Washington has quietly deployed another set of military drones to patrol the skies. This time, reports the New York Times, they're not hovering over the Afghanistan borderlands, but rather trolling for drug traffickers over our own. The brainless, robot aircraft reflects Washington's standard attitude toward border politics: two governments partnering mindlessly to keep communities divided and hostile.
On his tour of Latin America this week, President Obama tried to stress opportunities for economic and political partnership. But the bruised lower lip of America's border exposes a hard truth about the hemispheric balance of power: important partners don't always make good neighbors. The Obama administration continues to fixate on militarizing law enforcement to stem transnational flows of narcotics and labor. The collateral damage of that choice has come in the form of economic turmoil, the slaughter of civilians and constant fear.
The war on drugs is just one of the gears driving a massive humanitarian crisis stretching over the U.S.-Mexico border. News reports give us only fractured images of Mexico--a land of warring drug cartels, with grisly and escalating violence. Behind the headlines, though, Washington's policies have steered Mexico's tragic narrative of displacement, poverty and violence.
Addicted to the Drug War
As the White House pushes to renew funding for the Merida Initiative, human rights advocates point out that the shootings and murders have shown no signs of abating under the new administration. Rights abuses by U.S.-backed government forces remain rampant, and the drug war body count has approached 35,000 over four years. Meanwhile, ideas for alternative investments in social infrastructure and efforts to reduce demand are practically dead on arrival.
The State Department raised hopes for a more enlightened approach last year when it touted a new direction for the Merida Initiative that focuses more on social development rather than punishment and prosecution.
But a Government Accountability Office audit of the program found it still lacks clear goals, with few mechanisms for oversight. Freshly leaked diplomatic documents further revealed tension and incoherence in the two governments' attempts at cooperation. Criticism of bilateral drug policy has come from all corners, in fact, as more evidence surfaces of its corruption and strategic shortsightedness, its neglect of human rights standards; and the immeasurable social cost for Mexican and American communities.
Laura Carlsen of the Americas Policy Program said that despite the Obama administration's claims that it would boost development aid for Mexico, its budget proposal seeks "minimal" humanitarian assistance and maintains support for hardline policing tactics. "It doesn't ... look at the root causes of why organized crime has been able to grow so much," Carlsen said. It certainly fails to consider Americans' demand for drugs--a direct product of domestic policies focused on prohibition and punishment.
Inequity Keeps Drugs and People Moving
Not all the casualties of the drug war are directly in the line of fire. The embattled bodies of border-crossers in the desert are a testament to the human cost of failed foreign policy.
The border isn't just a gateway for drugs, but an artery for labor flows that shuttle between two vastly unequal worlds. And as the North American Free Trade Agreement widens the development gap between the U.S. and Mexico, drugs and people inevitably move toward the gravitational pull of underground markets.
Anti-immigrant groups tag undocumented migrants as "illegals," but their so-called crime is a product of the global marketplace's laws. NAFTA got rid of trade protections, and so helped cripple Mexico's indigenous farm sector while failing to deliver industrial investment. "The vacuum produced by the destruction of the rural social tissue generated a fertile ground for drug traffickers," said Manuel Perez Rocha of Institute for Policy Studies, "both in terms of gaining territories and as scores of people, particularly young people, have had no option or have been obliged at gun point to join the ranks of criminal organizations."
The other option for frustrated workers is to seek refuge across the border. At the height of the immigration reform debates in 2006, sociologist Alejandro Portes wrote:
They are dubbed "law-breakers" and accused of "taking jobs away from Americans." But this is just another exercise in victim-blaming. Those truly responsible for the situation are the authorities who embraced free markets as a cure for all economic and social ills.
Perversely, federal drug and immigration policies actually push the two issues closer together by turning the bodies of migrants into just another illicit commodity to be trafficked.
"What you have then is a situation where they beef up the border [enforcement] to treat human beings as contraband, essentially ... the same way we would treat illegal drug shipments," said Carlsen. Years ago, she said, migrants would rely on help from relatives and others who knew the routes. But since military-style enforcement has grown, without altering the reasons people move, migrants are "forced to hire human smugglers, members of organized crime.... That's created a huge human rights crisis on all levels."
Catalina Nieto of Witness for Peace summed up the net effect of the Merida Initiative from the perspective of a Colombian who has lived in the trenches of the drug war in Latin America:
Military aid won't end drug violence. While there's no easy fix to Mexico's violence, the U.S. government should ensure that our taxpayer dollars aren't used to violate human rights. Instead, the United States should attack the root causes of drug trafficking: high demand for drugs in the U.S., increased rates of poverty and unemployment, and the lack of opportunities for Latin American farmers and youth.
Meanwhile, drug violence helps build the dehumanizing gauntlet through which migrants cross--subjecting themselves to exploitation by predatory smugglers, by profiteering employers and by jingoistic Washington politicians. But what if the resources that now finance police equipment were channeled instead toward bilateral development programs for Mexico? What if, instead of exporting America's zero-tolerance policies, the White House focused on revamping civil society and public education for disaffected youth in both countries? What if policymakers envisioned a border policy that embraced the globalization of humanity just as it has fostered the globalization of factories and corn crops?
None of those questions are asked, perhaps because no one in Washington wants to hear the answer.
Cross-posted from Colorlines.com.
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Michelle, the invasion started long before NAFTA.
So, why have the enforcement at all? Well, because of those pesky 'law' things, that help prevent the southern US from looking like some parts of northern Mexico, complete with corpses and bullet holes in the walls, dogs, cars, etc. Some parts of northern Mexico have gone and pretty much had themselves a complete and total social breakdown, law enforcement used for target practice, a scene straight out of Robocop. Well, don't look now, but here comes OCP back the other way.
Eventually, there's going to be more prisons on both sides of the border, and people rend their clothes and flop around on the ground about it, but this is a day and age when police help build better communities by apprehending gang members and other violent lawbreakers, and if they don't, then the community itself needs to become organized for that purpose, both north, and south. There's a fire, and it needs to be put out, and after that, then you can talk about immigration or whatever, but first things first.
But while the US Government tries to enforce the laws against smuggling and illegally entering the country, Mexico's government continues to tell it's citizens that their "future is in the North (America)" and our immigration laws should not matter to them while simultaneously demanding that America stop the flow of guns to their nation.
The Mexican Army is rumored to be involved in drug trafficking and could actually be the biggest of all drug cartels. But what is happening in Mexico is in truth a revolution financed by drugs. They sent our ambassador packing because he threatened to expose that and in order to keep getting aid for their "Drug War" they can't afford to let that be known.
Mexico's problems are their own and they need to take care of them. They have tried a couple of times in history to make them America's problems and that has never turned out well for them. It's not going so well this time either.
The Mexican Army is not involved in drug traffic... the fact is that there are individuals, civilian and a few militars doing illegal acts, but again the Mexican Army is not involved, not the institution.
There is not a revolution financed by drugs, there is criminal mafia financed by the high drug consumption from many places, mainly USA.
The Ambassador left Mexico because he recognized he will be useless for USA interests. You cannot perform diplomacy when no one wants to talk with you.
Regards
U.S. corporate elite and politicians and the Mexican cartel run elite and politicians are in bed together and we are paying the price. It because of your type of ignorance that this continues.
http://twopesos-protestfortheundocumented.blogspot.com/
http://tinyurl.com/2fhyuo7
Something else...as well.
Right. HIGH FENCES make good neighbors. Get on it!
Why isn't it the job of the Mexican people to demand that their own government work harder to control the drug cartels, the human smugglers, demand better social programs, education, more freedoms and more equality? We had our own civil war and came out the better for it - why can't the decent people in Mexico fight for what they want?
"Illegal" - doing something that is against the law. Coming into our country without following our immigration laws is an illegal act. We are supposed to respect the laws of our country and also the laws of other countries when we are visitors. If we do not respect those laws, both in our own country and in others, we pay the consequences - we do not ask for special privileges or rights that we do not deserve.
Mexico has wonderful tourist areas, beautiful country, natural resources, good farm land - but evidently has not the will or the wish to demand better security, better government, better services for its own people.
The 40 year long "war on drugs", the US demand for drugs, and NAFTA
US policies which have brought misery on the people of Mexico, and obscene profits for those who traffic drugs, and exploit human beings. US policy, by the way drove drug trafficking into Mexico by it's "success" fighting the same drug war in S America.
Ryan Grim: NAFTA And The Drug Cartels: "A Deal Made In Narco Heaven"
Posted: July 1, 2009 09:24 AM
"During the first year of his administration, President Bill Clinton made free trade a top priority, pushing for the passage of the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement. It wasn't an easy task. Having helped Democrats take the White House for the first time in twelve years, organized labor was in no mood to see manufacturing jobs shipped to Mexico.
The debate was difficult enough without having to talk about the sprawling Mexican drug trade and its attendant corruption. And how the agreement would also end up benefiting the cartels.
So he ordered his people not to talk about it.
"We were prohibited from discussing the effects of NAFTA as it related to narcotics trafficking, yes." Phil Jordan, who had been one of the Drug Enforcement Administration's leading authorities on Mexican drug organizations, told ABC News reporter Brian Ross four years after the deal had gone through. "For the godfathers of the drug trade in Colombia and Mexico, this was a deal made in narco heaven."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/nafta-and-the-drug-cartel_b_223705.html
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Plus, there is always the added bonus of getting the U.S. taxpayer to provide the free service of eliminating one another's competitors to keep the price of narcotics higher!