Aileen Teague, Ph.D. is an expert on U.S. relations with Latin America.
Bryan/College Station, TX – On Nov. 20, the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy hosted a book talk featuring Aileen Teague, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of International Affairs, to launch her new book, “Policing on Drugs.” The book examines the motivations behind militarized antidrug interventions in Mexico and the United States, their effects and the roles that both countries have played in this war. The event opened with remarks from Raymond Robertson, Ph.D., director of the Mosbacher Institute, followed by the book presentation by Teague and an audience question-and-answer session.
Teague began by contextualizing the origins of militarized counternarcotics efforts, highlighting Operation Condor: a U.S.-backed Mexican herbicidal drug eradication program that stretched from 1976 to 1980 and marked one of America’s first efforts to deploy U.S. aircraft to dismantle drug trafficking using chemicals. Worried about spikes of heroin overdose in the United States by 1975, the American government offered military aid to Mexico, which culminated in Operation Condor as the first wave of militarized campaigns against drugs in Mexico. Teague argues that militarization against drugs brought deepened violence in Mexico instead of reducing drug use and trafficking.
She then described the second wave of militarized campaigns against drugs in Mexico under President Felipe Calderón, which led to military escalation and still did not yield the intended results of drug abuse and trafficking reduction. Teague noted that militarization efforts produced negligible and even counterproductive results, with the United States and Mexico having distinct security interests. On one hand, the United States had a geopolitical approach aiming at sole substance control with an aerial campaign that destroyed crops to reduce drug supply, while Mexico viewed the campaign as a mechanism for political control not only over the traffickers, but also over the left-leaning Institutional Revolutionary Party. Teague asserts in her book that this difference led to long-term negative effects in Mexico beyond drug control to high state repression in peripheral regions.
At the core of “Policing on Drugs,” Teague highlights that the contrast between United States and Mexican motives reveals unresolved narratives of the consequences of the militarized drug policy in both countries. While U.S. antidrug policy has focused on substance control, Mexican enforcement has embedded drug control within broader systems of political and social repression – resulting in violent unintended outcomes driven in part by American domestic priorities.
Teague emphasized that aggressive counternarcotics strategies have largely failed and often exacerbated instability. Latin American countries such as Brazil, El Salvador, and Ecuador have used force in cities, which drew criticism and accusations of human rights abuse. While the United States continues to fund enforcement, in Mexico, militarization has fragmented militias, paramilitaries, and criminal groups, each seeking a monopoly on violence and imposing order that they themselves undermine. Still, because military forces have not worked, reducing them does not equate to passivity. Instead, it requires prioritizing diplomacy, aid and multilateral engagement, Teague said.
During the Q&A session, Teague answered questions regarding Calderón’s shift from drug enforcement to political control, as well as the possibility of the Trump administration’s emphasis on border control to reduce support for Mexico’s drug war. She said that continued American support in the war against drugs in Mexico is likely.
