| ID: | 245623 |
| Date: | 2010-01-26 19:14:00 |
| Origin: | 10SANSALVADOR37 |
| Source: | Embassy San Salvador |
| Classification: | SECRET |
| Dunno: | 09SANSALVADOR1033 09SANSALVADOR1045 09SANSALVADOR1101 09SANSALVADOR1238 09SANSALVADOR789 09SANSALVADOR978 |
| Destination: | VZCZCXYZ0000 RR RUEHWEB DE RUEHSN #0037/01 0261915 ZNY SSSSS ZZH R 261914Z JAN 10 FM AMEMBASSY SAN SALVADOR TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0262 INFO WHA CENTRAL AMERICAN COLLECTIVE |
S E C R E T SAN SALVADOR 000037 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 2020/01/19 TAGS: PREL, PGOV, ECON, ES SUBJECT: With ARENA Fractured, Funes is FMLN's Only Rival REF: 09 SAN SALVADOR 1101; 09 SAN SALVADOR 789; 09 SAN SALVADOR 978 09 SAN SALVADOR 1033; 09 SAN SALVADOR 1238; 09 SAN SALVADOR 1045 CLASSIFIED BY: RBlau, CDA, DOS; REASON: 1.4(D) 1. (C) Summary: Eight months into the Funes presidency, the GOES can best be characterized as schizophrenic. The part of the government that Funes controls is moderate, pragmatic, responsibly left-of-center and friendly to the USG. The part he has ceded to hard-line elements of the (left-wing) Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) is seeking to carry out the Bolivarian, Chavista game-plan, including implacable hostility towards the USG. Divisions on the right have given the FMLN a dominant position in the Legislative Assembly. However, the FMLN does not have an outright majority in the legislature, and it faces strong opposition in the popular and independent-minded President Funes. Funes's popularity could erode quickly if his administration does not start showing visible results in reducing violent crime and reviving the economy. The government's long-run inability to tackle crime or produce economic growth, coupled with petty infighting and corruption within the country's political parties, raises questions about the future of democratic governance in El Salvador. End summary. --------------------------------------- FUNES-FMLN RELATIONS STRAINED BUT CIVIL --------------------------------------- 2. (S) The FMLN's relationship-of-convenience with Mauricio Funes has soured since the March 2009 election. Early in his tenure, Funes surrounded himself with centrist advisors and laid out a moderate, pro-U.S. foreign policy - moves FMLN hardliners saw as an attempt to distance himself from their influence. Recognizing Funes's popularity and needing his support, the FMLN sought subtle ways to challenge Funes's independence. Starting in September 2009, FMLN hardliners within Funes's cabinet (most notably Vice President and Education Minister Salvador Sanchez Ceren) gave anti-American speeches, announced El Salvador's intention to join ALBA, and made high-profile visits to Cuba and Venezuela - each action carefully choreographed to defy Funes's agenda but with the pretense that the officials were acting as FMLN representatives, not as members of the Funes government (see reftel A). Meanwhile, Public Security Minister Manuel Melgar has sought to politicize the National Civilian Police (PNC) and the FMLN has used its "territorial" ministries (Labor, Health, Education and Gobernacion) to extend their geographic and bureaucratic hold over the GOES. Funes advisors told us the FMLN may have also used their control of the Salvadoran intelligence agency to bug phones in the Casa Presidencial (see reftel B). Thus far, however, the two sides continue to cooperate on issues of mutual interest, including the budget and tax reform passed in December. 3. (C) While the Funes-FMLN conflict would appear to benefit the right, internal divisions there have prevented the (center-right) National Republican Alliance (ARENA) from mounting a serious opposition. Since October, thirteen legislative deputies and scores of mayors and local party functionaries have left ARENA, most of them joining the newly-formed Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) (see reftel C). ARENA leaders blame these defections on former president Antonio Saca, whom the party expelled from its ranks in December 2009. While not officially a member of any party, Saca is widely rumored to be the inspirational and financial force behind GANA. 4. (C) This crisis has not only dashed ARENA's hope of forming a majority alliance in the Legislative Assembly, it has also called into question the identity of the party, for years considered one of the most well-organized and ideologically-unified in Latin America. Still, XXXXXXXXXXXX told PolOff that the crisis has galvanized the party's base, which XXXXXXXXXXXX says is "angry as hell" at Saca and the GANA "traitors." According to XXXXXXXXXXXX, in February ARENA plans to roll out a Contract with America-style publicity campaign that will emphasize "center-right pragmatism" and distance the party from President Saca's corrupt legacy. XXXXXXXXXXXX said that ARENA president Alfredo Cristiani has instructed party leaders to focus their criticism on the FMLN and avoid attacking GANA or President Funes, both of which ARENA views as potential allies. Until the 2012 legislative elections, however, ARENA will remain a marginalized force in national politics. 5. (C) Aside from the FMLN and ARENA, the country's other political parties are small, weak, and ideologically malleable. Their only real selling points are as coalition partners providing the final votes on closely fought legislation. Neither the FMLN nor ARENA can achieve a legislative majority without the support of GANA or the (opportunist) National Conciliation Party (PCN). In recent months, the FMLN has teamed with both GANA and the PCN to reshuffle the legislature's leadership positions and pass a contentious tax increase (see reftels D and E). Given their strategic positions, GANA and the PCN will likely remain major players in legislative battles ahead, demanding, as they were rumored to have done in their previous votes with the FMLN, political favors and covert payments in exchange for their support. ----------------------------------------- Funes's Challenges: Crime and the Economy ----------------------------------------- 6. (C) Public security ranks atop most polling on the nation's priorities, particularly after a 37 percent increase in homicides in 2009. Despite great efforts, successive administrations have failed to make much of a dent in the intractable street-gang problem, so Funes's team will need to be both creative and ambitious in its approach to make any headway. So far, they have been neither. Funes's most significant public security reform to date has been a temporary deployment of troops to patrol high-crime areas (see reftel F) which news reports suggest may have moderately reduced crime in those areas since the November 2009 deployment. However, the constitution limits such deployments to six months, and Funes has yet to propose reforms to the GOES security apparatus that would make those gains sustainable. He has not moved to provide the National Civilian Police (PNC) with significant increases of badly-needed personnel, equipment and training, nor sought institutional changes in PNC culture, that will result in more effective law enforcement and crime control. 7. (C) The other major concern for the GOES is the sluggish economy, which continues to feel the effects of the global financial crisis and the recession in the U.S. According to the GOES, GDP declined 3.5 percent in 2009 and is projected to grow less than 1 percent in 2010 - its worst two-year performance since 1992. Unfortunately, Funes has few options available to stimulate a recovery: the GOES has limited funds for countercyclical fiscal activity, even with President Funes's modest tax increase, and dollarization rules out monetary stimulus. Funes and his economic team understand the importance of free-market incentives, but have been anemic in their efforts to attract private investment. Ultimately, powerful trade and remittance relationships mean that the Salvadoran economy will only recover following a sustained economic recovery in the U.S. ------- Comment ------- 8. (C) GANA's threat to ARENA now appears more serious than it did at first. GANA has poached dozens of ARENA-loyalists in recent weeks and has demonstrated through an extravagant convention and a subsequent publicity campaign that it has the deep pockets to put up a real fight. Whispers within ARENA also suggest GANA's critique of ARENA's elitism has struck a chord among mid-level party functionaries, many of whom secretly sympathize with GANA despite remaining within ARENA. ARENA's rebound depends on recuperating financing, which it lost when it became an opposition party without GOES patronage to hand out. It still represents the only organized force capable of confronting the growing influence of the FMLN. 9. (C) Funes's ego has little chance of rapprochement with the hard-line FMLN. If things continue to deteriorate, we could see an open break between the two sides, possibly resulting in a new alliance between Funes and an existing party (perhaps the center-left Democratic Change (CD)) for the 2012 legislative elections. Funes would then need to shake up his cabinet and seek right-of-center allies in the Legislative Assembly to pass his agenda. The FMLN response would be ugly - massive street protests, labor strikes, road blockages, threats of violence, legislative logjams - and paralyze some government operations and place a further drag on the struggling economy. 10. (C) The GOES's inability to make gains in public security, continued anemic growth and the disintegration of the right taken together present a challenging road ahead for democracy in El Salvador, especially if coupled with a Funes-FMLN split. Funes's persistent high popularity ratings, now well over 80 percent, make it too soon to sound the alarm, but democratic institutions are vulnerable. Sanchez Ceren's recent call for sweeping constitutional reforms to institute "participatory democracy" is a timely reminder that the hard-line FMLN's threat to Salvadoran democracy is real. The Embassy, allied with civil society, will continue to engage and support moderates in the GOES while working with democratic forces across the political spectrum to strengthen Salvadoran constitutional institutions. BLAU | |
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AFP/ Getty Images
A Mexican soldierguarded packages of marijuana outside a tunnel discovered in Tijuana on Nov. 26. The 2,200-foot tunnel was used to transport drugs to the U.S.
Last week, U.S. drug enforcement agents uncovered a 2,200-foot tunnel for smuggling marijuana that ran between a private house hard by the border in Tijuana, Mexico, and a warehouse across the border in Otay Mesa, Calif. The tunnel was no crude construction; it had electricity, a ventilation system and a rail track for transporting drugs. Several tons of cannabis, bundled and ready for transport, were found inside.
Each week seems to bring new reminders of the severity of Mexico's drug problem, and Washington is starting to worry. The Mexican drug cartels, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this fall, "are showing more and more indices of insurgencies. It's looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, when the narcotraffickers controlled certain parts of the country." The statement caused an uproar in Mexico, and President Barack Obama took the unusual step of repudiating it publicly. But the similarities cannot be escaped so easily, even if Ms. Clinton doesn't have the parallel exactly right.
Though we are certainly not winning the drug war, it has changed in important respects in recent years. Two decades ago, when the Medellin and Cali cartels were at their height in Colombia, Mexico was largely a trans-shipment point for narcotics. According to the Justice Department, in 2009, the last year for which reliable statistics are available, most of the drugs coming into the U.S.—heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, and marijuana—were either produced or refined in Mexico, although Colombian cocaine continued to be trans-shipped as well. Demand for particular drugs fluctuates, as in any market, according to supply and demand. At present, cocaine is down, but heroin and, above all, Mexican-produced marijuana and methamphetamines are up sharply.
This continued and still largely unstanched flow of narcotics into the U.S. is only part of the problem. Over the course of the past four years, fighting over turf and control of smuggling routes among the various Mexican drug cartels has made many Mexican cities and towns along the border virtual combat zones. "Amexica: War Along the Borderline," a recently released book by the British journalist Ed Vulliamy, paints a terrifying and authoritative portrait of this violence, in which at least 28,000 people have now died.
In an effort to restore some semblance of order, President Felipe Calderon has deployed the Mexican army, but despite some initial successes, the Mexican authorities have been unable to stem the violence. A cable from the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, recently released by WikiLeaks, notes that in Ciudad Juarez, one of the epicenters of the killing, only 2% of those arrested on drug or weapons offenses are ever brought to trial. And the violence is spreading. The northern city of Monterrey, one of Mexico's richest and most dynamic, is now the scene of considerable cartel violence. The tourist resorts of Cancun and Acapulco have also been hit, even if, so far, foreign tourists have not been targeted.
The fear in the U.S. is that the violence will spread north across the border. The fear in Mexico is that the capital itself, home to 20 million Mexicans, will eventually be hit. If this happens, the argument goes, Mexico will repeat the downward trajectory of Colombia during its struggle 20 years ago with the Medellin and Cali cocaine cartels.
But there are important differences. In Colombia, narcotraffickers like Pablo Escobar, the boss of the Medellin cartel, really did believe that they could force the traditional Colombian establishment to share political power. The Mexican cartels have killed a large number of local mayors and security officials, above all in towns and cities along the border, but so far they do not seem interested in killing leading figures in the Mexican establishment.
The crisis in Mexico is real and growing, but observers on both sides of the border have not yet come to grips with what can and can't be done about it. The expectation that Mexico, with U.S. help, can win its war on the cartels, just as Colombia eventually triumphed over its narcotraffickers, is based on an understandable but nonetheless dangerous misunderstanding. A sober look at what actually happened in Colombia would show us not the possibilities but rather the limits of what we can expect to achieve in Mexico.
Consider Plan Colombia, the long-term package of U.S. aid that allowed President Alvaro Uribe to prosecute a serious war not just against the drug cartels but against the FARC, the leftist guerrilla army that effectively controlled a sizable part of Colombia. Bogota was successful in finally turning the tide against the FARC, which was allied with the drug dealers and drew much of its funding from them.
But the two groups were not identical. Though the Colombian government's victory over the FARC heralded the end of a serious insurrectionary movement in the country, its success in breaking up the big cartels in Medellin and Cali emphatically did not break the back of cocaine exports from Colombia. The Colombian drug trade has been hurt by the government's advances (a recent UN report estimates that coca cultivation dropped by 18% in 2008), but the country remains the largest global producer of cocaine. Instead of two cartels controlling its distribution, now there are dozens. These smaller groups do not pose the systemic risk to the Colombian state that the big cartels once did, but their eclipse has not stopped the cocaine trade.
In some ways, the Mexican situation is even more difficult. Realistically, supply routes into the U.S. cannot be cut off, even if we were to build walls from San Diego to Brownsville and radically increase our interdiction efforts. Drugs now mostly come through densely populated urban areas along the border—precisely those areas, incidentally, where interdiction efforts have drastically reduced mass illegal immigration. These areas have by now become one interconnected and interdependent economic zone. The amount of cross-border trade is so great that interdiction, even with vastly increased resources, is unlikely ever to be all that effective, unless we are willing to radically diminish trade flows, which would wreck the legitimate economy on both sides of the border.
Nor are we making serious progress in the fight against demand for drugs on the U.S. side. Prohibition is not working any better with regard to Mexican methamphetamine and marijuana, and trans-shipped Colombian, Bolivian and Peruvian cocaine, than the prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. did in the era of the Volstead Act. Does this mean that we should legalize? My own view is that we should, as people with political views as different as George Soros and William F. Buckley Jr. have to one extent or another believed as well. But it is perfectly possible to oppose legalization without imagining, at the same time, that the laws of supply and demand are somehow going to disappear.
With diligence, patience, sacrifice and a little luck, the Calderon government in Mexico and its successors may succeed in eventually restoring some kind of status quo ante to the border, thus restoring calm and safety for bystanders and for the tourists whose expenditures play such an important role in the Mexican economy. But if we couldn't stop the drug trade from Colombia, which is far away from the continental U.S., what are the real chances of stopping the movement of drugs across a border that is all about the movement of goods?
We must not let our hopes, or the world we would like to live in, blind us to the realities of the world in which we actually live. Yes, the cartels need to be tamed, for the sake of both Mexico and the U.S., and the more resources that are committed to that fight, the better. But we should not delude ourselves that breaking the power of the big cartels will stop the drug trade to a market whose appetite for drugs is all but insatiable, any more than it did when the Medellin cartel was brought down in Colombia. That is a fantasy, and a dangerous one at that, for the authorities and citizens of both countries.
(The Wall Street Journal; David Rieff is the author of "A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis" and is working on a book about the global food crisis.)