The US-Mexico Network was designed to promote bilateral, cross-disciplinary conversations on issues related to Mexico and US-Mexico affairs.  To succeed in this endeavor, participation among individuals informed about these matters was essential.  Yet despite persistent efforts to promote this participation, it never developed.  This site was never intended to be blog that would simply be [...]

Teresa Margolles, Untitled Often using violence, death, and the structures of power that surround them as her subject for exploration, Mexican artist Teresa Margolles will exhibit a new work that examines the effects of ongoing conflict on contemporary culture. Untitled (2010) features a series of six custom-made concrete benches to be [...]

This year the U.S.-Mexico Network sponsored a virtual conversations tied in with one of the panels at the LASA Congress (October 6-9, 2010, Toronto, Canada).  It drew on a series of chapters from the Oxford Handbook on Mexican Politics (forthcoming 2011) and was entitled “Elections, Movements, and the Media”.    This conversation includes blogging [...]

I knew it would come to this! The Onion on the Mexican security situation.

Steffanie Strathdee of the University of California San Diego spoke at USC, Wednesday, September 15, 2010, as part of the University’s global health lecture series. The 3:30-5:00 pm (PDT) lecture was streamed live and a video of the presentation can be seen here. Dr. Strathdee is the Harold Simon Professor of Medicine; Chief, Division of Global [...]

Following up his 1999 brutal parody of corruption in the PRI political system, “Ley de Herodes”, Luis Estrada’s new black comedy takes on the realities surrounding the drug cartels in Mexico.  Released on 3 September in Mexico, we can only hope it will appear in U.S. theaters soon. Read about the film and watch a trailer [...]

Media outlets in the United States and Mexico reported that Hillary Clinton, in response to a question during her 8 September 2010 talk at the Council on Foreign Relations, referred to the Mexican drug cartels as “insurgents”, compared Mexico to Colombia at the height of its drug war, and called for a Plan Colombia for [...]

Following the assassination of Rodolfo Torre Cantú, the PRI candidate for Governor of Tamaulipas, there was for a brief while a sense that a political crisis was about to materialize. The murder was quickly–and probably correctly–attributed to organized crime. It beared the mark: a close-range execution with a rather disturbing display of firepower. The motives, [...]

Un día antes de que llegara Calderón a Washington, National Public Radio (NPR) publicó una serie de tres notas sobre la lucha en contra del crimen organizado del gobierno federal. NPR es, toda proporción guardada, un equivalente a Notimex en cuanto a difusión y audiencias. Por ello resultó alarmante que ante [...]

There have been a number of email exchanges about the latest NPR report that the Sinaloa cartel has been “insulated” and/or protected. I created a pdf file that has tracks references to this “protection hypothesis”. This file (49 pages…large) has sequenced the news references to this idea that Sinaloa has been protected. Here’s [...]

Just imagine if President Barrack Obama paid a state visit to Mexico, which included a welcome highlighted by pomp and circumstances when he helicoptered onto the verdant South Lawn of the White House, an elaborate luncheon hosted by top officials at the State Department, and a State Dinner at Los Pinos. Then suppose that Obama [...]

This post will be updated regularly throughout President Calderon’s visit to Washington to provide links to news articles, speeches, and commentary in the US and Mexico from the visit. Documents and Speeches: Comitiva: Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores; Ernesto Cordero Arroyo, Secretario de de Hacienda y Crédito Público; y Gerardo Ruiz Mateos, Secretario de Economía. Programa para el [...]

Felipe Calderon’s state visit to Washington this week will take place in the context of two under-reported events that speak volumes about the possibilities and the potential pitfalls for the medium-term future of the relationship.  The Obama administration’s new drug control strategy, by significantly increasing the emphasis on prevention and treatment, opens one more door [...]

Picking when to fight a battle is as important in politics as it is in war.  The timing of the current fight over immigration reform is full of peril for a variety of players  all on one side of the debate. I explored the downside for immigrant rights activists and Latino political leaders in a [...]

Narco-trafficking, immigration, and trade continually dominate the headlines with regard to the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Yet, during Michelle Obama’s recent visit to D.F.— her first solo trip abroad— the First Lady paid less attention to those issues that divide and focused more on areas in which the U.S. and Mexico can work together to achieve better [...]

Whenever I complete a talk on Mexico’s struggle with drugs and thugs, the first audience question is invariably: How can the United States thwart the cartel-related bloodshed that has erased almost 23,000 Mexican lives since Felipe Calderón swore the presidential oath on December 1, 2006?  I point out that despite preoccupation with two wars, health-care [...]

J. Jesús Esquivel’s cover story in this week’s Proceso caught my attention. The article starts out this way: “Un informe del Servicio de Investigaciones del Congreso de Estados Unidos considera indispensable y urgente una mayor intervención directa del Pentágono en México.” (A report by the Congressional Research Service of the United States considers greater [...]

A short article from the Washington Post about the rise in organized crime violence in Mexico by David Shirk, Eric Olson, and Andrew Selee.

Challenges and Opportunities in Mexico: Implications for US-Mexico Relations Held every two years, this conference focuses on trade relations between the United States and Mexico in the broad bi-national context. Although you may not have been at the Meadows Museum of Art this weekend, you can still join the conference conversation. This year it [...]

As Hillary Clinton prepares to venture south leading an impressive group of high-level administration officials for a bi-lateral meeting on Mexico’s security situation, two things are clear:  This meeting will be a public relations success but it is unlikely to have a real positive impact on the situation in Mexico.  The US and Mexico are [...]

The seeming inability of the Mexican government to reduce levels of violence associated with the drug trade – levels that have nearly tripled since the Calderon Administration took office – has motivated a growing debate among intellectuals, journalists, and politicians about the wisdom of the government’s current strategy against organized crime. President Calderon initiated this strategy [...]