watch \/ Flickr) Mexico, John M. Ackerman wrote recently for Foreign Policy, \u201cis not a functional democracy.\u201d Instead, it\u2019s a \u201crepressive and corrupt\u201d oligarchy propped up by a \u201cblank check\u201d from Washington. Since 2008, that blank check has come to over $2.5 billion appropriated in security aid through the M\u00e9rida Initiative, a drug […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-228325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}