By Adam Isacson, Lisa Haugaard, Jennifer Johnson
The Latin America Working Group, the Center for International Policy and the Washington Office on Latin America release a new report on the Colombian experience of the past ten years, drawing out human rights and strategic lessons that are now relevant for U.S. policy toward Mexico and beyond.
The report concludes that “The ‘success’ of the past several years in Colombia is only a partial, and fragile, victory at best—and it has come at an unacceptably high human and institutional cost.” In addition, it states that “Plan Colombia does carry a host of lessons for U.S. policy toward Mexico, Central America, and other areas of the world. These lessons, though, are not the ones that the ‘Plan Colombia is a model’ crowd might expect to draw.”
The 28-page report by LAWGEF, CIP, and WOLA three Washington-based organizations that have closely followed U.S. policy toward both countries since the 1990s, directly takes on the flawed Colombia-Mexico parallel. It walks the reader through Plan Colombia’s results, both positive (reductions in violent crime measures, at least until 2008) and troubling (a dramatic rise in extrajudicial killings by the armed forces). It explains the many ways in which Mexico today differs sharply from Colombia a decade ago.
A Cautionary Tale lays out a dozen lessons that U.S. policymakers must draw from the Colombia experience. They include a reminder that the United States must first “clean its own house,” showing the political courage necessary to take on the U.S.-based drug demand, arms trafficking, and money laundering that do Mexico and Colombia so much harm. The recommendations call for a strategy that, instead of relying overwhelmingly on militaries, helps partner countries strengthen their civilian capacities, particularly those of dysfunctional justice systems.