ENDNOTES

1. A widely cited 2008 worst-case assessment by the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) made the questionable assertion that Mexico was one of two countries—along with Pakistan—that could suffer a sudden collapse into a failed state in the near future. Specifically, the report asserted, “In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico...” (United States Joint Forces Command 2008.) Russell D. Howard and Reid L. Sawyer, Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment, Readings & Interpretations. Rev. and updated. ed. Guilford, Conn.: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2004.

2. The calculation of total homicides is based on rates reported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and CIA World Factbook population estimates for 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010. Jorge Ramos, "Gobierno revela mapa de guerra entre cárteles," El Universal, August 28, 2010 , Milenio, "28 mil 353 ejecutados en el sexenio. Radiografía del crimen organizado," Milenio, August 28, 2010; and “Mexico: Safer Than Canada,” Economist, August 27, 2010.

3. The U.S. government defines “spillover violence” as DTO attacks targeting U.S. assets, but excludes DTO-versus-DTO violence on U.S. territory or elsewhere.

4. While there is debate about the exact proportion of U.S. firearms that are responsible for Mexico’s violence, there is no doubt that these number in the tens of thousands. Eric Olson, Andrew Selee, and David A. Shirk, Shared Responsibility: U.S.-Mexico Policy Options for Combating Organized Crime. Washington, DC; San Diego, CA: Mexico Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Trans-Border Institute, University of San Diego, 2010.

5. Nacha Cattan, "Mexican Drug Traffickers Set Up New Cells in Central America " Christian Science Monitor, December 30, 2010.

6. The Government Accountability Office reports that $1.32 billion (84 percent) of Mérida Initiative funding was slated for Mexico, while $258 million (16 percent) was slated for Central America. United States Government Accountability Office, Mérida Initiative: The United States Has Provided Counternarcotics and Anticrime Support but Needs Better Performance Measures, Washington, DC, 2010, p. 4.

7. Presentation by sociologist Marcelo Bergman at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in April 2010. See also Jose Brambila Macias, Modeling the Informal Economy in Mexico. A Structural Equation Approach, Munich, 2008 .

8. As Campbell (2009) notes, drug trafficking creates a wide range of relatively flexible job opportunities at different levels of specialization: pilots, drivers, and logistics experts; lookouts, enforcers, and professional hit men; accountants and financial experts; and top-level cartel executives in the drug trade. U.S. government estimates of the total profits from these activities are between $19 billion to $39 billion, while the Mexican government has long estimated drug profits to be around $11 billion to $12 billion annually; these range between one to three percent of Mexico’s $1.4 trillion GDP. A recent Rand study provides the most careful estimate available to date, placing annual Mexican drug profits from the United States, not including other revenues, at around $6-7 billion or half a percent of GDP. See: Howard Campbell, Drug War Zone. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009 and Beau Kilmer, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Brittany M. Bond, and Peter H. Reuter, Reducing Drug Trafficking Revenues and Violence in Mexico: Would Legalizing Marijuana in California Help? Occasional Paper. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2010.

9. The calculation of 45,000 total homicides is based on official rates published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and CIA World Factbook population estimates for 2007, 2008, and 2009. See also, David A. Shirk, Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis from 2001-2009. San Diego: Trans-Border Institute, 2010. Jorge Ramos, "Gobierno revela mapa de guerra entre cárteles," El Universal, August 28, 2010 , Milenio, "28 mil 353 ejecutados en el sexenio. Radiografía del crimen organizado," Milenio, August 28, 2010.

10. In 2010 alone, 14 of the country’s roughly 2,450 mayors were assassinated. Viridiana Ríos and David Shirk, Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis Through 2010, Trans-Border Institute, 2011 and Redacción, “EU: el narco asesinó a 61 enlaces de DEA y FBI,” Pdblico, Año 14, Numero 4808, December 4, 20 10, p. 28.

11. El Universal, "Periodistas demandan justicia y abatir violencia," El Universal, July 9, 2010, ———, "Urge frenar ataques a medios: CIDH y SIP," El Universal, August 28, 2010.

12. María Celia Toro, Mexico’s “War” on Drugs: Causes and Consequences. Boulder; London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995.

13. The most comprehensive analysis of drug trafficking in Mexico has been conducted by Luis Astorga. Luis Alejandro Astorga Almanza, Seguridad, traficantes y militares: el poder y la sombra. . Mexico City: Tusquets, 2007, ———, El siglo de las drogas: el narcotráfico, del Porfiriato al nuevo milenio. 1. ed. Mexico City: Plaza y Janís, 2005, ———, Drogas sin fronteras. México: Grijalbo, 2003, ———, "Traficantes de drogas, políticos y policías en el siglo XX mexicano," in Vicios pdblicos, virtudes privadas: La corrupción en México, edited by C. Lomnitz. Mexico City: CIESAS, 2000. See also Carlos Antonio Flores Pérez, "Organized Crime and Official Corruption in Mexico," in Police and Public Security in Mexico, edited by Robert A. Donnelly and David A. Shirk. San Diego: Trans-Border Institute, 2009.

14. Luis Alejandro Astorga Almanza and David A. Shirk, "Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies in the U.S.- Mexican Context," in Working Paper Series on U.S.-Mexico Security Collaboration, edited by Eric Olson, Andrew Selee and David A. Shirk. Washington, DC; San Diego, CA: Mexico Institute (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars); Trans-Border Institute (University of San Diego), 2010, Richard Snyder and Angelica Duran-Martinez, "Does Illegality Breed Violence? Drug Trafficking and State-Sponsored Protection Rackets," Crime, Law, and Social Change 52, 2009:253–73.

15. The first major deployments began at the outset of the Calderón administration in December 2006, with the introduction of 6,700 troops to Michoacán, then Mexico’s most violent state. As the violence spread, troop deployments were expanded to other areas in Baja California, Guerrero, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, and Veracruz. Since 2008, Mexico’s major deployments have been concentrated in the state of Chihuahua, which presently accounts for the largest proportion of Mexico’s drug violence.

16. Some states, like Michoacán and Tamaulipas, saw significant reductions in drug-related violence after federal forces were deployed there in 2007, but both experienced sharp increases in 2010. Other states, like Chihuahua, Guerrero, and Nuevo León, suffered continued or increased violence after the arrival of the military.

17. From 2006-2010, there were over 4,200 formal complaints issued to Mexico’s human rights ombudsman, yet according to the Mexican military only around 2% of these resulted in formal action. Accusations of misconduct include torture, cruel and degrading treatment, arbitrary detention, dangerous incarceration conditions, and falsification of evidence in human rights investigations. For more on the role of the military, see Camp, Armed Forces and Drugs: Public Perceptions and Institutional Challenges, Moloeznik, "The Militarization of Mexican Public Security and the Role of the Military in Mexico," p.?? .

18. George Grayson, "Los Zetas: the Ruthless Army Spawned by a Mexican Drug Cartel," Foreign Policy Research Institute, 2008.

19. Public opinion polls generally support the government’s efforts to combat DTOs, but also tend to see the government as losing the fight. Consulta Mitofsky, “Economía, gobierno y política, ” Consulta Mitofsky, January 2010. Recent blows against the La Familia Michoacana organization in Michoacán resulted in public demonstrations of support for the traffickers. William Finnegan, "Silver or Lead," The New Yorker, May 31, 2010, Castillo, Elly. “Muestran apoyo a La Familia en Apatzingán.” El Universal Dec. 12, 2010.

20. Nathan Pino and Michael D. Wiatrowski, Democratic Policing in Transitional and Developing Countries. Interdisciplinary research series in ethnic, gender, and class relations. Aldershot, Hampshire ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub. Co., 2006. David H. Bayley, Democratizing the Police Abroad: What to Do and How to Do It, Washington, DC, 2001, Joseph S. Tulchin and Meg Ruthenburg, Toward a Society Under Law: Citizens and Their Police in Latin America. Washington, DC; Baltimore, Md.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

21. Recent police surveys in Guadalajara and Ciudad Juárez found that 80 percent of local police earn less than $800 per month, the vast majority reported working more than fifty hours a week, no overtime pay, and erratic shifts that seriously diminish job performance. Due to weak civil service protections, police promotions are not based on merit, but on personal connections. Also, frequent administrative changes result in a constant reshuffling of personnel that undermines effective program building, reduces corps morale, and erodes institutional knowledge. Marcos Pablo Moloeznik, David Shirk, and María Eugenia Sua^rez de Garay, Justiciabar6metro: Ciudad Juárez, San Diego; Ciudad Juarez, 2010.

22. Centralizing the functions of police at the state level could help bring greater efficiency, homogeneity, and resource capacity to Mexican law enforcement. However, neither the federales nor the state police are less vulnerable to corruption than local police, and organized crime would likely exploit the very same advantages reformers hope to achieve: unity of command, organizational efficiency, and economies of scale. For this reason, Mexican authorities would do well to take a more targeted approach, subsuming local law enforcement only as a last resort in extremely troubled municipalities.

23. Instituto Ciudadano de Estudios Sobre la Inseguridad (ICESI), www.icesi.org.mx.

24. Guillermo Zepeda Lecuona, Crimen sin castigo: Procuraci6n de justicia penal y ministerio público en México. Mexico, D.F.: Centro de Investigación Para el Desarrollo, A.C. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004.

25. Although the probability of being arrested, investigated, and prosecuted for a crime is extremely low, as many as eighty five percent of crime suspects arrested are found guilty, and at least half of all prisoners are convicted for property crimes valued at less than twenty dollars. Ricardo Hernández Forcada and María Elena Lugo Garfias, Algunas notas sobre la tortura en México, Mexico City, 2004, p. 139; International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), Country Assessment Report: Mexico. Copenhagen, Denmark: International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), 2006, p. 8; Elena Azaola and Marcelo Bergman, "The Mexican Prison System," in Reforming the Administation of Justice in Mexico, edited by Wayne A. Cornelius and David A. Shirk. Southbend, IL; La Jolla, CA: Notre Dame Press; Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 2007.

26. Elena Azaola and Marcelo Bergman, Delincuencia, marginalidad y desempeño institucional: Resultados de la tercera encuesta a poblaci6n en reclusi6n en el Distrito Federal y el Estado de México. Mexico City: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, 2009.

27. These judicial sector reforms significantly alter the functioning of Mexico’s variant of the inquisitorial criminal justice system by introducing elements (e.g. oral adversarial trials, alternative sentencing, and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms) found in adversarial systems, such as the United States. Matthew C. Ingram and David A. Shirk, Judicial Reform in Mexico: Toward a New Criminal Justice System. San Diego: Trans-Border Institute, 2010.

28. These drugs included marijuana, cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants, and nonmedical use of prescription psychotherapeutic drugs. Marijuana was the most commonly used illicit drug, with 14.4 percent current users. Over 26 percent of high school students had tried marijuana by their senior year, compared to 4 percent for cocaine, 35 percent for cigarettes, and 58 percent for alcohol. Drug use was significantly higher among unemployed persons, of whom 18.3 percent were current illicit drug users. Results from the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings (NSDUH Series H-34, DHHS Publication No. SMA 08-4343). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies. Rockville, MD (2008).

29. Black markets can make goods either cheaper or more expensive. When a good is legally available but overpriced (as with pirated music or cigarettes in Canada), black market prices tend to be lower than the “free” market. However, when a good is illegal and, especially, controlled by a small group or cartel (as with illicit drugs), its price tends to become inflated relative to what it might be on the free market. While U.S. official estimates suggest that marijuana represents 60% of drug profits, a recent Rand study places total Mexican DTO drug profits from the United States at around $6-7 billion, with up to a third coming from marijuana. Kilmer, et al. (2010).

30. Michael Smith, "Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal," In Bloomberg News, 2010.

31 Estimates for the number of drug shops along the border vary widely. In January 2008, Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhán indicated that “[b]etween Texas and Arizona alone, you’ve got 12,000 gun shops along that border with Mexico.” (Corchado and Connolly 2008). More recent estimates place the figure around 6,700, around three gun dealers for every mile along the border (Serrano 2008). Estimates for the total number of gun dealers in the United States also vary, but by all accounts they have declined dramatically over the last decade—from 245,000 to 54,000—thanks to tighter regulations Alexandra Marks, “Why Gun Dealers Have Dwindled,” Christian Science Monitor, March 14, 2006. See also: Jon S. Vernick, Daniel W. Webster, Maria T. Bulzacchelli, and Julie Samia Mair. “Regulation of Firearm Dealers in the United States: An Analysis of State Law and Opportunities for Improvement,” The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. Volume 34, Issue 4, pp. 765-775.

32. According to the 2004 national firearms survey conducted by Hepburn et al. (2007), there are an estimated 218 million privately owned firearms in the United States. However, only one in four U.S. citizens (26 percent) and two in five households (38 percent) actually owned a firearm. This means that the vast majority of firearms are owned by a small percentage of the population, with nearly half of all individual gun owners (48 percent) possessing four or more weapons and only 20 percent of owners holding 65 percent of all guns.

33. President Obama has voiced support for the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials, promulgated by the Organization of American States and better known by its Spanish acronym (CIFTA). CIFTA was initially signed by President Clinton in 1997, but has yet to be submitted for the Senate’s advice and consent on ratification.

34. For example, California has had significant success in reducing the accessibility of .50 caliber sniper rifles by imposing tough restrictions supported by U.S. law enforcement agencies. Moreover, comparative analysis demonstrates a strong correlation between state and local laws and illegal interstate trafficking. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Trace the Guns: The Link Between Gun Laws and Interstate Gun Trafficking, 2010.

35. Query to Ambassador Arturo Sarukan at presentation to the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2010.

36. Clare Ribando Seelke and Kristin M. Finklea, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation: the Me^rida Initiative and Beyond, Washington, DC, 2010.

37. It is notable that there is not a prominent role in current coordination mechanisms for the Ministry of the Interior (Gobernación), the federal judiciary, or the Mexican state executive and judicial branches (e.g., the National Council of State Courts, CONATRIB).

38. Given concerns about preventing human rights violations, it is notable that the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), under the Undersecretary for Democracy and Global Affairs, does not appear to play a prominent role under Mérida.

39. For example, the amount of drugs seized says nothing about the effect on aggregate supply and demand. Likewise, number of judicial system operatives trained does not account for the quality or influence of that training. United States Government Accountability Office, Mérida Initiative: The United States Has Provided Counternarcotics and Anticrime Support but Needs Better Performance Measures.

40. Reuter points out that policy is generally a far weaker influence on demand for drugs than cultural norms, and in any event prevention programs do not have significant near-term effects on overall market demand. Peter Reuter, "How Can Domestic U.S. Drug Policy Help Mexico?," in Shared Responsibility: U.S.-Mexico Policy Options for Confronting Organized Crime, edited by Eric Olson, Andrew Selee and David A. Shirk, p. TK. Washington, DC; San Diego, CA: Mexico Institute (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars); Trans-Border Institute (University of San Diego), 2010.

41. At a keynote address presented at the Fifth International Conference on Drug Policy Reform in Washington, DC, on November 16, 1991, Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman argued that, “The war on drugs is a failure because it is a socialist enterprise.... The U.S. government enforces a drug cartel. The major beneficiaries from drug prohibition are the drug lords, who can maintain a cartel that they would be unable to maintain without current government policy” (Trebach and Zeese 1992).

42. Peter Hakim, Rethinking U.S. Drug Policy, Washington, DC: Inter-American Dialogue; Beckley Foundation, 2011.

43. In 2009, U.S. authorities seized about 17,000 kilos of cocaine, or about $273 million at wholesale prices (roughly $16,000 per kilo), at the southwest border. However, authorities spent most of their time and manpower seizing the nearly 1.5 million kilos of marijuana that, in bulk terms (total poundage), represented 98 percent of all illicit drugs seized at the border. According to the best available estimates, these seizures represented a small fraction, no more than 9 percent of the $6 to 7 billion in total proceeds that Mexican DTOs derive from the United States each year.

44. The number of Border Patrol agents alone increased from 2,900 in 1980, to 9,000 in 2000, to more than 20,000 by 2010. This has squeezed “mom-and-pop” smuggling operations out of the business, allowing more dangerous and powerful DTOs to take over. As a result, the Border Patrol has experienced more violent attacks (including fatalities) and hundreds of cases of corruption in its ranks since 2003. Ralph Vartabedian, Richard A. Serrano, and Richard Marosi, “The Long Crooked Line; Rise in Bribery Tests Integrity of U.S. Border,” Los Angeles Times, October 23, 2006; Arrillaga, Pauline, “Feds Struggle with Border Patrol Corruption,” Associated Press, September 22, 2006; Archibold, Randal C. and Andrew Becker, “Border Agents, Lured by the Other Side,” New York Times, May 27, 2008.

45. The U.S. economy to loses $3.74 billion of cross-border economic activity and over 33,000 jobs each year at the San Diego-Tijuana corridor alone, the entry point for 12 percent of overall U.S.-Mexico trade. San Diego Association of Governments, Economic Impacts of Wait Times at the San Diego-Baja California Border, Final Report, January 19, 2006. See also: Haralambides, Hercules E. and Maria P. Londono-Kent, “Supply Chain Bottlenecks: Border Crossing Inefficiencies Between Mexico and the United States,” International Journal of Transport Economics, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, June 2004.

46. In 2009, marijuana violations accounted for six percent of all domestic arrests within the United States, and more than half of all drug-related arrests. See: the National Drug Intelligence Center’s 2010 National Drug Threat Assessment, Table 1. Drug Seizures Along the Southwest and Northern Borders, in Kilograms, 2005-2009; Kilmer, Caulkins, Bond, and Reuter, Reducing Drug Trafficking Revenues and Violence in Mexico: Would Legalizing Marijuana in California Help? , and FBI Uniform Crime Statistics for 2009 ().

47. The General Social Survey (GSS) conducted biannually since 1972 has demonstrated an increase in support for marijuana legalization beginning in the 1990s, and recent 2010 polls suggest that such support is at an all time high. Indeed, 46 percent of California voters (nearly 3.3 million people) favored legalization in a November 2010 ballot initiative. In Mexico, an April 2009 BGC-Ulises Beltrán poll suggested that support for legalization was slightly higher than in the United States at that time, with 40 percent supporting the legalization of marijuana. Mexicans showed much less support for legalization of other drugs, like cocaine (17 percent), crack cocaine (14 percent), ecstasy (13 percent), methamphetamines (12 percent), and heroin (11 percent).The same poll reported that more than two-thirds of respondents perceived drug consumption to be a national problem in Mexico, rather than a regional problem. Forty-six percent supported giving addicts legal access to drugs during rehabilitation, while 49 percent opposed this option (Beltrán 2009).

48. Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, Drugs and Democracy: Toward a Paradigm Shift, 2009, drogasedemocracia.org/Arquivos/declaracao_ingles_site.pdf