Literature Review: The Merida Initiative and its effects over the last decade

Jara Bucher
Nov 6 · 9 min read
Picture retrieved from: www.meridainitiative.org

Mexico has a troubled past and disrupted image in the world because of its many drug trafficking organizations. It is a fact that the maturity of the drugs sold on the streets of the United States are imported via the Mexican border. Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations were always present, but the mayor change in criminality happened around 2007, when the Merida Initiative came to life (Abu-Hamdeh 2011).

The Merida Initiative is a Letter of Agreement between the United States and Mexico. The letter was signed by Presidents Bush and Calderón in December 2008. Its objective is to combat drug trafficking and organized crime. Billions of dollars have arrived in Mexico since the initiative was launched, but the results are not visible to the bare eye (US Department of State 2014).

The initiative can be divided into four pillars, which are also its contemporary goals. Namely, they are: (1) Disrupting the Operational Capacity of Organized Crime; (2) Institutionalizing the Rule of Law in Mexico; (3) Creating a “21st Century Border”; and, (4) Building Strong and Resilient Communities (US Department of State 2014).

The Merida Initiative has now been in use for more than ten years. What has changed during this time and on what can the success or failure of the initiative be measured? In this literature review, I am going to focus on the points that have been discussed as the main positive and negative outcomes of the initiative during the last ten years.

Capture of High-profile Criminals
The strategy was from the beginning on very militarized, and the focus was to hunt down the leaders of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in Mexico. Namely, 25 of the initial list of 37 cartel leaders have been arrested. One specific example of the success of this strategy is the capture of infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, also known as “El Chapo” (Dzunic 2017). This focus, however, caused the organizations to restructure, mostly in a violent and criminal way (Seelke 2019). The fight for powerful positions within the cartels led to a formation of new and smaller criminal organizations of the same type. It has been observed that in 2006, there were only six organizations known. But this figure constantly rose, and there was knowledge of sixteen existing cartels in year 2012 (Rosen and Martínez 2014).

Not only members of criminal drug trafficking organizations have been captured, Mexico also made confiscations of illicit drugs and currency. According to Seelke (2019) those seizures were worth more than 4 million USD in year 2018. However, as BBC (2010) found out that the confiscations were a lot more enormous in 2009. The Mexican Army said they seized and burned more than 60% of the drug cartel’s annual revenue of marijuana alone. This corresponds to an estimated 8 billion dollars which would have been their revenue generated in the United States. Numbers differ, but it is a fact that Mexico does its part in confiscating and destroying illegal goods.

Human Rights Violations
In the Merida Initiative itself, there are four human rights reporting requirements stated. They must be met and reported to the U.S. State Department for Mexico to receive the full funds. The requirements focus on transparency and accountability of Mexican police forces, on “Enforcing the prohibition on using testimony obtained through torture as evidence in court”, to ensure that allegedly corrupt members of federal police and military forces are investigated by civilian (not military) prosecutors, and, to ensure that there is a mechanism of regular counseling between the Mexican government and the citizens regarding the implementation of the Merida Initiative (Brewer 2009).

According to Amnesty International (2009), in the period of 2006 to 2009, there were more than 2,200 complaints registered at the Mexican National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH). These contain enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings, and they have allegedly all been committed by Mexican military forces. Unfortunately, the real number must be even higher since a lot of families do not report or file official complaints because of their fear of retaliation.
In 2015, seven human rights groups and Amnesty International again demanded the U.S. government to withhold the 15% — as stated in the letter — of the funds to the Mexican armed forces because of their ongoing human rights violations (Melgar Manzanilla and Márquez Gómez 2018).

On the other hand, there is also a continuing police reform, as well as a judicial reform. To omit police corruption and involvement in any illegal business, firing and arresting police officers who have accepted bribes and therefore supported impunity has taken place from 2008 on. Furthermore, there has been enhancement in police training and the establishment of a national database to share intelligence and information among officials (Seelke and Finklea 2010).

Impunity
Another often discussed topic related to the Merida Initiative is impunity. It also belongs to the topic of human rights violations, as impunity is the equivalent of tolerating human rights violations (United Nations 2019). Impunity rates stayed nearby 98% during several years before the initiative. This is contrasted from the start of the initiative on, as there were funds for training, equipment and professional forces, which helped Mexico for a much-needed judicial reform (Seelke and Finklea 2010). In 2017, the impunity rate of Mexico lowered to about 70%. It is still the country with the highest impunity rate in the countries of the Americas, but the funds and aids of the United States have indeed been successful here (Global Impunity Index 2017).

Continued Violence
With the start of the initiative, and the militaristic approach to fight the drug trafficking organizations, the annual homicide rate began to rise dramatically. In big parts of the country, violence became an everyday matter, almost normality (Santos 2019). Only in year 2011, the homicide rate increased by 24%. Under President Calderón’s government, from 2006–2012, there were about 70,000 drug executions, as official government data says. However, different journals all over Mexico talk about different death numbers related to organized crime in Calderón’s six-year term. They range from 50,000 up to 120,000 deaths (Rosen and Martínez 2014).

Yet on the other hand, the initiative did not focus on a reduction of violence, and the clear upsurge was foreseeable. From the beginning on, violence was part of the initiative somehow, as the governments of Mexico and the United States chose to fight the drug trafficking with violence. According to Heinle, Ferreira and Shirk (2017), the homicide rate of Mexico is still average compared to selected countries of the Americas, even after the increase from 2007 on. The following graphic shows an overview of national homicides rates (per 100,000 habitants) for selected Latin American countries through 2014.

Community Development
As discussed in the last paragraphs, violence surged with the start of the initiative. A clear difference can be seen from 2011 on. The peak starts diminishing again, and this is partially because community development programs — among others — started to show effect (Santos 2019). President Calderón’s efforts were also focused on government investments in education, job training as well as school-based “culture of lawfulness” programs (Seelke and Finklea 2010).
A good example of how community projects showed their effects is Ciudad Juárez. The city has been elected the worlds most violent city for several year after the start of the Merida Initiative and president Calderón’s war against drugs (Santos 2019). The explosion of homicide rate can be seen in the graphic below.

But after the start of several community development projects, the city was able to recover its homicide rate and now even starts to open for tourists again (Santos 2019).
The success spilled over, and in 2014, Chihuahua was the state with the lowest unemployment rate of all (OECD Publishing 2015).

The future of the Merida Initiative is yet unclear. Mexico’s new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador wants to move away from the militaristic strategy, and rather focus on investment in social programs and development. In May 2019, the president said: “It hasn’t worked. We don’t want cooperation in the use of force, we want cooperation for development.” and his slogan was “abrazos, no balazos” (hugs, not bullets). Another critique from the president and his followers is that poverty, here seen as the root of drug violence, was not properly addressed in the Merida Initiative (Sheridan 2019).

To conclude, it can be said that the opinions about the Merida Initiative differ a lot. While the capture of many high-profile criminals was an important advance in fighting the drug trafficking organizations for some authors, others say that capturing their leaders has only led to the splitting up of the groups. They formed smaller, independent organizations and expanded their areas of operations. The judicial and police reforms in Mexico are still taking place, but the process is only slowly advancing. Nevertheless, human rights violations do happen on a regular basis. Most of the abuses are reported to be committed by the Military forces and the judicial system is not developed enough to secure a legal prosecution. In fact, impunity rates are still at 70%, and the figure for undiscovered crimes is thought to be very high.
A more positive part of the initiative is the community development that has taken place at the north border of Mexico. A perfect example for the success of such projects is Ciudad Juárez, in the state of Chihuahua. Mexico’s new president would like to continue with this and take the focus of the Merida Initiative away from militarization. If and how this will be successful over the next few years is another topic worth investigating.

Reference List:

Abu-Hamdeh, Sabrina. 2011. “The Merida Initiative: An Effective Way of Reducing Violence in Mexico.” Pepperdine Policy Review 4 (November 2011): 37–54. http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/academics/research/policy-review/2011v4/content/merida-initiative.pdf.%5Cn%5Cn.

Amnesty International. 2009. “Mexico: Merida Funds Must Be Frozen Until Human Rights Conditions Are Met”. Retrieved from: https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2009/08/mexico-merida-funds-must-be-frozen-until-human-rights-conditions-are-met/

BBC (2010). Mexico’s Drug War. BBC Documentary. [HealtyLife Documentary] (07.19.2015). Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwdXnBLKTiA, 12.10.2017

Brewer, Erin. 2009. “Rethinking the Mérida Initiative: Why the U.S. Must Change Course in Its Approach to Mexico’s Drug War.” Human Rights Brief 16 (3): 9–14. http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&context=hrbrief.

Dzunic, A. M. 2017.The War on Drugs and the Merida Initiative. Student’s Scientific Conference. 1, no 1. Retrieved from: http://szd.lib.uni-corvinus.hu/11183/

Heinle, K, O Ferreira, and D Shirk. 2017. “Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis 2016,” no. March. https://justiceinmexico.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2017_DrugViolenceinMexico.pdf.

Le Clercq Ortega, J. A. and Rodríguez Sanchez Lara, G. 2017. GII — 2017 Global Impunity Index. Global Impunity Dimensions. 1, no 1. https://www.udlap.mx/cesij/files/IGI-2017_eng.pdf?2811

Melgar Manzanilla, Pastora, and Márquez Gómez, Daniel. 2018. “The Merida Initiative and the Tort Claims Act: Human Rights Violations and Foreign Non-Contractual Civil Liability in the United States.” Mexican law review, 11(1), 31–55. https://dx.doi.org/10.22201/iij.24485306e.2018.1.12510

OECD Publishing. 2015. Measuring Well-Being in Mexican States. Measuring Well-Being in Mexican States. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264246072-en.

Seelke, Clare Ribando. 2019. “Mexico : Evolution of the Mérida Initiative , 2007–2020,” no. 1: 2019–20.

Ribando Seelke, C. and Finklea, K. M. 2015. U . S . -Mexican Security Cooperation : The Mérida Initiative and Beyond. Congressional Research Service: Issue Brief, no. R41349: 31.

Rosen, Jonathan Daniel, and Roberto Zepeda Martínez. 2015. “La Guerra Contra El Narcotráfico En México : The War on Drugs in Mexico : A Lost War Introducción No Se Puede Entender La Situación Actual En México Sin Un Breve Análisis de La Historia Del Narco- La Guerra Contra Las Drogas En Los Estados Unidos El Presi.” Rev. Reflexiones 94 (1): 153–68. https://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/reflexiones/article/view/20889.

Silva Santos, M. L. 2019. The Violence behind the Stigma Lessons from a Mexican Border City, no. July.

Sheridan, M. B. 2019. Mexico’s president says no to U.S. cash to fight drug crime. The Washington Post. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/amlo-rejects-us-crime-fighting-funds-injecting-new-uncertainty-into-relationship/2019/05/09/f9e368fe-71c2-11e9-9331-30bc5836f48e_story.html

United Nations. 2019. Human Rights Law. Retrieved from: https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/thematic-areas/international-law-courts-tribunals/human-rights-law/

US Department of State. 2014. “The Merida Initiative — An Overview,” no. December 2008. Retrieved from: https://photos.state.gov/libraries/mexico/310329/july2014/Merida-Initiative-Overview-jul14.pdf

Jara Bucher

Written by

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade