"They killed someone at my brother's football game. It was the father of one of the boys who was playing. The game stopped for twenty minutes, the ambulance came, and the man was put into a bag and taken away. Then the game resumed. It's crazy here."
The voice of the 24-year-old girl seemed like the only one speaking in the crowded hotel restaurant last Wednesday morning in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. I won't reveal her name for obvious reasons; let's call her Luiza.
Just a month before I had lunch with Luiza, I had lunch with Vice President Biden, Secretary Clinton and President Calderon in Washington, D.C. But from what they spoke about during lunch, you'd never think what Luiza was talking about was in reference to the same place.
They discussed an apparently new Mexico: a place where drug cartels have been confronted and disarmed, where problems are subsiding and where US commerce is welcome and practical.
Luiza, on the other hand, says murder is so common it is often ignored, that gory deaths that involve body mutilation don't make front-page news anymore. How could two perspectives be so different?
While Luiza is working as an architect in Juarez, and spending her weekends refurbishing the city's community centers, we Americans are losing focus on the urgency of this situation.
On my various plane rides to and from El Paso, Texas, from where I cross into the murder capital of the world, and in the responses I've gotten to my blog posts, public speeches and media appearances, it's apparent that we're ready to watch - and have already started watching - the world's next genocide take place. But for the sake of definitions, I'll call it pseudo-genocide, because no certain nationality or racial group is being wiped out, but instead the culture of northern Mexico.
Most people who engage with or respond to me on this topic think we need to legalize drugs in both Mexico and the US in order to solve the problem in Juarez. Those people may be right. Some Mexicans theorize that the newly erected wall on our border has made it so difficult to smuggle drugs into the US that the market has become localized. That is, the drugs are more present than ever in the Mexican border towns because their usual path to the US has been blocked, causing more drug-related crime and murder in places like Juarez.
Unfortunately, choosing the legalization of drugs as the stopper to this problem at this stage would be like pointing to the need to rebuild, waterproof and completely evacuate New Orleans right in the middle of Hurricane Katrina. The pseudo-genocide in Juarez is a living and breathing thing. Legalizing drugs right now would increase the mayhem; you don't experiment with policy change in the middle of a firestorm. And let's be real here: it's not going to happen, so let's move the discussion onward to a possible solution.
Do you remember the drama, the documentaries, the blame, the outspoken Hollywood actors and the apparently guilty politicians that the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur brought? As of now, those elements are missing from places like Ciudad Juarez. But what isn't missing is pointless political drama here in the US that ignores the grave situation on the other side of the border.
The controversial Arizona law that keeps every major news outlet busy these days is petty compared to the drug war. And President Obama's speech on immigration reform lacked the urgency over - it failed to mention - the issue that we're ignoring.
It's simple. We need to invest in community building, in a restructuring of civil society. We need to combat the mentality that murder is okay. But we won't. And most of you are rolling your eyes at the idea. But it's never been tried on the mass scale that this situation requires.
The death toll will continue to rise, majorly. And all we're going to be able to say as Americans is that we talked about irrational solutions while the killings took place, and that we barked across the political isle about a situation that should have been solved years ago.
Our neighbors to the south are suffering and we're showing them how little we care. After all, don't the drug cartels pose more of a threat to our security than the Taliban? Seems like we could use some effort closer to home.
Follow Michael Evans on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@sportsdiplomat
How would it increase the mayhem? They are already at war. Cutting off some of their money would reduce their effectiveness rapidly. Let's keep going with our failed policy because its failing. There is some logic.
"And let's be real here: it's not going to happen, so let's move the discussion onward to a possible solution."
The reason it is not going to happen is because of collaborators like you who stand in the way of change.
"...would be like pointing to the need to rebuild, waterproof and completely evacuate New Orleans right in the middle of Hurricane Katrina."
This is complete nonsense. The drug war has been causing violence for decades. And the violence has been used as an excuse to continue with failed policies for decades.
How am I a collaborator? Where is the logic in that name calling?
I would lament to be called a stagnant, non-actor. Anyone who is seemingly so intensely passionate about the failures of the current policies would also be intensely passionate about fixing the problem, right?
My comparison to Katrina is not nonsense. The violence has been happening for decades, but has it ever been this bad? Nope. It's the middle of the storm.
Finally, I agree that the policies have failed. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
And that is the side Mexico has chosen. On the one side, they assist the cartels as much as they can in controling towns and getting their products into the US. For this they must be paid hansomely because there is rumor that Calderon had some funding from the drug cartels for his presidential campaign.
On the other, they want the US to keep subsidizing Calderon's "War On Drugs", and send tons of money, weapons and military equipment. Which we do.
Without legalizing drugs, it will take Mexico getting seriously involved with border security and quit playing games about it to slow the violence.
But then there is one other rumor about the vaunted Drug War...that it is in truth a revolution going on under our noses.
Another way it would help is to keep vehicles from simply driving across the border with small aresnals for the drug gangs. Right now there is nothing to stop them. It is quite simple, no smuggling routes, no warfare over them.
Free trade agreements are not working to help the impoverished. Rather they are enabling the wealthy to become more wealthy. Poverty continues, and the US is growing more poor by the minute. Any google search on the subject shows unequivocally that free trade agreemensts as well as NAFTA is not working, and in fact hurts farmers, and small businesses, as big business moves in and takes over.
From Canada:
“Only those in the top one percent of the income scale saw significant growth in earnings, the report said.”
And yet, “The AFL CIO, a federation of more than fifty American and international labor unions, said the US trade deficit with Mexico and Canada has almost quadrupled since NAFTA went into effect, costing more than three quarters of a million jobs.
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2009/02/09/f-nafta-update.html
And it is not working in Mexico.
http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/NAFTAsUntoldStoriesJune03TW.pdf
And of course, I am always welcome to go where they are illegal. That is here. Wow. Imagine that.
Ending the prohibition isn't going to solve that problem and the pot smokers know it. They are simply taking advantage of a serious crisis to suit their own needs.
Are we supposed to be fooled by their narcissist whinings about pot? I am not. I know 10 young boys and men dead of drug over doses by perscriptions.
There have been no sincere efforts to fight drug addictions in America. Wouldn't the drug companies and stock holders have a fit if there was.
I know a group of people who visit a colonia along the border every couple months. These trips do help the people there, not only because of the basic food, clothing and school supplies they provide, but in less tangible ways that also benefit those who go. While the influence of such personal outreach is unquantifiable, there is no doubt that it aids in understanding the real situations in places very different from those to which most in the US are accustomed. Even a bit of immersion in the daily realities of most people along the border can give one a new perspective on it all. I have no patience for those who blame illegal immigrants as a whole for anyone's problems, nor for those who insist on sealing the border and doing nothing beyond that to help improve the situation in northern Mexico. Actions by Americans have altered the situation considerably, from the impact of NAFTA on Mexico's small farms to the overwhelming, all-encompassing effects of the drugs war. Both of those cause many to have to move, through no fault of their own. It isn't accurate to think what happens south of the border is independent of what happens north. Nor, obviously, vice versa.
I wish you all the best and success in your efforts. Paz, con cuidado.
My view on this is that legalization needs to become a realistic approach, because other approaches aren't going to be the humane ones Evans advocates. At the present time, the official "solutions" to the border problem and the ungovernability of parts of Mexico are to militarize them. If the US government exerts enough political pressure, money and firepower, the cartels can be forced underground and temporarily paralyzed. This is probably going to happen, and the consequence would be that Mexico become more like a military dictatorship than a democratic republic. Officially, martial law would be declared "until the crisis is over," but the crisis would not end anytime soon because this would in effect crush the peoples' expectations of political reform that have been building ever since the PRI lost their monopoly.
And of course the drugs traffic would just go elsewhere and take on insidious new forms like it always does.
The US law enforcement and military would be heavily involved in any such scenario, are in fact becoming more so by the day. Post length limit prevents explaining why this is bad, but it should be obvious.
Is the drugs war worth all that?
Will America lose it's precious rights? Oh well. When the adult citizenty refuses to protect it's most precious resource, children, they don't deserve any better than what they gave those children. Death. Poverty. Ignorance, by failure of the educational system.
Yes, the war on drugs is worth saving one American child from the devastaing ills of drug abuse. Saving that one child is not different than saving his future children from poverty and abuse, and his childrens children from the same potential of poverty and abuse.
They can line soldiers up at ten feet apart on the American side for all I care. Bring them home, where they are fighting a useless war, which is not protecting American, and let them do their job protecting America.
Let Mexico do what Mexico has to do. It is their job to do it.
I'm not rolling my eyes at it, because the situation currently is so horrible, and these changes you mention are so clearly needed. But I totally disagree about "investing" if by that you mean infusions of dollars. If not dollars, do you mean the Peace Corps? How long do you think volunteers would last, trying to change the narcotrafficker culture, on site and in person? So I'm not understanding your proposal at all. Do you think an American-sponsored initiative to teach people that killing is not OK can succeed where the indigenous Catholic Church has failed?
No, I am sorry but the first step must be international negotiations to end the war on drugs. When the war is over, rebuilding can begin. Not before.
Now it is a mess, and everyone wants the addicts want their corner drug store. And the government wants taxes.
To find the source for that, look to those who offer oversimplified solutions to complex problems, conspiracy theories tailor-made for a pre-existing agenda, the fetishism of one particular group of people over all others, and attempts to rationalize extreme, often violent solutions with no chance of success.
may take time. better get started.
contact LEAP, they seem to be the best hope.
This is an entirely different situation. Yes, the border region is in dire need of legal, productive jobs and societal reform. Legalization isn't the only answer to solving those problems, and the border crisis isn't the only reason to legalize drugs, but legalization is the only way to end the insanity of the so-called "war on drugs." You can beef up enforcement in one region or country, and production and trafficking are just going to shift elsewhere. It's been that way for nearly a century.
Defenders of the status quo have lists of reasons why other drugs are so awful and why things would be so much worse if they were legalized, but in nearly every example, the harmful effects are due to the illegality not the effect of the drug itself.
I am not a drug user, but I am sick of innocents suffering, butchery, corruption, astronomical expense, militarized law enforcement, erosion of civil liberties, poisoned landscapes from Latin America to the American midwest, the sheer hypocrisy and stupidity of it all at a time we have so many other problems.
I hope California voters pass marijuana legalization, and that it is the first domino to go in ending the century long failure that is the war on drugs.
wow, there's some sick humor.