In bed with the bully: Consensual US surveillance in Mexico

While the relevations by the whistleblower Edward Snowden of US surveillance of national leaders and officials drew a furious response in some affected countries, it required only a bare assurance of an 'investigation' by President Obama to assuage his Mexican counterpart.  Peter Watt explains why.

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THE revelations leaked by Edward Snowden that the US National Security Agency (NSA) committed acts of espionage against top Mexican officials and the president himself have so far provoked only mild indignation from the Mexican political class. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Jose Antonio Meade appeared to be reassured by President Obama's 'word' that he would launch an investigation into the workings of the US government. Notwithstanding the incongruity that any government investigating its own internal wrongdoing would have any interest in publicising conclusive evidence of its own criminal activity, President Enrique Pena Nieto has been reluctant to push the Obama administration further on the issue, presumably for fear of undermining Mexico's position as a staunch US economic and political ally.

Ex-president Vicente Fox, meanwhile, enthusiastically endorsed US spying on Mexican politicians, claiming he knew the US spied on him while he was president. Indeed, Fox took comfort in the fact that the world's superpower monitored his every move and his phone calls, evoking the ominous adage reminiscent of all authoritarian political institutions: one has nothing to be concerned about so long as one has nothing to hide and done nothing wrong. 'Everyone will do better if they think they're being spied on,' he noted, at once reinforcing the dubious entitlement of the US government to act as the world's police force while simultaneously apologising for the illegal activities of the NSA.

Fox seems unable to comprehend the basic moral and legal truism that merely because many are involved in committing criminal activities, the moral and legal implications do not simply vanish into thin air. A reasonable observer might instead conclude that the greater the number of international government institutions that are involved in criminal activity, the more serious the problem, not the reverse. 'It's nothing new that there's espionage in every government in the world, including Mexico's,' Fox observed. Flummoxed as to why Snowden's revelations have provoked outrage among the Mexican populace and investigative journalists (if not in government itself), he declared, 'I don't understand the scandal.'

One document obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University details Janet Napolitano's (then Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security) official meeting with President Pena Nieto in July 2013. According to Napolitano's briefing, avoiding discussion of NSA spying on the upper echelons appears to be a Mexican, not solely US, initiative. The Mexicans, the document claims, wanted to 'put to bed' the issue of NSA intrusions. Indeed, nowhere in the summary of their meeting does the issue arise. Instead, discussions focus on maintaining and increasing border security in order to protect commercial interests and on reducing the number of undocumented migrants entering the United States.

The listless and at times surreal reaction to NSA surveillance by Mexico's political class demonstrates their level of craven subordination to their US counterparts. One can only begin to imagine the response of the US political class and media pundits were they to discover that Mexican intelligence had repeatedly intercepted the electronic communications and tapped the phones of the Commander in Chief himself.

The Mexican reaction to NSA snooping on the inner circle of government stands in stark contrast to that of Brazil. Snowden's leaks provoked fury within the government of President Dilma Rousseff. She blasted the NSA tapping of her phone and interception of government communications in a fiery speech clearly aimed at President Obama at the UN General Assembly. She lambasted the NSA for spying on millions of Brazilian citizens, tapping the phones of Brazilian embassies, and spying on the country's partly state-owned petroleum giant, Petrobras. Interestingly, she remarked that the bulk of NSA spying in Brazil was not designed to thwart potential terrorists or to undermine the activities of transnational criminal organisations, but instead, to further US business interests through both - international economic and commercial spying.

As a result, Rousseff cancelled her planned diplomatic visit to Washington, called for an international conference on data security, began setting up a protected governmental electronic communications system, and proposed changing underwater cables so that international Brazilian Internet traffic would no longer pass through US territory.

Brazil's position, of course, is a reflection of the changing nature of US-Latin American relations more generally. Brazil, the emerging regional power and now less of a fixture of Uncle Sam's backyard, can afford to take an increasingly independent stance from Washington. Several countries in the region are integrating with each other politically and economically and establishing firm trade links with China, India, and South Africa - an unprecedented dynamic which has had the effect of undermining US hegemony in the region.

Mexico, however, dependent on the US market for 80% of its exports, is much less able to stand up to the superpower. Indeed, Mexico's traditional position as a subordinate and reliable ally of its northern neighbour is becoming all the more crucial in maintaining the waning US empire, increasingly defensive and militaristic as it reasserts its influence over the region. With a myriad of uncertainties lying ahead for US power in a region that has witnessed the birth of new left-wing social movements that have had considerable success at the ballot box, it is becoming imperative for the United States to uphold and preserve its political, economic, and military alliances as per Mexico and Colombia. In Mexico, US funding for the so-called 'War on Drugs' has provided a convenient pretext for heavy militarisation throughout the country and a clamping down on political dissent and organised popular movements. Spying and surveillance programmes are key to achieving the US objective of continuing and reinforcing a status quo that now sees well over half the population in Mexico living in poverty and unparalleled levels of economic inequality.

As in Brazil, US spying in Mexico seems less to do with the 'War on Terror' and the 'War on Drugs' - two key rhetorical tenets of US interventionism - and more to do with the realpolitikof ensuring that a pliant and subservient political class, personified by Fox, Calderon and Pena Nieto, guard the current transnational dynamics - a socioeconomic system that rewards the powerful moneyed neoliberal elites on both sides of the border and keeps the poor and marginalised in their place.

There is a further aspect to the Mexican response to NSA spying which warrants scrutiny. Throughout the Cold War, the CIA and its Mexican counterpart, the DFS, shared all manner of material and intelligence on dissidents (Marxists, communists, students, guerrillas, trade unionists, peasant activists, feminists, etc.) who were often incarcerated or liquidated because, as the authoritarian and paternalistic President Gustavo DĦaz Ordaz claimed, they were a threat to 'national security'.

The current partnership between the US and Mexican governments allows for a level of surveillance of which Mexico's Cold Warriors could only dream. In collaboration with telecommunications giants, the US and Mexican governments provide the wherewithal and funding for large-scale spying on the Mexican citizenry. Indeed, Mexico's Federal Ministerial Police (PFM) has recently designed a system of total surveillance and increased storage of electronic communications. In a climate in which there exist widening socioeconomic disparities, a grave security crisis and a growing disillusionment with the status quo, both the US and Mexican governments have a shared interest in forestalling the development of a widespread popular political revolt and a potential 'Mexican Spring'.

Were there any mystery as to why the Mexican response to Snowden's revelations was so moderate, one would only need to recall Vicente Fox's unintentionally shrewd observation that all governments have an interest in spying on one another and on their own citizens. The lacklustre reaction from Los Pinos to the NSA revelations is reflective of the extent to which Mexican elite politicians acquiesce in the intrusions, largely because they themselves use domestic spying to further their own sectional interests in a country in which, little more than a decade after the 'transition to democracy', the majority of the population are excluded from meaningful political participation.

Peter Watt teaches Latin American Studies at the University of Sheffield in the UK. He is co-author of the book Drug War Mexico: Politics, Violence and Neoliberalism in the New Narcoeconomy (Zed Books, 2012). This article is reproduced from the 'Mexico, Bewildered and Contested' blog on the website of the North American Congress on Latin America (nacla.org).

*Third World Resurgence No. 278, October 2013, pp 32-33