This week, high-level US and Mexican officials spoke out in favor of Plan Mérida, the three-year, $1.4 billion anti-drug package designed to assist the Mexican government in its ongoing battle with violent drug trafficking organizations. But at the same time officials like Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were visiting Latin America to seek support for the plan, at a forum on drug policy in Culiacán, Sinaloa, home of one of the most feared of the drug trafficking groups, the Sinaloa Cartel, there was little but criticism of the proposed aid package.

Ríodoce cover -- Sinaloa keeps bleeding. Why more (soldiers)?

But despite the massive military deployments in border cities from Tijuana in the west to Reynosa and Matamoros in the east, as well as in the states of Guerrero, Michoacán, and Sinaloa -- all traditional drug-producing areas -- and the high praise from Washington, Calderon's drug war has not gone well. Roughly 2,000 people were killed in Mexico's drug war last year, and with this year's toll already approaching 1,000, 2008 looks to be even bloodier. Yet the flow of drugs north and guns and cash south continues unimpeded.

Bush administration and Mexican officials met over a period of months last year and early this year to craft a joint response that would see $500 million a year in assistance to Mexico, primarily in the form of helicopters and surveillance aircraft. Known as Plan Mérida, after the Mexican city in which it took final form, the assistance package is now before the US Congress.

Congressional failure to fund the package would be "a real slap at Mexico," Secretary of Defense Gates said in Mexico City Tuesday as he met with General Guillermo Galván, the Mexican defense minister, Government Secretary Juan Mouriño, and Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa. "It clearly would make it more difficult for us to help Mexican armed forces and their civilian agencies deal with this difficult problem," he told reporters.

The same day, Attorney General Mukasey was in San José, Costa Rica, where in a speech to justice ministers from across the hemisphere, he, too, urged Congress to approve the aid package. Drugs, gangs, and violent crime on the border are "a joint problem -- and we must face it jointly," he said. "By working together, we can strengthen the rule of law and the administration of justice, and we can combat transnational criminal threats," Mukasey said.

That is what the Mexican government wants to hear. It negotiated the aid package, and although President Calderón's ruling National Action Party (PAN) does not hold a majority in the Mexican congress, it can count on the support of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) on the aid deal. Of the three major parties in the Mexican congress, only the left-leaning Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) is raising concerns about the package, but the PRD is not strong enough in the congress to block it.

But while official Mexico may want passage of the package, a number of Mexican intellectuals, academics, political figures, and former military officers attacked the plan to beef up the Mexican military for US drug war aims at a forum this week at the International Forum on Illicit Drugs hosted by the Culiacán weekly newsmagazine Ríodoce.

"The US wants to fight drugs, crime, and terrorism. Bush and Calderón have been talking about a new Plan Colombia, but the anti-drug policies pursued so far have been a failure," said Ríodoce managing editor Ismael Bojórquez, as he opened the conference. "The phenomenon of drug trafficking is very complex and reaches deeply into the fabric of our society. The system benefits from the drug trade; the profits from it enter into our economy and have benefited many businesses. Few sectors have been able to resist the easy money. In a country that has not been able to improve conditions for poor Mexicans, the drug trade is an attractive alternative," he explained.

"Our government has authorized the use of federal police and even soldiers to attack the drug trade, but this strategy is mistaken and the government has wasted million of dollars that could have gone to productive ends," Bojórquez added.

"Our foreign policy has been subordinated to that of the Americans, the policemen of the world," said Mexican political figure Jorge Ángel Pescador Osuna, the former Mexican consul general in Los Angeles. "Fortunately, this Plan Mérida initiative has yet to be approved by the US Congress, and hopefully, the voice of Mexico will be heard in this debate. We think there are real solutions that are within the grasp of the government and civil society," he said.

"They want to spend $500 million the first year, half of which will go to buy military equipment and advanced technologies," said Pescador Osuna. "My first response is how nice. But then I have to ask why we should use the military in areas that are outside its competence. What we need here is to strengthen our democracy, and we will not accomplish that by using the military for civilian law enforcement."

"These kinds of anti-drug policies that focus on policing are overwhelmingly simplistic," concurred Colombian economist Francisco Thoumi, director of the Center for Drug and Crime Studies at the University of Rosario in Bogota. "They do not attack the problem at the base," he argued. "The drug trade is a capitalist industry, and it accepts the losses of interdiction and eradication as a cost of doing business. This kind of enforcement looks good on TV and makes politicians and police happy, but the industry goes on, and this doesn't solve the problem."

"The idea with this is to give power to the armed forces," said Luis Astorga, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City and head of a UNESCO program devoted to understanding the ramifications of the international drug trade. "Calderon is doing nothing more or less than reconfiguring the anti-drug struggle in Mexico by putting it in the hands of the military. One question is how long this will last," he noted.

General Francisco Gallardo, a leading advocate of human rights within the Mexican armed forces, was also critical. "The context for Plan Mérida is this new world order where the US struggle for hegemony with China and the European Union," he argued. "The US has militarized its foreign policy, and it wants us to militarize our drug enforcement. But the function of the army is to defend the sovereignty of the state, not to fight crime. That is the job of the police," he said.

"Involving the military under the auspices of Plan Mérida does not respond to Mexican interests," Gallardo said. "It has a bad effect on the institutional and judicial order of the nation. The soldiers who kill innocents are absolved; they have impunity," he said, citing the cases of several mass killings by soldiers in Sinaloa, including an incident in Santiago de Caballero in the mountains above Culiacán in late March, in which four unarmed young men in a Hummer were killed by soldiers on an anti-drug mission. "The drug trade is a matter for police and the justice system, not the military," Gallardo concluded.

While the Bush and Calderón administrations are seeking to steamroll opposition to the proposed aid package, it is clear that Plan Mérida is drawing heated criticism in Mexico. What is less clear is whether that opposition can successfully block the initiative on the Mexican side. Right now, the best prospects for that appear to lie in the US Congress.

The endemic drug prohibition-related violence in Rio de Janeiro took another bloody turn March 3, when Brazilian police trying to catch members of the city's powerful drug-dealing enterprises killed at least 11 residents of a poor neighborhood, according to reports citing the Associated Press. Despite the death toll, the primary target of the raid, a suspected gang leader, apparently got away.

favela neighborhood, Rio de Janeiro

Television footage showed bodies lying on the streets in the favelas of Coréia and Vila Aliança after the raids. Favelas are the shantytowns that rise on the mountainsides above the city proper. Chronically underserved by the state, favela residents and local quasi-governmental organizations are locked in a variety of symbiotic relationships with both the drug gangs, or "comandos," and the police who make a living combating them.

Often patrolled by police only at their entrances -- except for the occasional raid -- the favelas provide a geographic base for the comandos, as well as retail outlets, or "bocas," for retail drug sales to favela-dwellers, and residents of the city proper.

Conflict between police and the comandos has resulted in frequent outbursts of violence, including coordinated attacks by comandos on police posts and the urban transportation system. Last year, some 1,300 people were killed in Rio's drug wars.

Last week's killings come less than a month after President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva visited Rio favelas to inaugurate an infrastructure development project. At the time, he warned police to treat local residents with respect.

Five years ago, the Thai government of then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawtra launched a bloody "war on drugs" in which an estimated 2,500 people were killed. Now, his political allies have announced that its successor has gotten underway, but they say they will not resort to extra-judicial executions of suspected drug peddlers and users.

Thai officials attend NGO human rights panel slamming Thai government at UN drug summit in Vienna last month

But Interior Minister Chalerm Yoobumrung, who is in charge of the campaign, sounded more ominous. The government would follow the rule of law, he said, then added: "If anyone does not want to die, don't walk this road," he said.

Chalerm said he had a list of 10,000 drug users compiled by police. "I can assure you all in the media that you will not get bored -- you will witness new and bold measures in this campaign," he said.

During the last Thai "war on drugs," human rights organizations accused the government of allowing police and soldiers to murder drug suspects. Thaksin defended his repressive apparatus, saying the deaths were "bad guys killing bad guys," and an investigation of his government by his government claimed security forces were acting in self-defense.

Thai officials complained that drug abuse had increased in the past two years. According to the Thai Justice Ministry, there are an estimated 570,000 drug users, up from 460,000 in 2003. While heroin is available, the most significant hard drug is methamphetamine.