WASHINGTON — Arizona and Mexico need more federal help to keep the brutal violence of the Mexican drug cartels from spilling over into the United States, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard told a Senate panel Tuesday.
“The explosion of violence we have seen in Mexico will not be contained there unless the Mexican government’s courageous effort to confront and destroy the drug cartels is successful,” Goddard told a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It is in the interest of the United States to assist Mexico in that effort and to step up our own law enforcement activities to dismantle the criminal organizations operating across the border.”
Specifically, Goddard called on Congress to increase funding for the Merida Initiative, a cooperative agreement among the United States, Mexico and Central American nations to combat drug and weapons smuggling and human trafficking across the border. The program provides U.S. funds to Mexico and Central America to provide equipment and training to fight the cartels.
But a professor from Mexico City warned that the violence will continue unless the demand for drugs in the U.S. is reduced.
“The U.S. government needs to grasp that this is a war that will never be won, that will never end with a certain triumph of the forces of good over the forces of evil, if the demand for drugs here is not stymied,” said Denise Dresser Guerra, a political science professor at the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico.