The Forgotten State: USAID and Plan Mérida’s Effectiveness in Guerrero, Mexico

On Tuesday, March 22, 2016, Nestora Salgado landed in the Sea-Tac International Airport in Seattle, Washington, after being released from prison in Mexico.¹ Salgado, who led a militia group, normally referred to as “community police,” was arrested without a proper warrant for allegedly kidnapping three teenage girls who were detained by community police for dealing drugs on behalf of their boyfriends in August 2013.² A US-Mexican dual citizen, Salgado spent the following 31 months isolated in El Rincon, a federal high-security detention center in Tepic, Narayit, Mexico, until she was cleared of all charges on Friday, March 18, when the United Nations arbitrary group ruled that the formation of community police forces was legal.1 The drug trafficking violence and crime in Guerrero and rise of vigilante militia groups led by community leaders like Salgado draw attention to questions, perhaps unanswerable, surrounding the effectiveness of USAID and Plan Mérida in Guerrero, Mexico.

These community police forces have become increasingly prevalent in Guerrero, which is considered one of the most violent states in Mexico.³ Guererro suffered 1,824 murders from January to November 2015, an increase from 2014’s total of 1,514 homicides.4 This does not include the numerous kidnappings and extortions.4 An example of this extreme violence and lawlessness plaguing Guerrero is the forced disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Teachers College after being attacked by local police while riding the bus outside Iguala, a city in Guerrero, in September 2014.⁴ The disputed case, which is still under reinvestigation by a group of experts appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, gained Guerrero international attention from the media, human rights groups and the U.S. government.⁵

The ongoing violence and involvement of community police brings into question the effectiveness of USAID and Plan Mérida in Mexico throughout recent years. In 2008, Congress approved Plan Mérida, a partnership between the United States, Mexico, Central America, Haiti and the Dominican Republic to address the increasing violence and corruption due to drug trafficking.⁶ Since then, the United States has committed over $2.5 billion to the initiative which focuses on equipping and training law enforcement in the respective countries for long-term reform and improvement of rule of law.⁷ Additionally, Mérida incorporates a strategy to secure the U.S.-Mexico border but in 2011 expanded to include the Mexico-Guatemala-Belize border, where migrants from other Central American countries are crossing enroute to the U.S. with the implementation of a $50 million plan by the U.S. Department of Defense.6 As a result, most states near both borders have experienced improvements in peace according to the 2015 Mexico Peace Index published by the Institute for Economics and Peace.⁸

This data is taken from the 2016 Congressional Research Service report on U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and Beyond and represents the amount of U.S. funding on Plan Mérida Initiatives from 2012 to the requested amount in 2017.

In recent years, the annual funds allocated for Mérida have been decreasing significantly thanks to the claimed progress Mexico has made in fighting the cartels; however, some states, like Guerrero, have not benefited positively from the Mérida funding and actually regressed. In 2012, $281.8 million was spent on Mérida funding with $33.3 million going towards the Economic Support Fund (ESF) and $248.5 million towards the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE).6 For the 2017 fiscal year, only $129 million in funding has been requested with $49 million going towards the ESF and $80 million towards INCLE.⁶  From 2011 to 2014, the homicide rates in Mexico have decreased by 30 percent and peace levels overall have improved, which intuitively lead one to believe peace in each state has improved.⁷ This is not the case. Guerrero, unlike Mexico as a whole, has become the least peaceful state, dropping from 28^th out of 32 in 2008 to 32^nd in 2014.⁷

The 2015 state of peace in Mexico as reported by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Guerrero is ranked 32 out of 32 as the least peaceful state in Mexico. Mexico’s overall peace level has improved by 16 percent over the past three years. Graph taken from Mexico Peace Index 2015 report by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Thus, Guerrero seems to be forgotten by USAID and Plan Mérida. Nonetheless, with the release of Salgado, Guerrero continues to gain international coverage through the media and human rights organizations. This reality prompts the question: Why has overall peace in Mexico improved, yet steadily decreased in Guerrero? In general, improving the peace in Mexican states on the U.S. border as well as those that border Guatemala and Belize are more advantageous for U.S. security interests than the central states like Guerrero. Yet, is not improvement of overall peace in Mexico even more important than peace in a few border states?

Perhaps, Guerrero’s increasing violence and lawlessness could be due to the balloon effect within Mexico. The balloon effect analogizes the phenomenon of a latex balloon that, when pressure is applied, does not pop but instead bulges in another area where the pressure is not applied with the U.S. Drug Policy in Central and South America. This same effect can be attributed inside Mexico where pressure is being applied to specific areas, such as the northern and southern border states, subsequently pushing the violence to another region with less resistance, like Guerrero and other central states. This leaves policymakers with the challenge of maintaining pressure fluidly throughout the country but also not spreading funds too thin.

Moreover, with the increasing prevalence of community police initiatives, a final important question remains: Should the U.S. be giving funds to local government and law enforcement when, in states like Guerrero, they have proven to be corrupt or, at least, ineffective? Realistically, the U.S. government cannot fund community police forces; however, they can and should include them in the dialogue for preventing drug trafficking violence and crime. Guerrero poses significant policy questions for the United States and Mexico. At this time, there may not be concrete solutions to these issues, but there must be more awareness as to how and where USAID and Plan Mérida funds to Mexico are being invested and who in those communities are receiving funds.