Via CNN: Mexican drug lords to face U.S. trials, Fox says

Mexico will begin extraditing drug lords wanted in the United States within weeks and expects a violent backlash from the powerful cartels, President Vicente Fox said on Wednesday.

Fox told Reuters the legal process of handing over traffickers on the U.S. government’s list had begun.

This is interesting, if anything because it echoes a similar path taken by Colombia over time during the drug war: using extradition to the US of suspected drug traffickers as a tool in the drug fight (as well as a means to placate the US).

The extradition issue is a complex one that intersects the issue of national sovereignty. While most Americans’ first response to such issues is, no doubt, that we are simply better equipped to dispense justice than the Mexicans, it is understandably difficult for Mexico to see it that way–especially since these individuals committed a large number of crimes within Mexico. (And, of course, there is no doubt that the US judicial system is superior to that of Mexico, and our level of corruption far lower–not to mention it is easier for Mexican cartels to intimidate judges within their own country).

At any rate, extradition always has a political dimension that taps into issues of national pride.

In the Colombian case from the 1980s to now, we have gone through differing periods regarding extradition, from cooperation to lack of cooperation (including, for a time, the declaration that the practice was unconstitutional). Currently the Uribe administration has been the most cooperative with the US on this count.

The violence issue is another key issue: the traffickers in question don’t want to be extradited, so are often willing to ratchet up the violence considerably so as to create political pressure in opposition to the process. Certainly this was the case in Colombia in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Given that the main nexus of the illicit drug industry has shifted to Mexico, it will be intriguing to watch how this develops.