经济学人1

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Dealing with drugs

On the trail of the traffickers

与毒品同行

追踪毒贩们的形迹

Mar 5th 2009 | MEXICO CITY

From The Economist print edition

Illegal drugs are causing havoc across the world. Over four articles, we look at attempts to curb supply and cut demand, beginning in Mexico

当今世界正面临着非法贩毒所带来的灾难。本次，我们将通过四篇报道，与您共同关注全球为减少毒品供应量和需求量所做出的努力。我们的第一站：墨西哥

IN RECENT months Mexicans have become inured to carefully choreographed spectacles of horror. Just before Christmas the severed heads of eight soldiers

were found dumped in plastic bags near a shopping centre in Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state of Guerrero. Last month another three were found in an icebox near the border city of Ciudad Juárez. Farther along the border near Tijuana police detained Santiago Meza, nicknamed El Pozolero (“the

soupmaker”) who confessed to having dissolved the bodies of more than 300 people in acid over the past nine years on the orders of a local drug baron. Mr. Meza, revealing a proper sense of machismo, added primly that he refused to accept the bodies of women or children.

近几个月来，墨西哥人似乎早已对那些精心设计的恐怖活动习以为常了，各种恐怖活动犹如家常便饭。圣诞节前夕，在南部格雷罗州首府（奇尔潘辛戈），有人发现了装有八名士兵头颅的塑料袋，这些塑料袋被丢弃在奇尔潘辛戈附近的一家购物中心旁。而在上个月，又有三个被装在冰箱里的人头在华雷斯城的周边地区被发现。此类事件层出不穷，不禁令人毛骨悚然。经过追捕，警方在提华纳扣押了绰号为“肥皂匠”的圣地亚哥•梅萨。梅萨供认，在过去的九年时间里，他奉当地毒枭之命，已经使用强酸溶液“处理”了300多具尸体。同时，他还称，出于作为一个男人的责任，他拒绝“处理”女人或是孩子的尸体。

“Organized crime is out of control,” Felipe Calderón declared on taking office as Mexico’s president in December 2006. He launched 45,000 army troops against drug-trafficking gangs. Since then, some 10,000 people have died in drug-related violence, 6,268 of them last year. Troops and police have fought pitched battles against gangsters armed with rocket-launchers, grenades, machineguns and amour piercing sniper rifles, such as the Barrett 50. But

perhaps their most effective weapon is corruption: in November Noe Ramírez, the prosecutor in charge of the organized-crime unit of the federal attorney general’s office, was charged with taking bribes of $450,000 a month to pass information to the Sinaloa drug mob. Six other officials from the unit face similar charges.

“有组织的犯罪已经徘徊在失控的边缘了。”墨西哥总统费利佩•卡尔德龙在他2006年12月的宣誓就职时这么说道。他曾动用了45，000名陆军士兵，用以打击毒贩帮派。从那以后，大约有10，000人死于同毒品有关的暴力事件，其中仅去年一年就有6268人死于非命。军队和警察同毒贩们激战不止，而如今的毒贩们真可谓武装到了牙齿，无论是火箭筒还是枪榴弹，抑或是各类机关枪，甚至到可以穿透装甲的反器材狙击步枪，例如巴雷特12.7毫米狙击步枪，各式武器，应有尽有。但是，毒贩子们对抗政府王牌武器当属“金元腐败”。去年11月，时任联邦检查总长办公室有组织犯罪科检察官尼奥•拉米瑞茲被指控收受来自锡那罗亚贩毒组织的贿赂，该组织通过每月450，000美元为条件向其换取政府缉毒情报。另外6名与其共事的官员也受到类似指控。

Officials insist that the violence and the arrests are signs that they are winning. But many disagree. An assessment by the United States’ Joint Forces Command, published last month, concluded that the two countries most at risk of becoming failed states were Pakistan and Mexico.

但是有些官员坚信，这些暴力事件和政府要员被捕事件的发生，恰恰说明了政府即将赢得这场战争。然而，许多人对这一观点并不苟同。上个月，美国联合部队司令部发布了一份评估报告，报告指出：巴基斯坦和墨西哥很有可能成为世界上最“无可救药”的两个国家。

Mexico? The world’s twelfth-largest economy, the United States’ second-biggest trading partner and an important oil supplier? It has evolved in the past

generation into a seemingly stable democracy. Sure enough, the prognosis was angrily rejected by Mexico’s government. But it came on the heels of a paper circulated by Barry McCaffrey, a retired general who was Bill Clinton’s “drug tsar”. General McCaffrey painted a grim picture in which “the dangerous and worsening problems in Mexico…fundamentally threaten US national security.” The stakes in Mexico were enormous, he concluded: “We cannot afford to have a narco state as a neighbor.”

墨西哥是一个无可救药的国家？它可是世界上第十二大经济体，美国的第二大贸易伙伴，同时还是一个重要的石油输出国。怎么可能呢？墨西哥政府闻讯后对这个评价嗤之以鼻，因为通过过去的20-30年的努力，政府眼中的墨西哥似乎已发展成一个社会安定的民主国家。但是随后而来的一篇文章却给墨西哥来了一通无情的批评，文章的作者是巴里•麦卡弗瑞，作为退役将军的他曾在克林顿内阁中担任“缉毒沙皇”的角色，他在文章中说道：“墨西哥所面临的致命问题愈加严重了，而这些问题正在从根本上威胁着美国的国家安全。”他在总结时对墨西哥寄予厚望：“我们决不能让我们的邻邦被毒贩子掌权。”

If this was intended to press the panic button, it seemed to succeed. On January 12th Barack Obama lunched for more than two hours with Mr. Calderón in his first meeting with a foreign head of government since he was elected president of the United States. According to a Mexican official present, Mr. Calderón

proposed a “strategic partnership” and urged the setting up of a bi-national group of experts to explore closer security co-operation. That would go beyond a three-year $1.4 billion program of security aid for Mexico and Central America, known as the Merida Initiative, which was approved (reluctantly) by the United States Congress last year. Like it or not, in the cause of the war on drugs the Obama administration looks likely to be drawn into a sustained security commitment to a neighbor of the kind Mr. Clinton launched in Colombia.

如果说这篇文章的目的是为了让美国启动紧急计划来援助墨西哥，那么看起来这个计划奏效了。1月2日，当选总统奥巴马与卡尔德龙总统促膝长谈达两个多小时。这次会谈也是奥巴马当选以来首次与外国领导人进行会晤。根据墨西哥官方的说法，卡尔德龙提议与美国建立"战略合作伙伴关系"，同时呼吁加快建立起两国专家组，以便两国在安全领域进行更为紧密的合作。如此看来，这可大大超出了去年那个艰难通过国会批准的梅里达计划的范畴了（梅里达计划：是一个为期三年，总额为14亿美元，旨在为墨西哥和中美洲国家提供安全援助的计划）。不管愿不愿意，为了反毒品斗争的需要，奥巴马内阁很可能不得不承担起为邻国安全负责的义务，就像当年克林顿总统援助哥伦比亚的计划一样。

In both Mexico and Colombia, though in different ways, the drug trade has exploited weaknesses in the capacity of the state to impose the rule of law. In Colombia, where a historically fragile state had long failed to impose its

authority over a vast territory of difficult geography, drug income breathed new life into left-wing guerrilla movements and begat right-wing paramilitary militias. As the guerrillas threatened to overrun the army and the cities, Mr. Clinton launched Plan Colombia, under which the United States trained and helped to equip the security forces at a cost of more than $6 billion since 2000.

不管是墨西哥还是哥伦比亚，尽管毒品走私为两国带来的危害不尽相同，但是两国在使用法律对抗毒品走私时的软弱却暴露无疑。拿哥伦比亚来说，这个向来软弱的政府从来没能在其地貌复杂的领土上建立起自己的威信。毒品走私带来的收入使得其左翼势力--即游击队运动势力更加猖獗，同时还催生了其右翼势力--准军事民兵组织。由于游击队势力扬言要接管哥伦比亚的城市与军队，克林顿总统启动了“哥伦比亚计划”，此计划始于2000年，美国花费了60多亿美元，用以帮助哥伦比亚训练安全部队，并为其提供各类武器辎重。

In one respect—counter-insurgency—Plan Colombia has been a big success. The United States added hardware and training to a big Colombian effort that has strengthened the state and made the country much safer. But as an anti-drug program, it has been much less successful. Thanks to the adamantine efforts of Álvaro Uribe, Colombia’s president, which included spraying hundreds of thousands of hectares with weed killer, the recorded area of coca seemed to fall by more than half between 1999 and 2006, according to United Nations

estimates. But it has since risen again. And thanks to productivity increases, total cocaine production in the Andes remains stable (see chart).

一方面来看，以平叛行动作为标准来评价哥伦比亚计划，那么它是非常成功的。通过为哥伦比亚训练部队并提供各式装备，美国无疑用这副“药方”将这个原本处于崩溃边缘的国家“救”了回来，哥伦比亚的社会也更加趋于稳定。但是如果用缉毒行动的标准来看待此计划，那么它的确不太成功。据联合国估计，由于哥伦比亚总统阿尔瓦罗•乌里韦的不懈努力，数十万公顷的土地被撒上除草剂，这些土地的可卡因产量在1999-2006年间一落千丈，一度不及原先产量的50%。但是此后，可卡因的产量又再度回升，由于生产力的提高，安第斯地区的可卡因总产量一直趋于稳定。（见图表）

When cocaine consumption first took off in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, the main smuggling route involved island hopping across the Caribbean from Colombia in light aircraft. It was the success of America’s drug warriors in shutting down this route that brought big-time organized crime to Mexico, as the Colombians began to send drugs that way. In Mexico, relatively small gangs had long run heroin and marijuana across the border. Their move into cocaine made them far more powerful. Two things helped them grow. The first was proximity to the United States. They gained control of retail distribution in many American cities, allowing them to dictate terms to the Colombians. And they continue to arm themselves with ease in American gun shops and launder their profits in American banks.

美国第一次陷入可卡因泛滥的泥潭可以追溯到上世纪70-80年代。当时，走私可卡因的一条主要路线是从哥伦比亚用小型飞机挨个飞越加勒比群岛，直抵美国本土。由于美国缉毒战士的不懈努力，终于堵上了这条贩毒路线。但是随之而来的却是墨西哥有组织犯罪率的大幅飙升。原因很简单，因为哥伦比亚的毒枭们开始以墨西哥为跳板向美国输入毒品。在墨西哥，有许多小帮派长期从事将海洛因和大麻偷运出境的活动，通过走私毒品，这些帮派正在日益壮大。有两个因素促进了他们的成长，其一便是地理因素--离美国很近。这是由于这一优势，他们不费吹灰之力便控制了美国许多城市的零售销售，这使得他们可以与哥伦比亚的毒枭们大谈条件，左右行市。与此同时呢，他们能悠闲自在的在美国的枪店里大肆武装自己，顺便还可以通过美国的银行洗洗钱。

The second factor was the flaws of the Mexican state. The revolution of 1910-17 gave birth to a seemingly powerful state, democratic in appearance but

authoritarian in nature, in which power was monopolized by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). One of the achievements of this system was

eventually to take the army out of politics. The police were required merely to impose political order, not to solve crimes. State governors were happy to

tolerate—or profit from—drug traffickers on their patch provided they kept a low profile. Partly because the Colombians at first paid their partners in product, the Mexican gangs began to push cocaine at home. In some areas, especially in northern Mexico, they acquired de facto control. The politicians did little to stop them—until Mr. .Calderón decided to make security the priority of his government, and a matter of personal commitment.

第二个因素属于人为因素——即墨西哥政府的过错。尽管1910-1917年的革命使得墨西哥成为一个看似强大的国家，它标榜民主，而骨子里却是彻底的独裁。整个国家完全由革命制度党（PRI）统治。而此举也有好处，那就是：终于将政治和军队的关系剥离开来。但是警察部门的作用却仅仅是用来执行政治命令而不是解决犯罪问题。一见有利可图，墨西哥的州长们便乐于向毒贩们妥协，只要毒贩们不在自己的辖区内惹是生非即可。由于哥伦比亚毒枭们最初是“付毒品”给墨西哥那些贩毒帮派们最为报酬，这在一定程度上导致了这些帮派在国

内开始非法销售可卡因。特别值得留意的是，他们甚至完全控制了墨西哥北部地区的可卡因交易。对此，政府官员则一直袖手旁观，无所作为。这一切直到卡尔德龙决定并承诺将国家安全作为第一要务之后才有所改观。

Taking back the street

从毒枭的手里夺回街道

The aim, says Eduardo Medina Mora, Mr. Calderón’s attorney-general, is not to end drug-trafficking “because that is unachievable.” Rather, it is “to take back from organized criminal groups the economic power and

armament they’ve established in the past 20 years, to take away their capacity to undermine institutions and to contest the state’s monopoly of force.”

爱德华多•曼特娜•莫拉是卡尔德龙内阁总检察长，他认为政府此举的目的并不是为了消灭毒品走私，“因为那是不可能的”，而是“为了从有组织犯罪团体手中重新夺回自己建立起来的经济实体和军事实力，同时，也是为了防止帮派们暗中破坏国家机器的各个职能部门，从而向国家垄断权威发起挑战。”

He points to progress. In the past two years the government has seized huge quantities of drugs (some 70 tons of cocaine, including 26 tons in a trawler, a world record for a single haul), money (some $260m) and arms (31,000

weapons, including 17,000 of high caliber). It has also made more than 58,000 arrests; and though some 95% of these people are hangers-on or small-time drug-dealers, they include two-dozen kingpins and a thousand sicarios (hired gunmen).

此外，他还谈到了所取得的进展，在过去的两年里，政府缴获了大量的毒品（大约有70吨的可卡因，包括在一艘拖网渔船上发现的26吨，这算得上单次行动中“钓的最大的一条鱼了”），货款（大约二亿六千万美元），以及各类武器（总计31，000余件,包括17，000件大口径武器）。政府部门共执行了58，000余次抓捕行动，尽管95%的被捕者只是毒枭们的跟班和喽罗，但是被抓获者中也不乏有24位主要贩毒负责人以及1，000多名赏金杀手。

Brushing aside nationalist scruples, Mr Calderón has stepped up the extradition of drug-traffickers to the United States, sending more than 180 north so far. They can’t go on running their businesses from American prisons, as they can from most Mexican ones. Until recently the drug lords lived openly in Mexico’s main cities. Now they can show their faces only in remote parts of the Sierra Madre, says Genaro García Luna, the minister for public security.

卡尔德龙选择了将民族问题放在了一边，开始逐渐加快毒贩的引渡工作，到目前为止，他已经将80名毒品贩子引渡至美国。若是将他们留在墨西哥的监狱里，他们仍能操纵毒品交易，一手遮天。而在美国的大牢里，他们就回天乏术了。公共安全部长赫纳罗•加西亚•鲁纳补充道：早些时候，这些毒枭们猖狂地在墨西哥的大城市里“筑巢”，而现在，他们只敢在马德雷山的边远地区抛头露面了。

The violence, officials say, is a sign that the drug gangs are turning on each other in a fight to hang on to a share of a shrinking business. They stress that around 60% of the killings are concentrated in just three of Mexico’s 32 states, and most of these in three cities: Ciudad Juárez in Chihuahua and Tijuana in Baja California, both just across the American border; and Culiacán in Sinaloa. Some four-fifths of the dead are members of criminal gangs murdered by other criminals. But more than 800 police and soldiers have also died since December 2006 (some may have been working for the traffickers). The beheadings (often

carried out after the victim is dead) and torture are intended to enforce

discipline within gangs and strike fear into rivals, Mr. García Luna says. Despite the headlines, Mexico’s murder rate is relatively low, at 11 per 100,000 people.

官员们认为，现阶段的种种暴力行为，正说明了这些贩毒帮派为了维持日益艰难的毒品走私而开始相互厮杀。他们强调，大约60%的谋杀案主要集中在墨西哥32个州的其中3个，而且应该说是其中3个城市：其中两个城市分别是芝华华州的华雷斯城和下加利福尼亚州的提华纳，这两个城市均处于美墨边境交界处。还有一个城市是位于锡那罗亚洲的库利阿坎，加西亚•鲁纳指出，大约4/5的死者本身就是贩毒组织的成员，他们大都死于帮派火并。但同时，自2006年12月以来，也有超过800名警察和士兵死于此次缉毒行动（这其中也包括那些被毒贩收买并为之效力的警察和士兵）。而斩首行为（通常是指在受害者死后将其头颅割下）以及严刑拷问则是为了让帮派成员更懂规矩，并从心理上打击对手，使其畏惧三分。

But the violence provokes “bewilderment and surprise” among Mexicans, says Enrique Krauze, a historian. After the revolution Mexico became “an island of peace, where refugees came from all over the world to escape

violence.” Several senior police officers, including last year the commander of the federal police, have been murdered by the traffickers. On September 15th eight people died when grenades were thrown at crowds celebrating

independence day in Morelia, in Michoacán. In Tijuana ordinary citizens are scared by the violence going on around them. People are going out less at night, and avoiding the city’s better restaurants after several cases in which gunmen have burst in and shot a rival, says José María Ramos, a political scientist at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte. And few doubt that the violence just across the border is deterring investment and tourists from the United States.

除去那些上了头版头条的谋杀案，墨西哥的谋杀率还是比较低的，仅为0.11‰，但是暴力犯罪还是在墨西哥人民中激起了“混乱与震惊”。一位名叫安立奎•克劳兹的历史学家说，革命之后的墨西哥曾是“一片和平的净土，她吸纳为了远离暴力而来的各国难民，俨然一处世

外桃源。”何塞•马里亚•拉莫斯是一名在北部边境大学工作的政治科学家，他告诉我们，一些高级警官，包括前任联邦警察指挥官，都不幸死于毒贩的枪下。去年9月15日当人们米却肯州的莫雷利亚庆祝独立日时，忽然有人向人群投掷手榴弹，当场造成8名人员死亡。而在提华纳，那里的人们已经被身边的暴力犯罪吓得毛骨悚然，他们尽量不在晚上出门，也不再去高档餐厅，因为雇佣杀手们经常在这些餐厅忽然出现，肆无忌惮地射杀雇主的对手。现在，几乎所有人都相信，由于边境暴力犯罪的出现，来自美国的投资和游客都在不断减少。

Mr. Calderón’s crackdown has inflicted serious disruption on Mexico’s main trafficking syndicates (see map). As many of the historic capos of these gangs are killed, arrested or extradited, what was an oligopoly has splintered into warring factions. This fragmentation is not wholly positive, admits Mr. Medina Mora.

卡尔德龙的镇压行动正在使墨西哥主要的毒品走私巨头走向分裂(见地图)，随着这些巨头的头目被杀，被捕或是被引渡，曾经那些不可一世的寡头走私集团正分裂成为一个个互相争斗的小帮派。曼特娜•莫拉承认，分裂带来的并不都是好事。

The biggest worry is that some drug gangs are starting to diversify into other criminal businesses. Extortion and protection rackets are suddenly becoming common. Shops and bars have been burned down in Ciudad Juárez. Over the past six months, big businesses, including multinationals, have become targets, with threats against warehouses and factories if payments are not made,

according to a security consultant in Mexico City. This is still local and sporadic, but at least one American company has paid up, he says.

恰恰相反，令人堪忧的是这些贩毒集团正在投身于别的犯罪活动。敲诈勒索，收保护费等现象一下子变得十分普遍，华雷斯城的许多商店和酒吧被帮派分子烧毁。半年里，一些大型企业，包括跨国公司，也成为了他们的目标。他们威胁仓储部门和工厂，扬言不付保护费就会采取“进一步行动”。尽管此类事件仅偶尔在华雷斯城发生，但是曼特娜•莫拉称，至少已经有一家美国公司已经付了保护费。

The second growth business is kidnapping. This is not new in Mexico. It tends to go in cycles. Many cases are not officially reported. But the number recorded by Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia (“Mexico United Against Crime”), a campaign group, raised sharply over the past two years before falling off in recent months, according to María Elena Morera, its director. And kidnaps are tending to become more violent. They account for only 1% of crimes, yet in one poll 46% of respondents say they are scared of them, says Mrs. Morera. The talk among better-off Mexicans is suddenly of whether they should try to leave the country rather than risk their children being kidnapped.

对于那些贩毒组织来说，第二个“新兴产业”就是绑架。事实上，绑架在墨西哥已经算不上新鲜事了，而且它已经发展得更成熟，更具规律性，并且时常发生。官方瞒报了许多绑架案，但是据“墨西哥抵制犯罪联合会”（一个社会运动团体）的统计，绑架案在过去两年内的发生

率一直不断上升，直到最近几个月才开始下降。身为主席的玛利亚•埃琳娜•莫雷拉称，现在的绑架案开始变得越来越暴力，尽管绑架案只占了所有犯罪行为的1%，但是民调却显示有46%的调查对象惧怕绑架案。一些较为富有的墨西哥人正在考虑是否要举家离开这个国家，因为他们不想冒着自己孩子被绑架的危险继续在那里过着担惊受怕的生活。

The underlying problem in Mexico is not drug-trafficking in itself, but that

neither the police nor the courts do their job properly. Not only have the police themselves sometimes been a source of crime, but they are also not

accountable to politicians or public. A survey in 2007 found that seven out of ten crimes are not reported. “Society and the police don’t work together,” says Ernesto López Portillo, of the Institute for Security and Democracy. Mr. García Luna admits that in some parts of the country the traffickers have established a “social base”. The previous two Mexican presidents tried and failed to reform the police. Mr. Calderón’s officials insist that this time they will succeed.

墨西哥当下面临的根本问题并不是毒品走私，而是其警察部门和司法机关无法正确地履行各自的职责。更有甚者，连警察们自己也成为了犯罪的源头，他们甚至不再对政府和民众负责。一份2007年的调查发现，7/10的犯罪行为没有公之于众。安全与民主机构的欧内斯特•洛佩斯•波蒂略认为“社会与警察部门简直形同陌路，”加西亚•鲁纳承认，在墨西哥的一些地区，毒贩子们甚至建立起了“社会基础”。前两任墨西哥总统都尝试改革警察部门，但均以失败告终，卡尔德龙内阁的官员们坚信，这一次，他们一定能够成功。

At the headquarters of the public-security ministry on a hill opposite

Chapultepec wood in Mexico City, cranes rise above a vacant lot where a new National Intelligence Centre is being built. The government’s more immediate innovation is housed in an annexe next door. A score of police officers dressed in dark suits sit at computer terminals facing a giant, segmented screen that occupies the whole of the wall in front of them. They are keying in data for

Platform Mexico, an integrated and searchable national database that will

combine criminal records with police operations’ reports and is due to start up in June.The screens can also display images from closed-circuit television across the country. The operators can communicate with every police post and patrol car in Mexico. Across the city in Ixtapalapa, the police’s main operating base in the capital is now equipped with helicopters and rapid-response teams. Eventually each state will have similar centers.

在墨西哥城查普尔提匹克森林对面的一座山上，坐落着墨西哥公共安全部门的总部，现在，一座新的国家情报中心正在那里拔地而起。而当前政府部门最大的创新之处则掩藏在其旁边的一幢附属建筑里。在这个房间里，20多名身穿黑色制服的警官们坐在电脑终端前，面对着眼前硕大的巨型分割屏幕，他们正在为“墨西哥平台”录入资料。这个名为“墨西哥平台”的国家级综合性数据库系统将会把犯罪记录和警方的行动报告整合起来，同时还会为系统使用者提供搜索功能。据称，整个系统将于今年6月投入使用。该系统屏幕还可以用以显示国内所有闭路