In early April, thousands of Mexicans poured into the streets in over 20 Mexican cities to raise their voices in a chorus of protest against the government's ineffective and increasingly unpopular military campaign against organized crime. That same week, authorities unearthed 145 murder victims in northeastern Mexico, not far from where 72 migrants were massacred last August. This gruesome discovery has further fueled the Mexican people's anger at the government's failure to stem spiraling violence that has led to over 35,000 dead in the past four years.
These mass mobilizations mark some of the most heated condemnation yet of violence and impunity associated with President Calderón's U.S.-supported "drug war." The day of protest has been described as a historic "sea change" in Mexican public opinion as well as an unprecedented rejection of the Mexican Army's role in public security efforts.
While frustration with the Mexican government's failure to stem the violence has been building for some time, these most recent protests were spurred by the murder of seven young people, one of whom was the son of acclaimed Mexican author Javier Sicilia. Upon hearing the news that his 24-year-old son had been murdered, Sicilia called for nationwide demonstrations in a stirring open letter to Mexico's "politicians and criminals," declaring that "we will go out into the street: because we do not want one more child, one more son, assassinated."
Sicilia's grief and "cry of indignation" resonated with Mexicans across the country and proved to be a catalyst for unified action. But the protesters are not alone in calling for a new strategy.
Just a week earlier, the United Nations released a report urging Mexican authorities to immediately withdraw the armed forces from "public security operations and criminal law enforcement" as a critical step to prevent forced disappearances. Simply put, the UN is urging Mexico to send its soldiers back to the barracks.
The UN findings indicate that security forces have played a role in disappearances. Mexico's own National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) agrees, citing that 5,397 people have been reported missing since 2006 when a newly inaugurated Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of soldiers across the country in an effort to pursue drug cartels. CNDH president Raúl Plascencia Villanueva echoed the UN recommendation when he urged the Mexican government to revise its public security strategy, emphasizing that only the police ought to carry out public security operations.
Mexicans are fed up, and for a good reason. Reports of grisly human rights abuses committed by the military, including torture, rape, and murder, have gone unchecked. Over 4,000 complaints of human rights violations have been filed with Mexico's National Human Rights Commission since President Calderón took office. Yet the notoriously opaque military tribunals have sentenced only one soldier for a human rights violation committed during the Calderón administration.
For years, as complaints of abuses by the military multiplied, rights groups have demanded that basic human rights be protected and that putting an end to rampant impunity is the enduring and effective solution to contesting organized crime, not military might. Without full and fair investigations, prosecutions and conviction, criminals -- both organized crime and corrupt officials -- will continue to be let off the hook, victims will continue to be denied justice, and the climate of lawlessness in which violence thrives will continue to undermine public support for efforts to ensure public safety.
The L.A. Times noted on Monday that the recent discovery of mass graves in northern Mexico should serve as a catalyst to advance desperately-needed judicial reforms in order to address skyrocketing levels of violence and impunity and restore the public's trust. Yet the Mexican government's response to these most recent slayings has been to send in more troops to patrol the streets. The Mexican people, however, have resoundingly called for a fresh, more effective strategy that respects human rights and upholds the rule of law.
With a looming presidential election, Calderón is quick to deny that he is losing the battle against organized crime. But as the Mexican people demonstrated earlier this month, he has already lost the fight over public opinion.
Now, there are no easy answers in tackling brutal drug-related violence. And there's no question that the United States has failed to put its own house in order by taking an effective public health approach to addressing drug treatment and prevention and reining in trafficking of arms and bulk cash that fuels the violence in Mexico. Nevertheless, the Mexican government can do more to regain the trust and confidence of its people, starting with a well thought-out strategy to remove the military from the streets, hold corrupt officials who collude with organized crime accountable, fiercely protect human rights, and ensure a competent judicial system that can deliver real justice. That, perhaps, will be a strategy the Mexican people can believe in.
The Latin America Working Group's Ben Leiter and Jennifer Johnson were lead authors on this blog.
Follow Lisa Haugaard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LAWGAction
Time for a new strategy? You bet. Legalization would be a good first step. But don't expect the cartels to go away just because you kill the drugs business. They're way beyond that now.
Friends that live in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, the site of the recent mass grave findings of kidnapped & murdered bus passengers, tell us that there are really no local police left; better than half the local force was arrested by the federal authorities for complicity and the rest have fled. A family member with a small business in a northern state capital has been kidnapped once, threatened repeatedly, and at last report is paying extortion money just to stay in business & prevent reprisals against his family. He isn't an exception to the "normal" state of affairs here.
There are 3rd & 4th string cities down here -so the unofficial reporting goes- where nearly the entire local business community has had to flee to the U.S. from where they try to run their concerns via remote control over the internet & telephone. There are Mexican-Americans in the states making good money helping them to
President Calderon may be blowing it, but only because he's committed less than a twentieth of the troops necessary to even start the job. If there ever was a point where calling off the army & marines would have been beneficial, that ship sailed long ago. The police, even the federal police forces which have some modicum of professionalism while still being largely clueless, are outnumbered and outgunned. They are also --if not completely corrupt, certainly significantly corrupt. Especially the local cops that have next to no training / schooling at all and are much more likely to be in the service of the drug lords. That is, if they want to stay alive. I'm not saying this to insult them, but it's just the way things are. I've lived here close to 40 years and I'm not making this up.
Those working on the border, prison employees, their suppliers and the companies that sell to the suppliers. Lots of empty cells so many prisons would be closed.
It almost always ends up being about money…much like what would happen if we put the Pentagon on a diet.
“Gee dad, that sure made me feel different.”
“Well son I think you are now old enough to have a sip of my coffee.”
“Gee dad, that sure made me feel different.”
“Well son I think you are now old enough to have a Coca Cola.”
“Gee dad, that sure made me feel different.”
“Well son I think you are now old enough to have a beer.”
“Gee dad, that sure made me feel different.”
We start grooming them right out of the crib.
Because Drug cartels will always have an endless supply of ready cash for wages, bribery and equipment, no amount of tax money, police powers, weaponry, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safe again. Only an end to prohibition can do that! How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?
If you support the Kool-Aid mass suicide cult of prohibition, and erroneously believe that you can win a war without logic and practical solutions, then prepare yourself for even more death, tortured corpses, corruption, terrorism, sickness, imprisonment, economic tribulation, unemployment and the complete loss of the rule of law.
The only thing prohibition successfully does is prohibit regulation & taxation while turning even our schools and prisons into black markets for drugs. Regulation would mean the opposite!
Let’s see how this works. Your substance abusers need drugs, why are you not supplying them with "Home Grown" drugs?
Let’s see how this works. You don't want to clean motel rooms, wash cars or dishes so you shout out across the border, "Come on up we have plenty of jobs."
I'd say the problem is on your side of the border with very lax laws and not enough people willing to get their hands dirty.
So you might be well advised to look in your own backyard which is in dire need of a good cleaning.
That is so much bullsh-- or aren't you familiar with that period of our history so well captured by the film "Grapes of Wrath" where people routinely "followed the crops" across this vast nation? My own wife's family were such people and they didn't need illegal aliens to assist them.
Mexico has many more problems than drugs; it is not a poor country despite all hte bull being spread, it has all the necessary ingredients to be prosperous, natural resources, etc., what it also has, in large measure, is a distinct separation between the haves and the have nots. In other words, in the country which has produced the world's richest man, we have poverty to the point where the government of Mexico actively encourages the "migration" of its citizens northward. When you have numbers like 12 to 20 million illegal entries into another country that is an invasion and it should be repelled with force. Invasion is an act of war. We should be at war with Mexico.
http://www.rationalpublicradio.com/bring-the-tropps-home-from-the-drug-war.html
If you think prohibiting the manufacture and distribution/sale will stop evil people from having guns, you are sorely, sorely mistaken. It would take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens however...and trample their liberties given them by the 2nd amendment.
Anyone with any mechanical ability can make a gun in their garage.
Anyone with any botanical ability can grow drugs in their basement.
See the similarities? You decry pro-gun, anti-drug-legalization...yet you are anti-gun, pro-drug-legalization......your theologies are hypocritical (as are any pro-gunners out there that are anti-drug-legalization).
Here we are back to "assault weapons" bans again. I guess he thinks that prohibiting guns will work even though prohibiting drugs does not. How the heck to you condemn prohibition in one breath and then promote it in the next?
Wow.
US taxpayers and the Mexican undocumented are both victims of the their respective country's elite.
I have a plan that might work if people would consider it.
http://twopesos-protestfortheundocumented.blogspot.com/2011/04/imagine-two-countries-saying-estamos.html
http://www.watchnewspapers.com/view/full_story/10513105/article-Former-Border-Patrol-Agent-Confronts-His-Past-With-Music?instance=local_news
And then, let's eliminate greed, violence and bigotry around the world!!
good grief...EVERYONE knows that corruption there is irrevocably engrained in every level of government (national/state/local)...every police force...commerce...the military. And it's been that way for 100 years.
Legalizing drugs here would indeed slow/stop the narco-gang related killings...but that infrastructure is now entrenched, so the gangs would just turn to new & improved ways of making money through brutal, illegal, activities (extorting everyday citizens/businesses...kidnappings would skyrocket...so would human trafficking.
Because corruption is so widespread among so many levels/sections of public officialdom, I just can't see how it can be reversed. It's like in sci-fi movies where the alien pod-thing attaches itself to a human& extends it's controlling tendrils so deeply into the host that it would die if the invader was removed.
Even law enforcement groups favor legalization and ironically the the most lethal and addictive substances - tobacco and alcohol - are actually procured OTC in every state without exception.
Legalize, regulate, declare the war over, and use the money to make American industry more competitive with other nations which long ago have taken the employer out of the health care equation.
You might consider taking down the signs or better yet toss those that employ them in the slammer.