The internationalization of police: The DEA in Mexico

Journal of American History

Volumn 86, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 623-640

  Toro, María Celia ^a  

^a EL COLEGIO DE MÉXICO   (Mexico)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33750872831     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2567049     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Ethan A. Nadelmann, Cops across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal Law Enforcement (University Park, 1993), xix.
2. Hans J. Morgenthau, "The Political Conditions for an International Police Force," International Organization, 17 (no. 2, 1963), 393;
3. Nadelmann, Cops across Borders, 111.
4. Nadelmann, Cops across Borders, 95.
5. See also David F. Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New Haven, 1973), 183.
6. Nadelmann, Cops across Borders, 95, 139-40.
7. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is neither the only United States law enforcement agency enforcing antidrug laws today nor the only law enforcement body with an international presence, but it is certainly the most important on both accounts.
8. U.S. General Accounting Office, National Security and International Affairs Division, Drug Control: International Narcotics Activities of the United States: Briefing Report to the Honorable Frank H. Murkowski, U.S. Senate (Washington, 1987), 3.
9. "Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986," Public Law 99-570, H.R. 5484, 99 Cong., 2 sess., Oct. 1986.
10. United States v. Verdugo Urquídez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990); United States v. Alvarez Machaín, 504 U.S. 655 (1992);
11. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Limits to National Jurisdiction: Documents and Judicial Resolutions on the Alvarez Machaín Case (Mexico City, 1992).
12. For the expansion of United States police and judiciary abroad, see Nadelmann, Cops across Borders, 463-78;
13. and Samuel I. del Villar, "La Suprema Corte de Justicia de Estados Unidos y la Doctrina Bush-Rehnquist frente a México" (The United States Supreme Court and the Bush-Rehnquist doctrine regarding Mexico), in México-Estados Unidos-Canadá, 1991-1992, ed. Gustavo Vega (Mexico City, 1993).
14. Nadelmann, Cops across Borders, 105.
15. William O. Walker III, Drug Control in the Americas (Albuquerque, 1981).
16. William O. Walker Drug Control in the Americas (Ibid., 119-33;
17. Nadelmann, Cops across Borders, 93-97.
18. On Mexican policy against drugs since the beginning of the century, see María Celia Toro, Mexico's "War" on Drugs: Causes and Consequences (Boulder, 1995).
19. Mathea Falco, Winning the War on Drugs: A National Strategy (New York, 1989), 36.
20. Peter A. Lupsha, "Drug Trafficking: Mexico and Colombia in Comparative Perspective," Journal of International Affairs, 35 (no. 1, 1981), 99.
21. Domestic Council, Drug Abuse Task Force, White Paper on Drug Abuse: A Report to the President (Washington, 1975), 50.
22. Lyle C. Brown, "The Politics of U.S.-Mexican Relations: Problems of the 1970s in Historical Perspective," in Contemporary Mexico, ed. James W. Wilkie et al. (Berkeley, 1976), 484.
23. On the technical and financial assistance from the United States government to the Mexican eradication campaign, see Richard Craig, "Operation Condor: Mexico's Antidrug Campaign Enters a New Era," Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 22 (Aug. 1980), 345-63;
24. and James Michael Van Wert, "Government of Mexico Herbicidal Opium Poppy Eradication Program: A Summative Evaluation" (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1982).
25. Richard Craig, "Human Rights and Mexico's Anti-Drug Campaign," Social Science Quarterly, 60 (March 1980), 692.
26. Ethan A. Nadelmann, "Cops across Borders: Transnational Crime and International Law Enforcement" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1987), 303.
27. Richard Craig, "La Campaña Permanente: Mexico's Anti-Drug Campaign," Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 20 (May 1978), 119-20.
28. Richard Craig, "Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Ibid., 120.
29. Nadelmann, Cops across Borders, 439.
30. For Mexican figures on the amount of drugs destroyed or confiscated every year, 1974-1994, see Toro, Mexico's "War" on Drugs, 19-20, 25-26.
31. James Michael Van Wert, "El control de los narcóticos en México: Una década de institucionalización y un asunto diplomático" (The control of narcotics in Mexico: A decade of institutionalization and a diplomatic affair), in México-Estados Unidos 1985, ed. Gabriel Székely (Mexico, 1986), 98. The figures regarding Mexico's share of United States imports vary depending on the sources used but they all coincide on the basic downward trend in the second half of the seventies.
32. Nadelmann, Cops across Borders, 189-249.
33. The acting director of the Mexican specialized antidrug unit (Instituto Nacional de Combate a las Drogas), José de Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, was indicted in February 1997 for alleged involvement with drug traffickers. See Time, March 3, 1997, p. 19.
34. Nadelmann, Cops across Borders, 107.
35. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Border War on Drugs (Washington, 1987), 33.
36. See Walker, Drug Control in the Americas;
37. and Nadelmann, Cops across Borders, 96.
38. On the Camarena affair, see Juan David Lindau, "Percepciones mexicanas de la política exterior de Estados Unidos: El caso Camarena Salazar" (Mexican perceptions of United States foreign policy: The case of Camarena Salazar), Foro International (Mexico City), 27 (April-June 1987), 562-75.
39. On Casablanca, see Time, June 1, 1998, pp. 12-17.
40. María Celia Toro, "Estrategias mexicanas de negociación: El caso del narcotráfico" (Mexican negotiating strategies: The case of drug trafficking), in México ante el fin de la Guerra Fría (Mexico at the end of the Cold War), ed. Ilán Bizberg (Mexico, 1998), 334-35.
41. William O. Walker III, "International Collaboration in Historical Perspective," in Drug Policy in the Americas, ed. Peter H. Smith (Boulder, 1992), 275.
42. For the best analysis of United States expectations regarding Mexican antidrug programs, see Peter Reuter, Quest for Integrity: The Mexican-U.S. Drug Issue in the 1980s (Santa Monica, 1992).
43. Lindau, "Percepciones mexicanas de la política exterior de Estados Unidos."
44. Nadelmann, Cops across Borders, 447.
45. Walker, Drug Control in the Americas.
46. On changes in Mexico's antidrug programs in the 1930s, see Robert L. Jones, The Eighteenth Amendment and Our Foreign Relations (New York, 1933).
47. Walker, "International Collaboration in Historical Perspective," 273.
48. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Mutual Legal Assistance Cooperation Treaty with Mexico, S. Treaty Doc. 100-13, 100 Cong., 2 sess., Feb. 16, 1988; Extradition Treaty between the United States of America and the United Mexican States, May 4, 1978, 31 U.S.T. 5059, T.I.A.S. No. 9656. For the passage from the 1989 agreement, see Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Limits to National Jurisdiction, 54-55.
49. See also Limits to National Jurisdiction, ibid., 36.
50. Eugenio Ursúa Cocke, "Drug Traffic, Law and International Relations," Revista de Investigaciones Jurídicas (Mexico City), 18 (no. 18, 1994), 291-92.
51. Eugenio Ursúa Cocke, "Revista de Investigaciones Jurídicas (Ibid.
52. Eugenio Ursúa Cocke, "Revista de Investigaciones Jurídicas (Ibid., 292-93.
53. Toro, Mexico's "War" on Drugs, 2.
54. The program combines aerial and manual eradication. After fields are sprayed from the air with defoliants, soldiers cover the fields, using machetes to cut, or manually pulling out, opium poppies and marijuana plants. Cutting poppy plants is necessary because for a day or two after herbicidal spraying, the flowers can still be harvested and used to produce opium. Marijuana, similarly, may sometimes be packed and shipped for consumption immediately after spraying. Sergio García Ramírez, Narcotráfico: Un punto de vista mexicano (Drug-trafficking: A Mexican point of view) (Mexico City, 1989);
55. Peter Reuter, "Eternal Hope: America's Quest for Narcotics Control," Public Interest (no. 79, 1985), 79-95;
56. Javier Treviño, "Evaluación de la estrategia internacional de erradicación de cultivos" (An evaluation of the international strategy for [drug] crop eradication), paper delivered at the conference "El Colegio de México-Harvard sobre un Nuevo Enfoque a la Estrategia Antinarcóticos México-Estados Unidos," April 1988 (in María Celia Toro's possession).
57. Reforma (Mexico City), Jan. 17, 1996.
58. Ethan A. Nadelmann, "Unlaundering Dirty Money Abroad: U.S. Foreign Policy and Financial Secrecy Jurisdictions," University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, 18 (no. 1, 1986), 43.
59. Bruce M. Bagley, "Colombia and the War on Drugs," Foreign Affairs, 67 (no. 1, 1988), 70-92.
60. For a similar argument on the conduct of powerful transnational actors, see Stephen D. Krasner, "Power Politics, Institutions, and Transnational Relations," in Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures, and International Institutions, ed. Thomas Risse-Kappen (New York, 1995).