EL ARTICULO DEL NYT

This article is by Randal C. Archibold, Damien Cave and Elisabeth Malkin. Susana Gonzalez for The New York Times

In a recent wide-ranging interview, President Felipe Calderón said, “Mexico must be cleaned up, and it is up to me to do it.”
MEXICO CITY — As the twilight of his presidency sets in, President Felipe Calderón of Mexico is striving to lock in the militarized approach to drug cartels that has defined his tenure, pushing aside public doubts and pressing lawmakers to adopt strategies he hopes will outlast him.

Mr. Calderón has recently stepped up calls for Mexico’s Congress to approve stalled initiatives to remake state and local police forces, codify the military’s role in fighting crime and broaden its powers, toughen the federal penal code and tighten laws to stop money laundering.

At this pivotal point, with violence swelling and presumptive candidates jockeying for position ahead of Mexico’s presidential election in July, Mr. Calderón has limited time to make the case that his strategy has worked.

He insists that the country will eventually become more secure, although about 40,000 people have been killed since he declared his war against organized crime. He began waging it shortly after taking office in 2006 as violence climbed, and he has continued pressing his offensive against drug organizations as they have splintered and descended into bloody infighting over territory and criminal rackets.

But in a wide-ranging interview, he could not say that his approach had made Mexico safer.

“What I can say is Mexico will be safer,” he said, “and to have not acted, it would have deteriorated much more.”

It is a nuanced, difficult argument to make as his party, the right-of-center National Action Party, faces the real prospect of losing the presidency, raising the question of whether Mr. Calderón’s approach will continue after his six-year term ends next year. Term limits prevent him from running again.

The killings in Mexico have reached such a point, analysts say, that no matter who wins the election, there will be intense pressure for a new course to somehow ease the violence without giving in to the cartels. The new president will also face demands from the United States, which has invested heavily in personnel, equipment and expertise and whose political leaders worry about the growing reach of transnational gangs.

“There seems to be a growing consensus that there needs to be a more refined strategy, a more targeted strategy, a more nuanced strategy,” said Eric Olson, a senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “It’s anybody’s guess what that will be.”

The inability to control the violence, with fresh horrors nearly every week, has rattled even some admirers in the United States Congress, who have begun to question publicly whether Mr. Calderón’s strategy — supported by the $1.4 billion in anticrime aid the United States is providing through the multiyear Merida Initiative — is making progress.

“I admire him for taking them head on, which is a very dangerous thing to do,” said Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican on the House Committee on Homeland Security. “He is the first president to confront the problem and do something about it. But has it been 100 percent successful? Not at all. It seems to keep getting worse.”

The Obama administration, too, while consistently praising Mr. Calderón for taking on the cartels and making some gains against its leaders, has remained concerned about the violence, the spread of Mexican drug gangs into Central America, and the slow pace of strengthening law enforcement and judicial institutions.

“Mexico’s military and police still struggle to break the trafficking organizations or contain criminal violence,” Philip S. Goldberg, an assistant secretary of state, testified in a House hearing on Thursday. He also said that “rising violence is taking a toll on public perceptions of the government’s ability to defeat the trafficking organizations.”

As he took stock of his presidency, Mr. Calderón emphasized what he considered his triumphs, including creating jobs, expanding health care, arresting or killing more than two dozen cartel leaders, and pushing efforts to build trustworthy police and judicial institutions, as well as social programs to fight the root causes of crime.

Still, coming close to self-criticism for someone who has typically blamed the United States or Mexican lawmakers for what goes wrong, Mr. Calderón said he would have shored up state and local police forces that were now overwhelmed as well as hobbled by inexperience, lack of training, incompetence and corruption.

“We would have done it in a more aggressive, much more determined way from the start,” he said.

No doubt, especially outside Mexico, Mr. Calderón, whom American officials credit for raising cooperation with United States law enforcement agencies to extraordinary levels, has won praise for taking on the fight and steering the Mexican economy through the global financial crisis.

“He has done amazing things for Mexico,” said Susan Segal, president of the Americas Society in New York, which gave Mr. Calderón an award last month to a standing ovation. “Mexico has some of the best economic management in the world, and this is the first time Mexico has taken on a lot of really bad people.”

But back at home his approval among voters, 53 percent, according to a recent poll, has fallen to a point lower than the ratings for any recent Mexican president at this point in the six-year term.

“He has not been able, maybe because it has been very difficult to impossible, to explain to Mexicans why the security fight is worth fighting,” said Luis de la Calle, Mexico’s under secretary for international trade from 1999 to 2002.

PS

A version of this article appeared in print on October 16, 2011, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Mexican Leader Wants Drug War Set in Law.