Mexico Drug Threat Divides Obama Administration & Weakens Policy

Ray Walser /

After a major foreign policy speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked to comment on the drug violence in Mexico. She answered quite frankly:

We face an increasing threat from a well-organized network drug trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing into or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency in Mexico and in Central America.

The Mexican government quickly challenged the statement. The Secretary’s top diplomat for Latin America, Arturo Valenzuela, also questioned the correctness of the Secretary’s views. He asserted that Mexico in 2010 is quite unlike Colombia in the 1990s since there are no “armed group aiming to seize political power.” Valenzuela viewed the Mexican cartels as violent and dangerous but essentially lacking the political clout and ideological purpose that characterized the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the late 1990s. Yet, Valenzuela failed to mention how FARC evolved from a political insurgency to a narco-terrorist organization that survives on the cocaine trade. (more…)