A mayor in the capital leads, but will the rest follow?

26/10/2010

“Everybody talks about drug trafficking, but it’s an effect, not a cause. The origin of the problem is that there are too many young people and too many families without prospects. If more than half of the young people in Juárez don’t go to school, what do you expect?”

- Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón, Mayor of Mexico City

I wanted to write about Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón. The man behind the new Mexico City—a now socially liberal bastion in a sea of social conservatism—the only place in the country where two men or women can get married, a woman can have an abortion, and where school dropout rates have decreased from 23% to 6%, in great part because of educational reforms in the Distrito Federal that have made 230,000 scholarships available.

I wanted to write about him because he reminded me of Antanas Mockus (http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/opinion/story.html?id=b2dc0a93-7c8e-42b5-9156-b096dbd413e1), the former mayor of Bogota whose successful but unconventional tactics there turned him into a legitimate Presidential candidate.

“Fight the drug trafficking? That’s necessary. It has to be done, but that doesn’t excite anyone. That has to be a prosecutor’s agenda not a country’s…”

As Mockus did, Ebrard refuses to be intimidated by both the traditional and contemporary sources of Mexican power. But while I admire and support his philosophy of fighting the “cause” instead of the “effect”, I wish I could believe he’ll be given the opportunity to implement it at the national level.

People are willing to experiment with innovators like Mockus or Ebrard in a city—and metropolises at that; a country, for obvious reasons, is a different animal. And assuming, which I think is fair, that this battle with the cartels will at the very least continue at its current bloody pace, it’s unlikely the majority of the Mexican electorate will be open to the suggestion of fighting them with increased budget allocations to health and education.

I wish I didn’t, but I see Ebrard fading into obscurity like Mockus, politicians with ideas for which their countries aren’t ready.

When FARC reemerged following the Santos election, only to be put down swiftly by the new administration, I admit I wondered if the mathematician-philosopher would have dealt with the terrorist threat as effectively; but when another thirteen minors are gunned down in Tijuana, in of all places, a rehabilitation center—I don’t see how the security situation in Mexico can improve under the current strategy.

I instinctively cringed when I read about the authorities’ massive seizure of marijuana in Tijuana last week; the requisite photo-op and the gloating—as if the victory were free—as if there wouldn’t be retribution.

15 innocent teenagers shot at a party in Juárez, then 13 more at the rehabilitation center in Tijuana last night, followed by a message that took over the airwaves: “this is just getting started.” The police have been warned: these 28 will be followed by 107 more, apparently 1 for each ton of marijuana seized.

The guns used to commit these crimes are American—to the tune of 90%, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Californians are debating the legalization of marijuana with Proposition 19, and the Merída Initiative is looking a lot more like poor man’s Plan Colombia.

It’s almost too frustrating to be tragic—because the only people without any say in what approach should be taken are predictably those suffering the most.

But they will have a say in 2012.

The pessimist in me sees Ebrard as another Mockus; the optimist sees Ebrard replacing a truculent and manipulative Obrador on the PRD ticket in 2012, defeating a tired incumbent in PAN, and a PRI most expect would return the country to the days of even more widespread mordidas (bribes) and— of course—la vista gorda (looking the other way).

Marisol Valles García, a twenty-year old criminology student became new police chief in Práxedis G. Guerrero (a small town of 3400 next to Ciudad Juárez) last week and was almost immediately described as the bravest woman in Mexico; it’s time to have the courage at the national level to at least try something different.

It's hard to imagine a failure worse than the status quo.