In this 50th episode of the Just the Facts Podcast, Adam talks with Daniel Mejía, an economist from Colombia's Universidad de los Andes, who just co-edited a book, "Éxitos, fracasos y extravíos," which thoroughly critiques, and proposes alternatives to, the U.S.-backed anti-drug policy in Colombia.

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During the last week of April a group from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA, Washington), the Center for International Policy (CIP, Washington), Asociación MINGA (Bogotá), and the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ, Bogotá) traveled to Tumaco, on the Pacific coast of Colombia’s far southwest, near the border with Ecuador.

With a population of 180,000 and a land area about equal to Rhode Island, the city and surrounding municipality (county) of Tumaco make up one of Colombia’s most troubled and violent territories. Every year, Tumaco is listed as Colombia’s number-one or number-two municipality for the cultivation of coca, the crop used to make cocaine (the country has 1,100 municipalities). It also has one of the country’s highest murder rates — well over 100 homicides per 100,000 residents — and a strong guerrilla and paramilitary-group presence.

We traveled to Tumaco because it is also one of about fourteen sites chosen for a U.S.-supported military and development aid program that is, in a way, the successor to “Plan Colombia.” Known as “Consolidation” or “Integrated Action,” this large-scale program purports to introduce a functioning government in long–neglected territories.

Our four organizations are carrying out a joint project to monitor this program. Though its design indicates that learning has taken place since Plan Colombia’s launch in 2000, we have concerns about Consolidation: the role of the military, coordination between government bodies, consultation with communities, effects on land tenure, and several others.

In each of the chosen zones, the Consolidation strategy begins with offensive military operations to establish “security conditions.” Then, it aims quickly to bring in the rest of the government to provide basic services in a phased, coordinated way. According to the Consolidation program’s documents, the desired end state is the military’s near-total pullout from the zone, leaving behind a functioning government, greatly reduced violence, the absence of armed groups, and the elimination of drug production.

Though we were looking at it in Tumaco, the United States has invested most heavily in Consolidation elsewhere in Colombia since the program began, in its current form, in 2007. A December 2009 report by the Center for international Policy, “After Plan Colombia,” looks at Consolidation in two of those zones of greater investment: the La Macarena region south of Bogotá, and the Montes de María region near the Caribbean coast. U.S. officials tell us that the program is advancing with Washington’s support in the southern part of Tolima department, west of Bogotá, but we have not yet visited that zone.

Though it appears in the list of consolidation zones and is clearly a priority because of drug production, we hadn’t heard as much about how the program was proceeding in Tumaco. We chose to visit the city, though, because of a close tie to U.S. policy: its crisis of violence and drug-trafficking owes in part to Plan Colombia’s unintended consequences.

Fumigation planes share the tarmac at Tumaco's airport.

In 2000, a US$1.3 billion aid package from the United States, the first outlay of funds for Plan Colombia, allowed a dramatic expansion of aerial herbicide fumigation in the department of Putumayo, about 250 miles east of Tumaco, bordering Tumaco’s home department of Nariño. At the time, Putumayo was Colombia’s largest producer of coca. Plan Colombia extended into Putumayo a huge aerial herbicide fumigation program. U.S. planners did not accompany this spraying program with anywhere near enough alternative development assistance for Putumayo’s farmers. In fact, Plan Colombia lacked any real attempt to establish a permanent civilian government presence there; it continues to be weak in Putumayo.

As a result, many Putumayans whose crops were sprayed and found themselves with no economic options migrated to the Pacific coast, particularly Tumaco. The town of Llorente, in the eastern part of Tumaco municipality, is occasionally called “Putumayito” because of the large number of Putumayan migrants.

The displacement of coca, and coca growers, to Putumayo upset the social order in what was then one of Colombia’s most forgotten corners. Tumaco’s mostly Afro-Colombian population lives in near-total isolation from the rest of the country, engaging in subsistence agriculture or growing basic cash crops like coconuts, cacao, or plantains. Lining the many rivers flowing into the Pacific are communities settled by freed and escaped slaves, whose descendants were excluded and held apart from Colombia’s national life.

In 1993, two years after Colombia approved a progressive new constitution, a new law — Law 70 — recognized the landholdings of these and hundreds of other Afro-Colombian communities in the country’s isolated, undeveloped, densely jungled Pacific lowlands. These landholdings, known as Community Councils, are held in common. Titled collectively, they make up a significant percentage of Tumaco’s land area. A smaller but significant amount of land is in the hands of indigenous communities.

This major advance in recognition of their property rights, unfortunately, came at the same time that these communities entered into greater contact with the outside world. Instead of government officials offering security, justice and basic services, though, “contact” meant encounters with narcotraffickers and large landowners, who were often the same people.

The narcotraffickers were attracted by Tumaco’s strategic value. Its rivers have proven to be ideal corridors for taking shipments of drugs to the Pacific Ocean — directly or through Ecuador — and on to Mexico, Central America, and the United States. Its dense jungles provide cover for laboratories to make cocaine. Its coastal mangrove estuaries provide innumerable hiding spots for boats transshipping drugs. (They also hide “semi-submersibles:” homemade submarines, usually pulled behind a boat, that carry tons of cocaine at a time and are difficult to detect.) As coca cultivation migrated to Tumaco during the early 2000s, the municipality became a center of cocaine cultivation, production, and transshipment -– one of few territories where all phases of the cocaine production process take place simultaneously.

For their part, large landowners saw vast expanses of well-watered, undeveloped land ideal for large-scale, capital-intensive agribusiness. These include profitable products like African oil palm and cattle ranching. The oil palm — used increasingly in biofuels — experienced a boom during the mid-2000s, along with massive land purchases, until a blight destroyed most of Tumaco’s crop.

While landowners began encroaching on the Community Councils’ territories, the profitable coca trade proved to be a temptation to many of the Councils’ residents. UNODC has found (PDF page 62) coca-growers earning a net income of perhaps US$10-12 per day — about double the minimum wage in Colombia’s formal economy, and better than most cash crops offer. Its product, a highly portable paste that traffickers later refine into cocaine, is far easier to market in roadless territories.

With the coca boom, however, came a far greater presence of illegal armed groups whose presence in Tumaco had been only sporadic before. In fact, while economics enticed some to grow coca, many others have been forced to plant the crop by the guerrillas or paramilitaries who held sway in their territories.

The FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and ELN (National Liberation Army) guerrilla groups started out raising funds to buy guns by taxing coca growers, but soon went on to participate in production and trafficking. They built up their presence in the municipality during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Guerrillas, especially the FARC’s 29th front, began killing community leaders whom they viewed as threats to their dominion, extorted funds from business owners, and controlled communities’ movements along the rivers.

The guerrillas had little competition from Colombia’s state, which was barely present in Tumaco beyond a few military and police posts and a badly corrupt municipal government. Government representatives spent very little time outside the county seat, leaving the forgotten communities along the rivers at the armed groups’ mercy.

The drug trade’s wealth then attracted an illegal armed group from the other side: the pro-government, drug funded paramilitary network known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. The AUC’s so-called Liberators of the South Bloc, headed by Guillermo Pérez Alzate, who went by the name “Pablo Sevillano,” moved into the zone after 2000. As in other zones of guerrilla influence, the newly arrived paramilitaries carried out a brutal wave of hundreds of extrajudicial killings and massacres of those they believed to be guerrilla collaborators. The violence displaced tens of thousands of people to Tumaco’s town center and to cities elsewhere in the country, while thousands more crossed the border into Ecuador. For their part, Colombia’s security forces combated “Pablo Sevillano’s” men only on the rarest of occasions.

After pushing the coca economy from Putumayo, Plan Colombia followed the coca crops to Tumaco. The U.S. and Colombian governments’ initial response to Tumaco’s drug and violence crisis was not to strengthen the state’s presence in the municipality. Instead, Plan Colombia offered a sharp increase in aerial herbicide fumigation over the Community Councils’ collectively held lands. Nariño, led by Tumaco, has been by far the most fumigated of Colombia’s 32 departments during the past ten years.

The fumigation came with alternative development programs, financed by USAID and other donors. These covered only a small portion of the affected communities, though, and could do little in a context of statelessness, lack of transportation, uncertain land tenure, and out-of-control violence. Worse, the U.S.–backed Colombian National Police fumigation program has insisted on spraying any coca plants it detects, meaning that alternative development projects funded by USAID have routinely been sprayed merely because of the proximity of coca plants.

Despite large-scale fumigation, coca growing has proved stubborn in Tumaco. This is largely a result of the state’s absence from most of the territory and the lack of other economic alternatives for growers. So when the U.S. and Colombian governments begin pursuing Consolidation — a strategy that explicitly seeks to build up the government’s on-the-ground presence — Tumaco appeared to be a prime candidate.

Despite that, our attempt to evaluate Consolidation’s performance in Tumaco was more challenging than we expected. The main problem was that nobody in the municipality seemed to know what we were talking about, even though Consolidation had officially been functioning and present in Tumaco since 2008.

In other parts of the country, Consolidation is also often known as CCAI, after the name of the agency in the Colombian Presidency (Center for the Coordination of Integrated Action) that manages it. In Tumaco, however, when we asked civil society leaders about the CCAI (pronounced “Say-Kigh”), they responded, “What kind of fruit is that?” A top municipal government official told us of having received e-mail about the program and hearing nothing since, until the CCAI held a meeting in early April.

The CCAI "Coordination Center" in Tumaco.

We paid a visit to the CCAI headquarters for Tumaco: it is a room with desks, computer equipment and maps at a beachside hotel complex heavily used by police and contractors involved with coca-eradication missions. The office is meant to coordinate all government agencies’ activities to establish a presence in the zone; the Tumaco “coordination center,” however, appeared to have only a handful of staff and a very small administrative footprint.

Unlike La Macarena — a zone where the United States has helped finance hundreds of millions of dollars in military offensives and development projects — Tumaco has seen very little investment in the Consolidation framework. Instead, the activities the United States is actually paying for in Tumaco look more like the same Plan Colombia programs of a decade ago.

As in Putumayo circa 2002, fumigation is massive, while alternative development projects lag behind in stateless, insecure areas. Building up a civilian, institutional state presence on the ground is still a faraway goal toward which little progress is notable, even in the town center.

When fumigation eliminates growers’ legal crops or food crops, food security assistance is rarely available. Local human rights and development workers affirmed that a significant portion of those who displace from Tumaco’s Afro Colombian communities today are fleeing repeated fumigation.

Why has “Consolidation” stumbled at the starting gate in Tumaco? The main reason is resources. Its far-flung geography makes Tumaco very hard to govern, and its high poverty and indigence rates mean that needs are greater. A proper Consolidation program in Tumaco would require an immense amount of funding, a large multiple of what USAID, other donors and the Colombian treasury are currently providing. The United States has not planned to invest such resources in Tumaco — a great shame considering the amount that the United States has invested in forced eradication — and Colombia’s government has done little to fill the gap.

To date, the significant exception appears to be a program begun by the Nariño governor’s office called “Si Se Puede” (Yes We Can). This is a small program –- the governor’s office, in the hands of a leftist opposition party under Governor Antonio Navarro Wolff, a former leader of the disbanded M-19 guerrillas –- is strapped for cash and heavily indebted. Nonetheless, the Si Se Puede program did answer positively to a request for development financing from the leaders of one Afro-Colombian Community Council in Tumaco: the community of Rescate-Las Varas.

Here, in exchange for the community’s willingness to eradicate their own coca, the government is offering assistance with USAID support. Farmers are getting food-security aid as they switch to legal cash craps like cacao, coconuts, managed forestry, fish farming and others. The successful eradication of most coca in Las Varas is leading local officials to consider the community a model. Local coordinators of the CCAI in Tumaco say they plan to work with the Las Varas community to guarantee further investment and to extend the model elsewhere in Tumaco.

This expectation to provide future support was the main concrete example we heard of the Consolidation program’s activity in Tumaco. As Governor Navarro (and likely his party) leave office at the end of this year, the sustainability of the government’s commitment to Las Varas is in question. Consolidation may have to pick up where “Sí Se Puede” left off.

This may be far more difficult than it sounds. The community's trust in the government remains fragile, and relationships forged with the governor's office may not be easily transferrable to a new entity. Meanwhile the Las Varas community faces friction with other Community Councils uncomfortable with its embrace of the state or unhappy that they are not receiving similar investment.

The Consolidation program is proceeding haltingly in conditions that continue to be among the least secure in the country. Indeed, the Las Varas community has suffered the death of six or seven village leaders (depending on whether or not some were accidents or homicides) as a result of their choice to abandon coca and work with the state. The FARC guerrillas remain very active in Tumaco and neighboring municipalities, participating in the drug trade, targeting local leaders, particularly indigenous leaders, attacking military and police targets, and making travel difficult on the few existing secondary and tertiary roads.

Further downriver and along the coast itself, one finds the heirs of the AUC paramilitary group, which disbanded officially in 2006. (Pablo Sevillano, the head of the AUC’s Liberators of the South Bloc, is now in a U.S. prison serving time for drug trafficking.) Former mid-level AUC commanders now control smaller groups that exist mainly for the drug trade, but still regularly threaten local leaders and engage in land theft. These so-called “emerging criminal groups” are popping up all over the country. Many reportedly have little to fear from the police and military, though this is usually a result of corruption, not alliance. Some in fact do drug business with the FARC guerrillas, and often fight each other for territory.

In Tumaco, the “new” paramilitary group that appears to have wrested control from the others is called Los Rastrojos (the word refers to what is left behind after a harvest), which is one of the most powerful of the new groups nationwide. The Rastrojos now control most riverine traffic in coastal Tumaco, especially the boatloads of cocaine that continue to leave the zone. The FARC, however, do continue to control some rivers and corridors, and joint guerrilla-paramilitary drug shipments have been detected.

The security situation in Tumaco remains dire. Most people we talked to, regardless of their social sector, were reluctant to talk at length about the perpetrators of the zone’s violence and narcotrafficking. Some authorities, however, said that the number of incidents of murder and other violent crime had dropped since the middle of last year; this, they suspect, may be a result of the Rastrojos’ defeat of their paramilitary rivals and assumption of greater territorial control. Tumaco’s trafficking routes may be somewhat less contested than before, and the FARC — with the exception of some recent kidnapping-for-ransom attempts in the city center — are largely forced to operate upriver, further from the coast.

The government response to the Rastrojos remains unclear. As in other parts of the country, the armed forces tend to consider them primarily to be a police responsibility. Colombia’s police forces, however, are meant to operate in urban areas (with the exception of small, specialized units like Carabineros or Junglas). When they operate in rural zones, as they usually do, the Rastrojos end up in a “doughnut hole” of security-force responsibility: they are in the jurisdiction of army and marine units who consider them primarily to be a police issue. This is compounded by a chronic lack of coordination between the armed forces and police.

Amid this panorama of violence and narcotrafficking, the Consolidation or Integrated Action effort has barely begun. Tumaco’s challenges make it difficult to determine where to start, especially when U.S. and Colombian government funding hasn’t been generous.

The Colombian government is currently evaluating or rethinking the national Consolidation effort. When the government announces the results of this rethinking — probably in June — these will include a reduction in the number of “Consolidation” zones from the current fourteen. Several zones will see their CCAI offices close, and promises of state presence and investment will go unfulfilled. The remaining zones, however, will presumably see far greater investment than before.

It is likely that Tumaco will remain in the national Consolidation scheme. If so, perhaps a year or two from now Tumaco’s local leaders will have heard and seen enough of Consolidation to be able to evaluate the program and gauge its impact on their communities — which to date has been nearly zero.

This is a "first take" on our trip to Tumaco written by WOLA Senior Associate Adam Isacson. We'll soon post observations from other participants in this visit and one we took to the La Macarena Consolidation zone. We'll be visiting La Macarena and other Consolidation sites again in a few months, and publishing joint reports about each.

At a conference in Mexico sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Adam talks with Professor Bruce Bagley, chairman of the Department of International Studies at the University of Miami and a longtime expert on U.S. counter-drug policy in the Americas.

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On March 15, the Latin America Working Group, Center for International Policy and Washington Office on Latin America, along with many other faith-based organizations, humanitarian agencies and nongovernmental organizations, sent a letter asking Congress "not to turn your backs on the most vulnerable people in Latin America nor abandon wise investments that create lasting peace and security for our hemisphere as you make difficult choices on the final FY2011 and the FY2012 budgets."

Based on that letter (PDF), Latin America Working Group's director Lisa Haugaard testified today before the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee with the following appeal:

We urge you not to turn your backs on the most vulnerable people in Latin America nor abandon wise investments that create lasting peace and security for our hemisphere as you make difficult budget choices.

In Latin America, U.S. aid programs protect those at risk from disasters, deadly disease, and conflict. Well-targeted aid programs such as development assistance for small farmers help impoverished people raise themselves to a better life. Multilateral Debt Relief reduces the debt burdens of some of the hemisphere’s poorest nations so that these countries can invest in poverty reduction. The Inter-American Foundation’s compact budget supports small-scale self-help.

U.S. assistance programs reduce the threats from drug trafficking and drug-related violence that directly affect the communities that you represent. USAID supports efforts by Andean farmers to abandon coca and grow food crops instead. USAID and the Justice Department help Mexico, Colombia, and Central American nations strengthen courts and prosecute drug trafficking mafias. The U.S. Institute for Peace encourages fresh approaches to ending conflicts. All of these programs in the long run are less costly and provide more sustainable solutions than emergency military programs to address drug-related violence that has spiraled out of control.

With the maze of funding categories, it can be hard to understand why cuts to a particular account fall so hard. For example, most members of Congress say they support assistance to Colombia. Yet to ensure that good programs for Colombia are not cut, you have to know that programs to support alternative development, aid Afro-Colombian communities, strengthen human rights and help people displaced by violence are under Economic Support Funds. Indeed, “Economic Support Funds,” which has a name even its own mother couldn’t love, is a catchall category that fails to convey the importance of the programs it funds in Latin America. In Mexico, ESF supports crime prevention in Ciudad Juarez and human rights training for police and prosecutors. If your goal is to effectively reduce illicit drug production and the power of drug cartels and strengthen the rule of law in Colombia and Mexico, we know you will find a way to support those programs.

The President’s budget cuts assistance to Latin America, reducing economic assistance by 5 percent and sensibly beginning to shift responsibilities, as long scheduled, for military aid and equipment maintenance to the Colombian government. There are programs in the President’s budget that merit further cuts. Aid that encourages militaries to carry out internal security is damaging, as is assistance to security force units that commit abuses with impunity. Military and police aid makes up at least one-third of aid to the region in the foreign ops budget, and is an even greater percentage if you factor in what is in the defense bill. If you cut humanitarian aid and do not cut military aid, the U.S. footprint in the region looks more like a bootprint, and that is not the image our nation should wish to convey.

The President’s budget fails to fund adequately Migration and Refugee Assistance for the Western Hemisphere, which helps Colombia and its neighbors grapple with the largest conflict-driven humanitarian crisis in the world. This has protected children from forced recruitment, helped refugee women who have survived sexual violence, and offered a lifeline of food aid and income generating opportunities for refugees living in perilous conditions.

Finally, we urge you to hold true to our commitment to help Haiti recover from the earthquake. While U.S. assistance has saved lives, rubble still has not been removed, hundreds of thousands of people remain in precarious conditions in camps, a cholera epidemic has had deadly impact, and many Haitians have not been able to rebuild their livelihoods and their lives. The U.S. government needs to listen harder to input from Haitian civil society about the best path toward recovery. But the United States should not cut funding or walk away. If you have visited Haiti, walked past the photos of Haiti in the Rayburn foyer or met with the Haitian civil society leaders here recently who are working so hard to help their communities, you know why we must commit to join with them to address this humanitarian crisis and strengthen the Haitian government’s capacity to meet the needs of its own people.

As the Congress considers tough choices, we urge you to preserve already very limited economic and institution-building programs for Latin America. Their impact on the U.S. budget is minimal, but their return, measured in increased goodwill, citizen security, alleviation of suffering and protection for human rights, is substantial. They benefit U.S. interests by building support from our neighbors in the hemisphere, showing that the United States can be a partner willing to lend a helping hand.

How many Mexican military and police personnel did the United States train in 2009? The answer varies very widely, depending on which official U.S. government source you consult.

Last May, a report from Republican staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [PDF] reproduced an entire State Department document about the status of aid deliveries to Mexico. This document showed that the U.S. Embassy’s Narcotics Affairs Section alone, spending funds from the State Department’s International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) program, trained 4,933 Mexican personnel in 2009.

But then last month the State Department produced its annual Foreign Military Training Report for 2009. In this report, required by Section 656 of the Foreign Assistance Act, the State Department must provide a full accounting of all foreign personnel trained in the past year.

The 4,933 Mexicans don’t appear in this report.

Instead, it shows only 5 Mexican personnel trained by the INCLE program, and 709 overall.

This massive discrepancy calls into question the reliability of State Department reporting, and whether congressional oversight personnel are getting the information that they requested when they put the Foreign Military Training Report into law.

It also calls into question the accuracy of the training data that we present on this website, since we rely heavily on this report. We’re left wondering what else we’re missing. Even as we await data for 2010 (the report for last year is now overdue, as the law requires State to submit it to Congress every January 31), we certainly can't say with confidence how many Mexicans received U.S. training in 2009.

Adam talks to Steven Dudley, co-founder of the recently launched website insightcrime.org, about this new resource and organized crime and narcotrafficking trends in the region.

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An incident surrounding the contents of a U.S. military plane has Washington's relations with Argentina in crisis. Adam discusses the episode, and its context, with Lucila Santos of WOLA.

See below for a fact sheet about the incident prepared by Lucila Santos.

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Argentina and the United States have been struggling for the last week with a diplomatic dispute over a U.S. Air Force plane that landed in Buenos Aires’ International airport on February 9^th. Below is a fact sheet on the dispute.

The plane: On Thursday February 10, a U.S. Air force plane C-17 Globemaster III, license 77187 was delayed in the Bs As' International Airport (Ezeiza) due to alleged irregularities. It was bringing weapons and equipment for a U.S.-funded training exercise to be conducted with Argentina's Federal Police.

The course: The course, previously approved by the Argentine government, was to be taught to the Special Operations Special Group from the Federal Police (Grupo Especial de Operaciones Especiales de la Policía Federal- GEOF, similar to a U.S. police SWAT team), which was to take place during February and March. La Nación reported that these security courses have taken place since 2009 with the Federal Police. The courses train local agents in rescue of kidnappings, anti-terrorist techniques, and marksmanship. It was to be taught by 12 US Special Operations’ officers.

The course was initially set to take place in August of 2010, but due to a similar incident, in which the plane bringing the equipment also landed with items that had not been declared, the course was postponed to February 2011. On that occasion, U.S. Ambassador Vilma Martinez sent the plane back to North Carolina. The weapons’ serial numbers did not coincide with the numbers on the Ambassador’s list. The Argentine government estimated that the total cost of the equipment’s transportation, and of the course, was approximately 2 million dollars.

The equipment: The Argentine government stated that the plane was carrying undeclared "sensitive material." Apparently, there were machine guns and rifles and ammunition, in addition to a strange suitcase, which had not been previously declared. The military and defense attaches, Colonels Edwin Passmore and Mark Alcott, were waiting for the plane. All boxes were stamped with the insignia of the U.S. Army 7^th Special Forces Group, with headquarters in North Carolina. Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman stated that the plane contained a range of weapons and drugs, including doses of morphine. It also, he said, contained equipment to intercept communications, various sophisticated and powerful GPS devices, technological elements containing codes labeled secret, and a trunk full of expired medicine.

The dispute: The State Department requested an explanation of the Kirchner government about the incident, and communicated its discomfort with the situation. The Argentine Foreign Affairs Ministry replied that it would send a formal protest to Washington and that it would require the U.S. government’s cooperation in its investigation. The Argentine ambassador in Washington was called to the State Department, and later Valenzuela called Timerman to express again the U.S. government’s discomfort and unease with the situation.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said that his department was "puzzled and disturbed by the actions of Argentine officials.” Crowley stated that the plane’s search was "unusual and unannounced" and that minor discrepancies in the manifest “were the kind of thing that could have been cleared up on the ground by customs officials.”

Subsequently, Matthew Rooney, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, stated that that it was a misunderstanding. The Argentine Foreign Ministry appreciated Rooney’s words. Rooney explained that even though there might have been discrepancies with the aircraft’s load, there was no intention to import into Argentina undeclared material. Argentina understood this as a positive sign towards reconciliation.

However, Frank Mora, who talked to the Argentine news channel TN, said that the information given by Timerman was false, and requested that the items retained by the Argentine Customs agency be returned to the United States immediately, in order to resolve the dispute. Aníbal Fernandez, the Chief of Cabinet, asked Mora to apologize for having accused the Argentine Foreign Affairs Minister of lying.

A U.S. State Department official told the Associated Press that all the key materiel in the shipment was properly declared and authorized by Argentina, describing the undeclared equipment as a minor problem with the plane's manifest that could have been resolved privately. For example, the official said, according to AP,

each machine gun and related equipment was declared. But extra gun barrels brought to replace barrels that overheat during live-fire exercises were seized because they lacked matching serial numbers (…) Also seized was a U.S. medic's kit, brought along in case anyone got injured. While the kit was declared, all the drugs inside weren't individually listed (…) The purported spy equipment is simply satellite phones, which the nine-member Special Forces training team carries with them in the field in case they must communicate through secure channels to their U.S. commanders (…) Only one of the three phones listed in the manifest was declared, and the inventory didn't specify all the related computer equipment or classified codes used to make the calls. All were seized. (…) Stretchers, bandages and military rations make up most of the rest of the undeclared equipment. Argentine officials told the Americans during planning for the training course not to worry about declaring such material, the official said.

This has been the only detailed explanation heard so far from the US side.

Argentina continues to insist that its laws were made to be enforced, and since Argentina respects the laws of other countries in their territories, any country should respect Argentina’s laws as well. This was emphasized by the Interior Minister, Florencio Randazzo. During a public presentation, President Fernandez de Kirchner also alluded to the importance of defending national sovereignty. Finally, Chief of Staff Aníbal Fernandez has said that under Argentine customs laws, Argentina can destroy the equipment seized. Meanwhile, an Argentine federal judge is demanding a full accounting from the foreign ministry, and some lawmakers vowed to hold investigative hearings.

Yesterday's post on the 2012 budget request noted a deep cut in military and police assistance to Mexico. We asked whether the Obama administration might be planning to keep providing this aid through other sources, like the defense budget or a special supplemental appropriation. It turns out that, in fact, what the State Department calls the "Beyond Mérida" initiative will be focused on civilian institution-building (something our organizations support), at a substantially lower level of funding.

A State Department background briefing with reporters yesterday makes clear that (1) Mexico will indeed be seeing a significant drop in military aid in 2012, and (2) Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's pledge of $500 million in aid during her Mexico visit last month was taken out of context. The Secretary was apparently referring to old, but as yet undelivered, aid. There also appears to be a bit of message confusion between State Department headquarters and the U.S. Embassy in Mexico.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Now, you may be asking why it is the 2012 request reflected a 250 million drop in assistance. While the 2012 request may appear to be a significant decrease from the 2010 enacted total of $582 million, this is largely because the Fiscal Year ’10 figure includes 260 million in one-time boosts in military assistance. This $260 million is providing much needed aircraft to the Mexican military, which is involved in the fight against cartels in areas where civilian law enforcement need support. We have since moved away from providing aircraft and other expensive equipment and toward a focus on strengthening justice sector institutions. And so that is the main reason why our budget for Mexico goes down from 2010 to 2012 is to reflect the end of these one-time equipment purchases.

...

QUESTION: Hey, Jesus Edquivel from Proceso Magazine in Mexico. Thank you for this conference. With regard to Merida Initiative, I just wonder why – Secretary Clinton, when she was in Mexico on January 26, announced that the package for help Mexico on the war on our cartels will be $500 million. So my question is: Why she say that? She wasn’t aware of the budget process with you guys? Or what was the reason that she mentioned that amount of money, but in reality it’s less than $500 million besides what is the official request in cooperation with 2010 fiscal year?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: I’ll have to go back and look at the Secretary’s statement, but what I guess is that the Secretary was talking about the current level of – the current program level in 2010. In January of this year, the Secretary wouldn’t be talking about our 2012 budget, which was just released yesterday. So we’ll have to go back and look at her statement and get you a more specific answer.

QUESTION: And if you allow me, since you guys gave the numbers yesterday, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico started sending a press release calling to the journalists that it was false, that this is a reduction of 250 millions with regard to 2010. So my question is: What was wrong? The U.S. Embassy in Mexico wasn’t aware of what you told reporters yesterday at the State Department briefing room, or they don’t know anything, or they’re just trying to give the impression to the Mexicans that the U.S. is still committed with the same amount of money to the Merida Initiative?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: I think what’s going on here is the number for 2012 is the number for 2012, and I think the issue is that the reason for the big – for the decrease is this one-time $260 million cost for the equipment that we received in 2010 but for which we no longer need. So again, I haven’t seen the press release that the Embassy sent out, but where – we should all be talking about the same numbers. And I think the reason for the 2012 number being different from the 2010 number is for that one-time set of equipment purchases that are no longer part of our budget.

The Obama administration's 2012 aid request for Latin America. Two hearings in Congress this week about U.S. policy toward the region. A bizarre episode highlights problems in U.S. relations with Argentina.

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