It is time to debate a joined civil mandate- Benitez [in Spanish]

Reforma, 9/16/12

Raúl Benítez Manaut, an academic at UNAM,  has called for a profound military reform in Mexico, and says that the president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto should start on it immediately.  He says that otherwise relations between the military and the civilian government will continue in the same opaque and uncoordinated manner, and continue the lack of transparency in military matters.

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Why so many mayors are now targets in Mexican drug war

The Christian Science Monitor, 9/28/2010

It used to be that working as top cop was one of the most dangerous jobs in Mexico when it comes to drug-trafficking targets. These days, however, it seems that mayors are facing the most danger. The latest attack came Monday, when a mayor and his aide from the small town of Tancitaro in the state of Michoacan were found mutilated, apparently stoned to death. Their bodies were found in a pickup truck outside of the town of Uruapan.

Raul Benitez

The attack marks the fifth targeted attack of a mayor in Mexico in more than five weeks and the 11th assassination of the year. Grisly violence is nothing new in Mexico, where more than 28,000 have been killed in drug-related violence in four years. But targeting the political class has become a disturbing new problem in the country.

Raul Benitez, a security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, says that the spate of recent deaths may be no coincidence: It comes as the federal government is increasing intelligence capabilities and taking a harder look at collusion between traffickers and local police and authorities, as it looks to centralize the police force.

Therefore, many mayors who once may have turned a blind eye to trafficking exploits in their towns might now be refusing to cooperate.

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Calderon seeks to dispel talk of ‘failing state’

Benitez questions "failed state" label

Los Angeles Times, 1/25/2009

Stark assessments of the threat that drug crime poses to Mexico’s stability have put the government of President Felipe Calderon on the defensive as he tries to forge a relationship with a new U.S. president. Rising violence, spurred in part by Calderon’s 2-year-old offensive against drug traffickers, has prompted some officials and analysts in the United States to warn that Mexico faces a risk of collapse within several years.

Mexican officials and most analysts here scoff at depictions of Mexico as a failed or failing state. They say it bears little resemblance to basket cases such as Somalia, Haiti or Sudan, with their weak central governments, sectarian blood-letting or fleeing populace.

“It’s a very bad analysis,” said Raul Benitez, an expert on security and U.S.-Mexico relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “Mexico has some failed institutions inside the government, but not the whole state.”

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