Wonk-landia

The breathlessly awaited “Informe 2008” published every November by Corporación Latinobarómetro (Santiago de Chile).  This is the very detailed annual survey of social and political attitudes throughout Latin America that, in something of an annual tradition, is cherry-picked by U.S. commentators to try to spin whatever the policy de jour is… as BoRev.net writes:

Every year the Chilean polling firm Latinobarometro releases the latest round of public opinion polling data from 18 Latin American countries, and every year Venezuela comes out on top in all the democracy and quality of life categories, and every year the press has no idea what to do with that, so they cover some marginally relevant data point en masse, and ignore the rest. It’s become a Thanksgiving tradition, like triptophan!

Venezuela isn’t my beat, particularly, so I’ll leave that to Bo.  I have downloaded the entire PDF file to start my own cherry-picking, but haven’t really started plowing though it yet.  One thing that caught my attention (page 24) though was that while “deliquency” and public security issues were the number one social problem mentioned by Mexicans, it was only put at the top of the list by a third (33%) of respondents.  This is far below the number of Venezuelans (57%) who also put it at the top of their worry list.  What I realized is that the number of respondents who mentioned “deliquency” nearly matches the percentage of voters who opted for PAN in the last Presidential election… for whom crime control was THE campaign issue.

I don’t mean that PAN didn’t win the election (though they may not have, based on other factors), nor that crime prevention shouldn’t be an important policy goal, but that it isn’t the overriding issue that foreign media often makes it out to be.  Nor that the policies used by this particular administration are universally backed, or even considered effective.

I thought of that when I read yesterday’s posting in “Bloggings by Boz“.  Quoting stories in both the Washington Times and the Los Angeles Times on Mexican narcotics-export outlets extending their business practices to the United States (how’s that a nice way of saying “murder and mayhem”?), Boz writes:

The worst case scenario for the US is that the cartel wars take place inside of our country. The best way to prevent that scenario is to start helping Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean improve their governments, economic development and security. We need the Merida Initiative money to start flowing and we may need to think beyond the Merida Initiative towards a more extensive program.

Boz is my native guide to the strange and exotic world of inside-the-Washington-beltway Latin American think-tank wonklandia. Obviously, the wonks are starting to push for spending that Merida Initiative money (which won’t be going to Mexican crime control, but to U.S. “consultants” and suppliers) rather than deal with an issue caused by the huge market for narcotics within the United States. With only a third of Mexicans even identifying delinquency as the number one social problem, and less than that buying the present administration’s anti-crime policies, this won’t be an easy sell for the U.S. government. And… the idea of the U.S. government “helping Mexico” has a long history of being seen as interference for the benefit of the United States. It ain’t gonna fly.

Given that the whole anti-narco policy within Mexico has been to drive the crooks out of the country, the present administration has been somewhat successful, if the news stories aren’t exaggerated, and the cartels are moving their operations to the United States. And… maybe the United States will start dealing with their narcotics use problem once a few heads start to roll… into the offices of the Washington Times or the Los Angeles Times… or a few narco-mantas start appearing on the overpasses of the Washington beltway.

That’s my spin, and I’m stickin’ to it.