U.S. - Mexico Relations and Weapons Traffic: Mexico lawmakers livid over U.S. Operation 'Fast and Furious'

The 'Fast and Furious' scandal is heating up - both within Mexico and between Mexican politicians and the U.S. (As another post points out, the presidential election seasons has begun in both countries.)

Mexico lawmakers livid over U.S. Operation 'Fast and Furious'

Mexico has long complained that drug gangs are terrorizing cities with high-powered weapons smuggled from the United States. But Mexican lawmakers are now up in arms over the recent revelation that the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) purposefully allows some of these weapons to be smuggled south of the border so it can track them as part of "Operation Fast and Furious. ...

The controversy comes just as US-Mexico relations appeared to be on the mend following last week’s visit by President Felipe Calderón to the White House. But this latest problem seems to show that not much of substance was resolved at the leaders meeting, some experts say.

Javier Oliva, a security expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, wonders whether Mexico even knew about the operation. “The fact that the Mexican government is requesting information demonstrates that there isn’t much collaboration with the United States,” he says.

Mexico will use the ATF controversy to keep pressuring the US on arms trafficking, says Vanda Felbab-Brown, a Mexico expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“Now [Mexico] can say that the US is equally lacking in intelligence, and are equally having problems with efficiency of [its] programs,” she says. “It allows the Mexican government to deflect the focus from problems in Mexican institutions.”" Christian Science Monitor