WikiLeaks reveals a desperate Mexico

American diplomats think of Mexico as a “failed state,” said Jenaro Villamil in Proceso. WikiLeaks cables from U.S. envoys in Mexico, which have been published over the past two weeks, paint a devastating picture of a nation losing its battle against drug cartels and corruption. Our armed forces are described as “clumsy, uncoordinated, outdated, bureaucratic, and parochial”—with the sole exception of the Mexican Navy, which was trained by the U.S. Navy. Our own authorities are quoted despairing of ever regaining control of large swaths of the country. And our defense minister, Guillermo Galván Galván, actually discussed with former U.S. intelligence chief Dennis Blair the possibility of declaring a state of emergency. The U.S. is so alarmed by the basket case on its border that it is “on the verge of direct military intervention” in Mexico.

The truth hurts, said Manuel Camacho Solís in El Universal. We’ve all kept our worst fears at bay by telling ourselves that President Felipe Calderón is “truly committed to the battle against drugs.” But his good intentions hardly matter since his government is “permeated by incompetence and corruption.” Worse, the cables reveal that Calderón “puts no limits on U.S. involvement” in this country. He has practically abdicated authority over the border while letting the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency operate here almost completely free of Mexican oversight. “Central decisions regarding domestic security are now being made by various arms of the U.S. government.”

It gets worse, said Lorenzo Meyer in Diario de Yucatán. The cables reveal that President Calderón is humiliatingly “obsequious” with U.S. authorities. In one conversation with Blair, for example, Calderón gratuitously brings up Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, a U.S. enemy, and asserts without any evidence that Chávez has been meddling in Mexican domestic politics and colluding with Iran. He implied that there was “a link between Venezuela, Iran, and the drug trade—a kind of ‘axis of evil’ threatening the region.” It was a blatant attempt to “ingratiate himself with Washington” by presenting Mexico as an “enthusiastic partner of the U.S. crusade against international evildoers.”

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So far, Calderón is shrugging off the revelations, said Luis Javier Garrido in La Jornada. His Foreign Ministry released a short statement calling the cables “biased and inaccurate,” but he appears to have no intention of letting them hurt relations with the U.S. The problem for Washington, though, is that Mexican opposition parties can no longer feign ignorance of “the scale of the disaster that Calderón and U.S. policies have inflicted on Mexico.” They will now be forced to challenge the government. Because one thing is clear: “The Mexican people do not want this servile relationship with the United States.”