Travel Advisory Offends Mexico

Mexico reacted with indignation Thursday to U.S. criticism of its border policing efforts, producing one of the sharpest public disputes between the two countries since President Vicente Fox took office.

“The Mexican government does not accept the judgment or labels of any foreign government about the political actions it carries out to face its problems,” Fox’s office said in a written statement, joining a chorus of responses by Cabinet officials.

The flap started Wednesday with a U.S. State Department travel warning to travelers to beware of a “deteriorating security situation” in northern Mexico, where at least 27 U.S. citizens have been abducted in the last six months. It was coupled with the release of a letter to Mexican officials by U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza, who worried that Mexico’s “inability ... to come to grips with rising drug warfare, kidnappings and random street violence will have a chilling effect” on cross-border commerce.

The tone of the exchange recalled the frequent flare-ups between a string of U.S. administrations and the nationalists who ruled Mexico for 71 years under the banner of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Sensitive to the loss of half their country’s territory to the United States in the 19th century, Mexican leaders were often quick to accuse Washington of bullying and interference.

That appeared to change under Fox, whose election in 2000 ousted the PRI. Mexico began cooperating more closely with the United States on sensitive security ventures, notably to catch drug traffickers and secure the 1,950-mile border against the threat of terrorists.

The new leader, who took office about the same time as President Bush, played up their friendship and, until this week, picked just two quarrels: He canceled a 2002 visit to Bush’s ranch in Texas to protest that state’s execution of a Mexican convict on death row, and he opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“This incident is a lot more upsetting for the Mexican leadership because it touches something that we are aware is a weakness -- which is corruption, lack of control, ungovernability -- and that is why the administration reacted so strongly,” said Lorenzo Meyer, a prominent Mexican historian. “The truth hurts.... We don’t have the moral high ground this time.”

Fox’s statement acknowledged that “Mexico and the United States share successes as well as errors.” But Interior Minister Santiago Creel said the criticism “went too far,” and Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez said it was “exaggerated and outside the scope of reality.”

Mexican authorities are in a dangerous new phase of their prolonged war against drug traffickers. This week they sent federal troops to several border cities that have experienced an upsurge of killings and kidnappings by rival drug-smuggling cartels.

They paused Thursday to take a swipe at the U.S. record in fighting the drug problem.

“The capos are in Mexican prisons,” Creel said. “I wish that there were more capos in the U.S. prisons. And above all, that they do something about the problem of consumption; of course, that’s what drives drug trafficking.”

His barb echoed sentiments of many Mexicans who took offense at the U.S. criticism.

“The Americans should control their own drug problem before declaring what they declared,” said Emilio Munoz, a 24-year-old student.

Other Mexicans, noting that Condoleezza Rice took office Thursday as Secretary of State, saw her hand in the U.S. warning and predicted rougher times ahead for the U.S.-Mexico relationship.

A U.S. Embassy official here said the timing of the warning was “not driven by politics” but by the abduction cases near the border. The State Department said two of the 27 kidnapped Americans had been killed and 14 released, leaving 11 unaccounted for.

Officials on both sides said they expected the verbal jousting to stop before it undermined the two neighbors’ cooperation on drugs and border security.

“Our history has shown that this kind of bickering doesn’t help,” presidential spokesman Agustin Gutierrez Canet said.

He added that Derbez had spoken by phone Thursday with Rice to discuss a possible visit to Washington by Fox.