ABSTRACT
Colombia is a unitary system while Mexico is federal. One of the implications is the much greater complexity of Mexico's police-justice system. It has a national police, closely tied to the army. Insurgency forces have waged a forty-year armed struggle against the Colombian government, with varieties of rightist self-defense forces. Mexico's key challenge is a sharp upsurge in criminal violence beginning in about 2005 and escalating in subsequent years. It is associated with drug trafficking in the sense of trans-national smuggling and retail distribution to the rapidly-growing internal drug markets. The George W. Bush administration made a conspicuous effort not to take the initiative but to respond to Mexico. The Mrida Initiative demonstrates that corruption and violence related to organized crime have reached a critical level in the Caribbean Basin countries, and that the United States is beginning to redefine the problem from one of law enforcement to that of a significant threat to democratic governability in the region.
