Sunday, December 18, 2011

U.S. agents south of the border? - an idea acceptable to 57% of Mexicans surveyed


A whopping 57% of Mexicans want American financial aid to help in their fight against the cartels and narcotics trafficking, and according to a 2010 study they're prepared to accept it even on the condition that U.S. agents enter the country to stage manage the drug war here.

Mexico's Center for Investigation and Economic Studies published the survey results in September. They were reported today by El Universal, a Mexico City newspaper.

The 2010 survey was administered in five countries, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador and Peru. Respondents were first questioned about their attitudes generally on American anti-drug trafficking financial aid. While far more than half approved it in principle, when such aid was linked to direct U.S. participation in narcotics offensives and law enforcement activities, support plummeted in every country but Mexico. Interestingly, Mexicans were 3% more favorably disposed to U.S. financial aid coupled with the presence of foreign law enforcement agents (57% to 54%) than without.

Experts say that the results are striking confirmation that until a country has experienced the levels of domestic terror which Mexico has at the hands of its drug cartels, attitudes towards foreign assistance and direct participation generally remain more conservative. Mexicans in the northern half of the country, which contains regions particularly hard hit by narco violence such as Monterrey and Ciudad Juárez, were more favorably disposed to the operational presence of U.S. agents than were their neighbors farther south.

Here's a report and some graphs on the survey (in Spanish): http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/816984.html

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