Jeffrey SimpsonThe Globe and Mail
Mexico's war against drug cartels is the country's "defining issue," Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson writes. "Win it, and the country might enjoy the elixir of prolonged security and economic growth; lose it, and Mexico will be written off as a violent, drug-infested place at the margins of North America."
Mr. Simpson, a longtime national affairs columnist and former foreign correspondent who has just returned from Mexico, joined us online Wednesday to discuss the situation there. Here are some highlights from the discussion - click below for a full transcript.
Moderator's question: What happens in 2012, when Mr. Calderon is replaced as president? Does the rest of the Mexican leadership share his appetite for what you describe as a "hard, long, violent struggle" ahead? And what about the Mexican people themselves?
Jeffrey Simpson's answer: These are the very questions that informed observers of Mexican society are asking, because the presidential campaign will start in a year or so. At least nominally, the possible candidates for the presidency are mostly saying that they recognize the threat from the drug cartels and will combat them; they have not indicated whether they will prosecute the war with the vigour and cost that President Calderon has. It could be, given the level of violence (which it should be said is concentrated in a minority of Mexican states) will weary enough people that they will want the government at the national and state levels to cut some kind of implicit deal whereby the drug traffickers are not hounded as they are now in exchange for their abstaining from terrorist attacks and other forms of mass murder. I mean a while ago a large number of migrants from Central America heading north were killed in a gangland-type murder by one of the cartels. I was told that this particular outrage really bothered a lot of ordinary Mexicans, since the victims were completely innocent bystanders who were murdered anyway for one reason or another by a cartel.
Question from reader Grant: The drug issue in Mexico is a global problem and not completed owned by Mexico. Is there a degree of hypocrisy amongst those who contentiously protest Globalization and other "right wing" agenda items and at the same time smoke marijuana?
Jeffrey Simpson's answer: Grant's comment leads me to say that the hemisphere faces a challenge. The raw material for drugs, and much of their fabrication, happens in parts of Columbia, Peru and Bolivia -- where the president has been publicly encouraging the growing of the plants from which cocaine is made. There is a southern route through Brazil, whereby, as in Mexico, huge local markets have been created, and an export business that sends the drugs to Africa and Europe. And there is a northern route up through Central America, Mexico to the United States -- and to Canada. We might think that this issue is for "them," the Mexicans and Americans, but we are involved as a destination market too.