Mexican <i>municipios</i> to blame for problems

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Americans may find it strange that Mexico has had to turn to its army in the savage battle now underway against drug traffickers (see a report here by Ken Ellingwood).

They figure it has to do with local police corruption.

But there’s more to it.

The reason police are corrupt is weak local government -- known as municipios – which is the root of much of what ails Mexico.

In the U.S., local law enforcement is the best line of defense against drugs, gangs and crime in general.

Not in Mexico, says Mauricio Merino, a Mexico City political scientist who has studied and written extensively about the municipio.

Since the country’s inception, the municipio has been controlled by the Catholic Church, then, in turn, by the central and state governments.

Municipios never learned to act alone.

Only in 1983 were they made independent, Merino says, and charged with urban services: garbage, streets, parks, planning and patrol cops.

But they didn’t get funding. Of every 100 pesos in taxes, only five were doled to cities (states got 15 and 80 went to the feds). That’s gone up to eight in recent years, but it’s still not enough, Merino says.

Plus, Merino says, mayors can’t be reelected. Every three years, a mayor’s administration leaves and a new one takes its place -– and is just learning the job when its time is up.

So, says Merino, municipios are essays in improvisation. This is why Mexican streets are unpaved, cities aren’t planned, water treatment plants are rare. And local cops are poorly paid, trained and equipped, and thus both incompetent and easily corrupted.

After centuries of municipal submission, “the national government is looking for [local] allies but there’s no one,” Merino says. “They don’t have the participation of local police.”

So the job of fighting dope traffickers is the army’s alone.

-- Sam Quinones in Los Angeles