There are currently over 45,000 armed troops pounding the streets of our nation. U.S. and Mexican government officials say the military strategy, while difficult, is working. Since Calderón took office in December 2006 and declared war on the drug cartels and corrupted officials who aid them, authorities have arrested 76,765 suspected drug traffickers at all levels and have extradited 187 cartel members to the United States.

There are now sustained calls in Mexico for a change in tactics, even from allies within Calderón’s political party, who say the deployment of 45,000 soldiers to fight the cartels is a flawed plan that relies too heavily on the blunt force of the military to stem soaring violence and lawlessness.

“The people of Mexico are losing hope, and it is urgent that Congress, the political parties and the president reconsider this strategy,” said Ramón Galindo, a senator and Calderón supporter who is a former mayor of Ciudad Juarez, a border city where more than 1,100 people have been killed this year.

U.S. officials said they now believe Mexico faces a longer and bloodier campaign than anticipated and is likely to require more American aid. U.S. and Mexican officials increasingly draw comparisons to Colombia, where from 2000 to 2006 the United States spent $6 billion to help neutralize the cartels that once dominated the drug trade. While violence is sharply down in Colombia, cocaine production is up.

Mexico, nearly twice Colombia’s size, faces a more daunting challenge, many officials and analysts said , in part because it sits adjacent to the United States, the largest illegal drug market in the world. In addition, at least seven major cartels are able to recruit from Mexico’s swelling ranks of impoverished youth and thousands of disenfranchised soldiers and police officers.
-Washington Post

Recent media headlines of grave human rights violations, political mudslinging, and citizen’s losing hope and faith have gathered alot of interests around the globe. According to Human Rights groups, Mexican politicians and the United States’ media, President Calderon has spent almost three whole years using the same strategy; a strategy which has only produced more blood, violence, and death. The verdict has been reached:Militarization is a failure, period,case closed.

I personally agree that militarization is not any type of long term solution, but for the time being, it is our only solution. For many, especially the U.S., the thought of military troops patrolling ones own country is unheard of, it is considered martial law. But what do you do when the enemy terrorists whom hold your entire nation hostage are your very own flesh and blood, your own citizens?

Everyone seems to have an opinion, everyone has a complaint and everyone has deemed President Calderon’s drug war strategy a failure, but no one has offered an alternative.

“We are committed to enduring this wave of violence. We are strengthening our ability to protect the innocent victims of this process, which is the most important thing. We will not look the other way. No one has told us what alternative we have.”
-Fernando Gomez Mont, Interior Minister of Mexico

What are our options? What do we do? We can’t count on local and state police forces; they’ve already been bought and are neatly registered on the narco payrolls. What is the solution, what are our alternatives? Why is it everyone has a voice in condemning strategies already in play, but nobody has a voice when it comes to alternatives?

In Mexico, it is true, neither high-profile arrests nor mass troop deployments have stopped the cartels from unleashing spectacular acts of violence. This month, responding to the arrest of one its leaders, the cartel called La Familia launched three days of coordinated attacks against Federal police in eight cities in the western state of Michoacan. Among the casualties were a dozen federal agents; their corpses, tied, bloodied, and tortured were found piled one upon the other, beside a highway.

After the attacks, a La Familia leader called a television station and said the cartel was “open to dialogue,” Gómez Mont vowed that the government would never strike a deal with the traffickers. To ease up now, said Gomez Mont, would be to sanction criminal behavior and its corrupting influence on Mexican society.

We have to do this while we are strong enough to do it,” he said. “We know we are right. Do I have to accept corruption as a way of stabilizing our society? No. I have to act.”
-Fernando Gomez Mont

Calderón is highly regarded in U.S. law enforcement circles for declaring war on the traffickers and increasing cooperation between the two governments. Asked whether he would make any changes to the Mexican president’s strategy, Anthony Placido, chief of intelligence for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, replied: “None.”

But Placido said he was concerned that Calderón was fighting not only well-entrenched criminal organizations. “He’s also fighting the clock,” Placido said. “Public support for this can’t remain high forever. He’s really got to deliver a death blow, or significant body blow, in the short term to keep the public engaged.”

Calderón appears to be increasingly isolated in Mexico, weakened by his party’s defeat in recent mid-term elections and by the relentless carnage. The cover of the influential news magazine Proceso this week featured a photo of the 12 federal agents, their bound and mutilated corpses in a pile, beneath the headline: “Calderón’s War.” -Washington Post

It is said President Calderon feels ‘alone’ in his fight to rescue Mexico. The people of Mexico have shown their loss of faith by voting his political party’s rival, PRI back into congressional power. This loss of faith, the loss of support, will allow the drug traffickers an even greater hold on Mexico, as they will scurry to offer what the government can not.

Dan Lund, president of the MUND Group polling organization, said public support for Calderón’s strategy appears to be weakest in the places where the federal government needs it most. “In a series of national surveys, polls consistently have found a reasonable but cautious level of support for using the military in the front lines against the cartels,” he said. “But in all the states where the military is actually deployed, the support goes down, sometimes dramatically.”

The situation has been exacerbated by the global economic crisis, which has cast millions of Mexicans into poverty. José Luis Piñeyro, a Mexican military analyst who maintains close ties with the armed forces, said rising unemployment and poverty “is creating what I call an ‘army in reserve,’ ” for the traffickers.
-Washington Post

Cartels are known to seek approval and loyalty amongst the poorer populations by preying upon their lack of trust in the government. After the multi-city attacks against federal police in Michoacan, Servando Gomez, La Tuta, during a phone call, announced on a live television broadcast he was forced into such acts to protect the innocent families of Michoacan.

“I want to say to all Michoacanans, we love them and respect them.” Everyone here has known us since we were kids. We are with the people of Michoacan.”
-Servando, La Tuta Gomez, Familia Michoacana cartel

Carlos Heredia, a former Michoacan official who now works as an analyst at a Mexico City think tank, said the government’s iron-fisted approach is a recipe for failure in regions where mistrust of the government is high.

“You don’t have the hearts and minds of the local population,” Heredia said. “And if the local drug lords play Robin Hood, then you are lost. Because the people are ultimately going to say, ‘What do those officials in Mexico City care about us? They despise us. And these drug guys, at least they give us something.’ ”

So, there you have it. We are officially between a rock and a hard space. We’ve come too far to turn back and it appears we have no other plan, but the one current one, to move forward.

It’s a shame, really. With so many negative opinions about Calderon’s War, you would of thought somebody by now, instead of just complaining and pointing out the obvious, might of offered a better plan, some type of alternative, to solutioning the ills of Mexico.