http://www.mexidata.info/id748.html

Monday, January 16, 2006

Mexico Moves to Renovate its Navy

By Barnard R. Thompson

During the first week of January 2006, Mexican President Vicente Fox sent a reform initiative to Congress that will bring the Mexican Navy up to speed administratively with the already important role it is playing in the Western Hemisphere. Guidelines, rules and regulations that will more clearly spell out the navy’s role in not only safeguarding the nation and its resources while watching over maritime and coastal activities, but too its part in combating potential terrorism, narcotics trafficking, gunrunning, people smuggling and other crimes.

The proposal was immediately sent to the Navy Committee of the Chamber of Deputies for analysis.

In order to strengthen the Secretariat of the Navy, as well as naval forces and operations, Fox is first calling for revisions to Mexico’s Organic Law of Federal Public Administration. Article 30 of that law governs the Secretariat of the Navy, and it currently includes 19 points that outline the areas of responsibility and involvement of the ministry and those it commands.

Admiral Marco Antonio Peyrot González is Mexico’s Secretary of the Navy, and in a recent newspaper interview he noted that the Regulations of the Mexican Navy, that were last modified in 1976, are also out of date. Those too will be reformed and modernized, once Article 30 of the aforementioned law is amended.

Included in the material now before Congress are plans to give the Mexican Navy a greater role as “maritime police,� further validating duties that, for comparative clarity only, are carried out in the United States by the U.S. Coast Guard. Other similar activities include the detailing of search and rescue, safety of human life and assistance at sea, vessel protection, and maritime vigilance and security in accordance with national laws, as well as international treaties and conventions.

“President Vicente Fox has proposed reforms to Article 30 of the Law. A basic change, with the inclusion of the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that was not in the legislation, is the Navy will be empowered to exercise state authority at sea, and carryout the rule of law in order to prevent whatever violation in the same,� Admiral Peyrot said.

This includes the possibility of search and seizure of suspect vessels in not only Mexico’s 12-mile territorial waters, but too in the EEZ. As well, the amendments include responsibilities that range from watch over Mexico’s coastal and island area natural reserves and guarding against illegal fishing, to taking needed measures against terrorism and drug trafficking.

All of this, the admiral noted, is also based on Mexico’s participation in international treaties and conventions. And he should have added part of the ongoing cooperation with the United States in the global war against terrorism by the Mexican Secretariats of National Defense, and the Navy.

Mexican navy personnel are also taking special antiterrorism courses in the United States, at different military installations. According to news reports, over the past three years 13 cadre members of the Mexican military have completed the Counterterrorism Fellowship Program, sponsored by the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency. Of those six were naval officers.

Among others, courses completed by those from the navy have included Response by Civilians and the Military to Terrorism; Intelligence in the Fight against Terrorism; and the Regional Defense Program against Terrorism. The latter course, again quoting the Mexican media, focused on watch over strategic installations, above all oil and gas fields and facilities, nuclear electric plants (Mexico has one at Laguna Verde, Veracruz), hydroelectric facilities, and thermoelectric plants.

While the reform proposals for the navy may include directives related to people smuggling and the interdiction of foreigners, it is interesting to note that nothing was said about Mexican emigrants. Not until Peyrot was asked by reporters about the U.S. proposed border walls, and undocumented Mexican migrants trying to get into the United States illegally.

Peyrot noted that walls could force some Mexican and Central American migrants to take to the sea as alternate routes to illegally enter the U.S. However, over the past two years few bodies of migrants, who drowned trying to get into the United States, have been found in contiguous Mexican waters he added.

Moving his emphasis from the northern border to Mexico’s southern boundary, Peyrot said that before two years ago it was common to find 20 or 30 undocumented corpses, people who to keep from being detected capsized their boats. Or as was the case in Chiapas, traffickers leading the migrants would wreck and their passengers would drown while using the rocky coastline to evade authorities.