Mexico's crime wave

...The police, whose monthly salaries hover around $200, exacerbate the problem...

...During the last national security alert, only the good sense of President Carlos Salinas (1988-94)-reinforced by U.S...

...First, the handsome, square-jawed general has distinguished himself as the zone commander in impoverished, violence-ridden Guerrero state...

...Apparently, he feared that the military's stature and influence would soar as policymakers from his ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) stood paralyzed by the disaster...

...and (3) the PRI's nightmare that it well might lose next year's race for mayor-a potent stepping stone to the presidency in the year 2000-if the party fails to launch a successful, high-profile anticrime crusade...

...As a democratic but weak president bestows greater power on the Mexican army, its shoot-first disposition could convert labor demonstrations, teacher protests, peasant marches, and other isolated incidents into regional brush-fires...

...Every opinion poll highlights "public safety" as the paramount concern of the capital city's 18 million residents, an astounding two-fifths of whom claim that they or a close family member was victimized in 1995, according to the newspaper Reforma...

...But as things now stand, says analyst Maria Teresa Jardi, "the reforms underway foretell a dark period which, once started, will not be easy to reverse-and we will all end up regretting it...

...For starters, the army already has enough on its hands bird-dogging guerrilla groups such as the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) which launched armed assaults in six different states last month...

...Finally, Zedillo and the PRI have doubled the city's budget to fight crime, fully aware that their political stock-the president's approval rating quivers around 46 percent-will plummet if insecurity deepens...

...Eleven years later, this June, chief executive Ernesto Zedillo replaced the capital's top seventeen public-safety officials with army generals and colonels...

...Long infamous for extracting bribes to drop trumped-up charges, law-enforcement officers have increasingly become involved in car thefts, burglaries, assaults, murders, narcotics-trafficking, and even protecting drug lords...

...The number of serious crimes reported in a single day has shot up from 290 in 1982 to 700 in 1995...

...George W. Grayson MEXICO'S CRIME WAVE The cops are part of the problem Hollowing the devastating earthquakes that struck Mexico City in September 1985, President Miguel de la Madrid refused to activate the army's emergency relief plan...

...More alarming, though, is the army's inexorable advance into the drug quagmire...

...The Reforma survey revealed that most Mexico City residents have "little" (34 percent) or "no" (52 percent) confidence in their municipal police...

...But Zedillo's action could pave the way for Mexico's civilian-controlled armed forces, which now boast a much brighter image than the police, to repeat the dismal pattern of what has already happened in strife-torn Colombia...

...Under pressure from the Clinton administration, Zedillo has already enlarged the armed forces' role in the ever more visible war against drug kingpins...

...While more a thorn in Zedillo's side than a dagger in his heart, the EPR attacks could unnerve domestic and foreign investors just when the economy has begun to expand amid lower inflation rates and increased exports...

...2) police reluctance to enter Tepito, Buenos Aires, and other gang-infested neighborhoods at night...

...Reportedly, military men discharge law-enforcement roles in twenty-two of the country's thirty-one states...

...Originally limited to combating crops and shipments, the military now fights "violence generated by organized crime arising from the illegal traffic of drugs, precursor chemicals, and arms...

...Once renowned for its tranquillity, Mexico City has witnessed an alarming upswing in violent crime, apace with growing unemployment and misery, especially since the 50-percent devaluation of the peso following 1994's "Christmas crisis...

...during the first six months of 1996, the crime rate surged a further 40 percent...

...In Mexico as in most Latin American countries, however, generals-turned-gendarmes have done little to diminish either the crime rate or the culture of pervasive corruption that wracks the law-enforcement community...

...But danger lies in the armed forces' own affinity for repression over negotiation...

...Harcourt Brace...

...As he recently told Mexico City authorities, "The police cannot function as they do now: we are going to be tough, inflexible within our ranks and toward outsiders...

...Meanwhile, the center-right National Action Party (PAN) is gaining momentum, in part because of its law-and-order, professionalize-the-cops appeals...

...For example, since taking office twenty-two months ago, PAN Attorney General Antonio Lozano Gracia has dismissed more than 700 of the execrably venal 4,400-member Federal Judicial Police, Mexico's version of the FBI...

...Second, rather than assuming command alone, Salgado has brought along a team of tenacious, seasoned officers to take charge of the city's eleven separate law-enforcement units...

...This figure seems inflated, but in terms of political impact, perception often outweighs reality...

...He hopes they can reverse the city's mounting crime rate and extirpate police corruption before Mexico City elects its first mayor next summer...

...Since 1897, thirty of the capital's sixty-nine police chiefs have been army officers, even though recent presidents have preferred civilians...

...As the army assumes police duties in Mexico City and elsewhere, opportunities will multiply for contacts between its officials and narco-traffickers adept at suborning generals, not to mention modestly paid captains and lieutenants...

...George W. Grayson, who teaches government at the College of William & Mary, has written Mexico: From Corporatism to Pluralism?, to be published by Harcourt Brace...

...Although Salgado and company may marginally improve public safety, the risks of assigning police functions to senior officers in the 130,000-member army greatly eclipse the potential benefits...

...Entrusting generals to command Mexico City's police is not a novel idea...

...Zedillo's move to replace the city's civilian public safety head with army General Enrique Salgado Cordero sprang from three factors: (1) escalating fear voiced by the overwhelming majority of Mexico City dwellers...

...Ambassador James R. Jones's sage advice-kept the army from massacring peasants in dirt-poor Chiapas state, rather than allowing civilian authorities to marginalize the photogenic but innocuous Zapatista National Liberation Army...

...No one sees Salgado or other prominent generals morphing into jackbooted Pinochets, but Mexico will likely suffer expanded social turmoil as economic growth remains anemic and tentative victories by PAN candidates spark trade-union activism...

...General Salgado, however, appears disinclined to bargain...

...Rather than risk greater corruption of the military, Zedillo would do better to seek advice from well-disciplined police forces abroad on how to reform Mexico's law-enforcement agencies...

...The public's animus toward the blue- and brown-shirted officers-scorned as "thieves," "rats," and "leeches"-has only intensified since the incarceration of 229 law-enforcement agents during the first three months of 1994, the last period for which data are available...

...For several reasons, however, the PRI government believes that the fifty-eight-year-old Salgado will succeed where his predecessors failed...