Jack & Jill Politics

While Republican leaders and candidates rail about the danger to U.S. security posed by Iran and North Korea there’s a real conflagration going on nearby that one hears nary a peep about. Mexico is our closest neighbor to the south and an important trading partner. yet there’s been little substantive discussion about U.S-Mexico relations other than more get-tough rhetoric towards immigrants. Many Americans would be surprised to learn many Mexicans have even less use for us than we do to for them. They rightfully blame us for the carnage that’s claimed the lives of 48,000 of their countrymen over the past six years since President Felipe Calderon declared war on Mexico’s drug cartels.

The level of violence is horrific – massacres, mass graves, severed heads – the stuff that movies are made of. Except this is not a made in Hollywood thriller, it’s a made in America disaster that’s consuming whole countries. A recent report in Foreign Policy noted the following:

The situation in the “northern triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador is even more alarming. Central American governments are overwhelmed and outmatched, unable to cope with a growing crime wave. A recent report in the Miami Herald about Honduras was particularly chilling. Honduras now has the world’s highest homicide rate (82.1 per 100,000 residents). Nearly 7,000 homicides were recorded in 2011, a 250 percent increase in half a dozen years. Organized crime pervades the country’s police forces.

Drug policy is a key dimension of the current crisis. Drugs — in Central America, chiefly cocaine — fuel much of the violence, yet are apparently an issue unworthy of discussion in a U.S. presidential race (with the exception of Ron Paul, who has no chance of being nominated).

The death toll from the drug war in Latin America greatly exceeds the number who’ve died in the Arab uprisings but you wouldn’t know it from watching the news. Opposition to the war on drugs is sweeping across Latin America from government leaders to every day people and their anger is not just directed at the cartels. Latin Americans rightfully attribute their problems to the demand for drugs in the U.S. and Western Europe and the prohibitionist policies that make these local crops worth more than their weight in gold. Here in the United States of Denial, we persist in the myth the drug war can be won, with more money, more weapons, more technology, more time………Well, our neighbors to the south are about at the end of their patience with us – they’ve joined together to say NUNCA MAS!!

“Our region is seriously threatened by organized crime, but there is very little responsibility taken by the drug-consuming countries,” Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said at a December meeting of Latin leaders in Caracas. Colom said the hemisphere was paying the price for drug consumption in the United States with “our blood, our fear and our human sacrifice.”

With transit countries facing some of the highest homicide rates in the world, so great is the frustration that the leaders are demanding that the United States and Europe consider steps toward legalization if they do not curb their appetite for drugs.

At a regional summit this month in Mexico, attended by the leaders of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries, officials declared that “the authorities in consumer countries should explore all possible alternatives to eliminate exorbitant profits of criminals, including regulatory or market options.”

“Market options” is diplomatic code for decriminalization.

The complaints are not exactly new but are remarkable for being nearly unanimous. The critique comes from sitting presidents left to right, from persistent U.S. antagonists such as President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and from close U.S. allies such as President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, which has received almost $9 billion in aid to fight the cartels.

“All the money, regardless how much it is multiplied, and all the blood, no matter how much is spilled” will not stop the drug trade “as long as the north continues consuming,” said Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega. At a recent summit in Venezuela’s capital, Ortega suggested that the group “monitor and rate” anti-drug efforts by the United States, just as the U.S. State Department does for the region.

“We speak of a drug-trafficking route that moves about a hundred billion dollars a year, culminating in the world’s largest market and biggest consumer of these substances, the United States,” said El Salvador President Mauricio Funes, who added that the United States had a “moral responsibility” to do more.

This international drug route is beautifully captured in the opening montage to the dramatic documentary, Sins of My Father.

Honduras has become the newest bridge for cocaine traffickers moving their product to northern markets.

“The biggest challenge faced by many Latin American countries is the rising threat of organized crime funded by U.S. drug consumption. That is without a doubt,” said Andrew Selee, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute.

You would think a fire that’s been raging in your neighbor’s backyard would be worthy of attention. How long will we ignore the fires down below?

Authors Note: I’ve been sick for the past few days and fell behind in my posting. So, I’ll be doubling up until I catch up……..Today, Days 9 & 10.