Pundits?

While some pundits will certainly overreact to the presence of any US security personnel in Mexico, what I find surprising is just how small this operation is. This article describes fewer than two dozen people assisting a fusion cell and perhaps another dozen serving as advisors for a police unit, all at the invitation and request of the Mexican government. That’s front page news?

Bloggings by Boz, 7 August 2011

Indeed it is, Boz… indeed it is.

Boz is a generally reliable guide to Washington establishment thinking on Latin America.  I can’t read his mind, but I hope he is referring to the U.S. commentariti, and not us here in Mexico.

I don’t think I’m a  “pundit”, though I’m happy to say some people read what I write from the perspective of a U.S. citizen living in Mexico.  It’s not an over-reaction in the least to remember other small-scale “advisories”, going back to Viet-Nam.  I know that is ancient history back north of the border, and I don’t see “fewer than two dozen Drug Enforcement Administration agents, C.I.A. officials and retired military personnel members from the Pentagon’s Northern Command” escalating into an army of occupation.  But I see no indication that these people would be limited to working in a “fusion center”,  nor that the number of such agents wouldn’t grow exponentially.  And, the mention of “retired military” suggest “contractors” who, as we learned from the U.S. occupation of Iraq, are used to inflate the actual number of individuals involved in these kinds of actions belying publicly available figures.

As it is, throughout Latin America, there is a huge mistrust of U.S. “advisors,” not for what they do directly, but for what is done with their advice.  Colombia may be “safe” (or at least Bogatá is) from open warfare by narcotics distributors, but the “advice” passed on about fighting them is used to kill union organizers, quash journalistic independence, and stamp out insurgency movements that had nothing to do with the stated U.S. objectives.

As a resident of Mexico, one notes that it’s not just the “pundits” who are making a stink about this.  Congress wants answers, and — although they may be grand-standing in anticipation of next years Presidential elections — the government’s reaction (or non-reaction, saying they couldn’t talk about it) is not likely to make the issue go away.