Marisela Escobedo’s life changed forever in August 2008 when her 16-year-old daughter Rubi failed to come home. What was left of Rubi’s body was found months later in a dump — 39 pieces of charred bone.
The Costa Rican legislature on December 20 approved another deployment of dozens of U.S. ships to its territory for the next six months, but denied permission for warships to deploy to the country until a full debate occurs after the New Year.
It’s not just the weak African states that are corrupted by drug trafficking, but larger ones like Ghana.
One cable describes a Mexican government pursuing losing tactics in the name of an unfocused strategy that leaves everyone worse off, with the exception of the country’s increasingly drug cartels.
Latin American governments can’t help but ask how the U.S. government can continue to call on them to implement harsh drug control policies when a key policy is being called into question in the United States itself.
Contrary to common belief, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico’s national holiday. That date is September 16, which this year marks the bicentennial of the independence of Mexico. In 1810 Mexico started its independence struggle against Spain, its formal colonial ruler. One hundred years after that, in 1910, Mexico rose up to free itself from three decades of dictatorship under Porfirio Díaz and leave behind the unjust redistribution of wealth, the concentration of large extensions of land (latifundios) in a few hands, the exploitation of workers by capitalist industrialists, corruption, the denial of democracy in elections, and other historic problems.
In response to a recent question about the American government’s actions (or lack thereof) regarding drug-related violence in Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered the administration’s boldest statement yet on the question of military intervention. Mexico, she said, “is looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago.” Likening Mexican drug violence to a FARC-like “insurgency,” she declared that, “[I]t’s going to take a combination of improved institutional capacity and better law enforcement and, where appropriate, military support for that law enforcement…to prevent this from spreading and beat it back.” Clinton maintained that Plan Colombia “worked” and added, “We need to figure out what are the equivalents for Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean.”
A chorus of pundits has lately been arguing that an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities is either inevitable or commendable. Recently, Jeffery Goldberg predicts in The Atlantic that Israeli will strike by next July. Reuel Marc Gerecht, an editor for the Weekly Standard, urges that regional stability calls for Israel wasting no more time in launching a pre-emptive hit. These arguments predictably come from the neoconservative crowd who urged the United States to topple Saddam Hussein as an avenue toward reaching regime change in Iran.
The elections of Sunday, July 4th, in fourteen Mexican states can be seen as a struggle for Mexican territories by diverse power groups, including the drug cartels. And in the case of Oaxaca, it is, furthermore, the exercise of its citizenship by an aggrieved population whose movement was defeated in 2006, and which has subsequently turned to voting as a manifestation of their rejection of Ulises Ruiz and the political group that he represents.
Those most affected by drugs and drug policies — from urban youth to coca farmers — usually find themselves sidelined in the debate over drug policy.