Over 100 Groups Call on Obama & Mesoamerican Leaders to Tackle Root Causes of Violence at SICA

By CIP Americas with several others and signed by more than 145 organizations

Dear Honorable:

President Barack Obama

President Enrique Peña Nieto

President Laura Chinchilla

President Otto Pérez Molina

President Porfirio Lobo

President Mauricio Funes

President Daniel Ortega

President Ricardo Martinelli

Attorney General & Minister of Foreign Affairs Wilfred Elrington

April 30, 2013

We, the undersigned civil society organizations from throughout the region, are writing to you on the eve of your meetings in Mexico and at the Summit of the Central American Integration System (SICA) in Costa Rica.We welcome the opportunity for our nations to discuss cooperation on critical cross-border issues and urge our States to address our concerns about the dire human rights crisis in Mesoamerica.

Our organizations have documented an alarming increase in violence and human rights violations. While we recognize that transnational crime and drug trafficking play a role in this violence, we call on our governments to acknowledge that failed security policies that have militarized citizen security have only exacerbated the problem, and are directly contributing to increased human suffering in the region.

It is time to refocus regional dialogue and resource investment to address the root causes of violence,

understanding that for many citizens and communities, drug trafficking is not the principal cause of insecurity. Harmful “development” policies have similarly caused increased conflict and abuses, while forced migration and criminalization of migrants and human rights activists continues to divide families. Most importantly, the region’s challenges must be addressed without violating fundamental rights and human dignity.

An Ugly Truth in the War on Drugs

The NY Times 
By Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Ruth Dreifuss
Published: March 10, 2013

This week, representatives from many nations will gather at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna to determine the appropriate course of the international response to illicit drugs. Delegates will debate multiple resolutions while ignoring a truth that goes to the core of current drug policy: human rights abuses in the war on drugs are widespread and systematic.

Consider these numbers: Hundreds of thousands of people locked in detention centers and subject to violent punishments. Millions imprisoned. Hundreds hanged, shot or beheaded. Tens of thousands killed by government forces and non-state actors. Thousands beaten and abused to extract information, and abused in government or private “treatment” centers. Millions denied life-saving medicines. These are alarming figures, but campaigns to address them have been slow and drug control has received little attention from the mainstream human rights movement.

This is a perfect storm for people who use drugs, especially those experiencing dependency, and those involved in the drug trade, whether growers, couriers or sellers. When people are dehumanized we know from experience that abuses against them are more likely. We know also that those abuses are less likely to be addressed because fewer people care.  Read more. 

Mexico considers marijuana legalization after ballot wins in U.S.

Mexico, which has fought a long war against drug cartels that supply U.S. users, is rethinking its marijuana policy after Colorado and Washington approved legalization.

Los Angeles Times: By Richard Fausset, January 4, 2013.
MEXICO CITY

Forgive the Mexicans for trying to get this straight:

So now the United States, which has spent decades battling Mexican marijuana, is on a legalization bender?

The same United States that long viewed cannabis as a menace, funding crop-poisoning programs, tearing up auto bodies at the border, and deploying sniffer dogs, fiber-optic scopes and backscatter X-ray machines to detect the lowly weed?

The success of legalization initiatives in Colorado and Washington in November has sparked a new conversation in a nation that is one of the world's top marijuana growers: Should Mexico, which has suffered mightily in its war against the deadly drug cartels, follow the Western states' lead?

Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, opposes legalization, but he also told CNN recently that the news from Washington and Colorado "could bring us to rethinking the strategy." Read more. 

US marijuana legalisation fuels Mexico drugs war debate

BBC  November 20, 2012

Earlier this month, two US states voted to legalise, regulate and tax marijuana. The BBC's Will Grant in Mexico City looks at what this shift in stance could mean for Mexico and its fight against the drug gangs.

Every year, pro-marijuana campaigners in Seattle hold their annual Hempfest, a two-day festival along the city's shoreline.

Thick pungent clouds of pot smoke waft over the crowd who are sitting out with a joint in their hand, listening to the live music, or pottering among the dozens of stalls selling bongs, pipes and other smoking paraphernalia.

The police are on hand to ensure there is no open buying or selling of the drug. But at the next 'Hempfest', they may not even need to do that.

On the day voters in Washington state chose to re-elect President Barack Obama, they also chose to legalise the recreational use of marijuana. Over the Rockies in Colorado, it was a similar story. Read more. 

Mexico Lambasts US Drug Policy at Ibero-Am Summit

Cadiz, Spain, Nov 17 (Prensa Latina) Mexico President Felipe Calderon highlighted today the paradox of the Federal license on the sale of marihuana in some US states.

Calderon called crucial settling problems like violence and organized crime he defined as an international pest and reminded that Latin America is in the death route of drugs, immigrants and human trafficking.

It also gets a southwards flow of illegal money and weapon trafficking that turns Latin America into a dangerous war zone, he told the plenary session of the 22nd Ibero-American Summit in this city.  Read more. 

Colorado, Washington Marijuana Legalization: Latin American Leaders Ask For A Review Of Drug Policies

Huffington Post By E. Eduardo Castillo and Michael Weissentein

MEXICO CITY — A group of Latin American leaders declared Monday that votes by two U.S. states to legalize marijuana have important implications for efforts to quash drug smuggling, offering the first government reaction from a region increasingly frustrated with the U.S.-backed war on drugs.

The declaration by the leaders of Mexico, Belize, Honduras and Costa Rica did not explicitly say they were considering weakening their governments' efforts against marijuana smuggling, but it strongly implied the votes last week in Colorado and Washington would make enforcement of marijuana bans more difficult. Read more. 

Murder of Miami’s ‘Cocaine Queen’ Offers Teaching Moment

The Narcosphere, Posted by Bill Conroy

The Truth of the Drug War Won’t Be Found in Hollywood or the Mainstream Media — Which Both Work From the Same Tired Script.

Griselda Blanco, 69, was cut down in front of a butcher shop in Medellin, Colombia, in early September by a middle-aged man who was delivered to the murder scene on the back of a motorcycle — and who calmly, methodically, jumped off the back of that bike, held a gun to Blanco’s head, and pumped two bullets into her brain.

Blanco, well prior to her death, had been pumped up as a rock star of the drug war by the US mainstream media and various Hollywood-inspired films, such as the Cocaine Cowboys documentary. In fact, at the time of her death, several feature films about her life as a big-time cocaine dealer and killer in Miami in the 1970s and early 1980s were reportedly in the works — including one in which movie star Jennifer Lopez is seeking to play the leading role as the “Narco Queen” in hopes of winning an Oscar, according to Fox News Latino.

But Blanco, like so many other US-media created narco anti-heroes, is more fiction than reality, and a prime example of how US “news” coverage of the drug war has become essentially indistinguishable from the fiction manufactured in Tinsel Town. Read more.