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A Film by the HCLU and Espolea
The War on Drugs in Mexico - Is There an Alternative?
Particularly in the Latin American continent
drug trafficking played an important role in the recent increase
in homicide and the use of violence.
We consider the efforts made by Mexico...
And the families of the victims, the 35 or 40 thousand victims,
we have to think about the price that those families have payed,
it is certainly a laudable effort.
-So it's on the right track, basically? -Absolutely yes.
Four years ago Felipe Calderón declared the war on drugs in Mexico,
how do you see the situation after four years? Did it improve or is it worse?
Well, I think there's some achievements that we must recognize,
but, I think that considering the results,
almost 30 thousand victims, an extended violence all around the country,
portions of the territory under control of organized crime,
what I think is that the strategies (being used) to confront organized crime have to be changed.
I don't see any progress. What you can see even in cities like where I'm from,
you see 2 or 3 killings a day. If we would see violence reducing,
more jobs, that's when we would say that we're winning the drug war.
Felipe Calderón, with his usual "bravado" declared this war on drugs
without knowing what was gonna come on him. He said "I'm gonna be the drug lords
worst nightmare". Well, guess who's not sleeping these days?
I would think it's the president but also many Mexicans,
it's a shame that many communities have to live with the terror,
and the lack of the minimum conditions for survival.
Young people who are using Twitter, for example,
try to report that "don't go through that street in Monterrey because there's gun shots being fired"
"Don't cross on that lane because there's a bunch of people holding that road"
I think Mexicans at some point need to say "Hey, stop... we can't live this way"
And when they tell us this is going to be a long fight, a prolonged fight, and that we need to be patient,
I disagree, why should we be patient? I don't want to live my life
driving from work to home with a military truck next to me with a gun pointing to my head,
because that's the way they drive through the city.
There are several parts of the country that have no State whatsoever,
and where organized crime is the State or is the main actor
taking leadership and making decisions.
In Mexico there are actually two important cartels,
the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas, those are the most important because they have the international connections
and because they control the most trafficking and drugs from South America to the USA.
And for example, the Sinaloa cartel is controlling basically the most of exportation of marihuana,
but increasingly are getting more stronger in the exportation of ***-amphetamines.
The Zetas control one part of *** and the arms trafficking from USA to Mexico,
right now they're in control of both territory in Mexico.
The Zetas were deserters from the Mexican army.
When they were part of the Mexican army they were trained in the USA and Israel,
for terrorist tactics, intelligence and counter-intelligence tactics,
the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas, they are the most important,
they're getting the most important firepower also, so the confrontation in Mexico actually right now is carried between these two cartels.
We have a bunch of young Mexicans without any perspective of future,
without any aspiration to become anything, other that rich,
and whose lives don't matter to anybody.
There must be many different connections between cartels and the elites,
not only political but also economic. It's not an unknown phenomenon that many families these days
are marrying their daughters into drug trafficking families,
because that's a way to acquire social mobility.
Drug cartels are basically offering "Hey, you know what? We're giving you a way of life,
you're gonna have money to feed your family" and I think that's the number one issue,
well, people are gonna even "defend" the drug lords, right?
You have a drug lord that is the one who is taking care of all of the sewer problems of a small town,
electricity, finding other elements so people can live,
that's why they become so powerful, because people depend on them.
They started to provide services that the State, in all of its three levels of government, couldn't provide,
we've heard of roads build by drug traffickers, of airports, of schools and clinics,
so it is very hard to think that this is something that floats and can be surgically removed with the army,
this is something that has deep roots in Mexican society,
many parts of the society are accepting this way of life.
In Mexico, contrary to what happened in the rest of Latin America, the army did not have a specific role in politics,
and bringing it in to combat drugs has given it some space in the political arena,
that, it has been a very costly space in that political arena for the military, because
it has lost most of the prestige it had, and it has also lost a lot of lives in a war that is very difficult to win,
the army is trained to fight a concrete enemy in a concrete situation of battle,
that is not the way drug lords work. They consider big achievements not only capturing drug lords but killing drug lords,
if this were a true democracy and if this were a true State with rule of law,
you wouldn't need to kill people like in the wild West.
Even if you're facing them in the context of war, even in the context of war there would be rules
to deal with prisoners, there would be rules to deal with the enemy. And when they consider a big achievement
the killing of Nacho Coronel or the killing of the Beltran Leyvas, well I ponder and I say
"Excuse me, even these people, as rotten as they were" if we buy that argument,
"deserve a fair trial and the whole thing that comes with the rule of law."
I think the USA has to check the issue that if they want to sell weapons to their citizens,
that's a decision that the USA has, and it's a second amendment right that they have,
but I think you need to make very difficult for those arms to be sold to people and then being smuggled into Mexico.
It is impossible to believe that only Mexico has corruption and that's why the drug trafficking takes place,
there has to be a counter part in the United States for drugs to be going in the way they are.
Do you have any estimations about how much money Felipe Calderon has spent in the war on drugs since 2006?
Well, one of the problems in Mexico of trying to trace the budget oriented to combat drug trafficking
in general, is the fact that we don't have access to that information as a civil society.
You don't know how they spent the money, and you don't know where or on what.
Some politicians have said that there needs to be a pact between government and drug cartels,
I don't think that's the issue either, but I don't think that the issue is going and confronting them
and fighting a war when you really don't have an alternative of how you're going to end that war,
and in how many years you're going to end that war, that's the problem with Felipe Calderón's tactics,
because he's basically fighting drugs but he's not doing anything for better health, better education,
more money for families, etcetera.
There are drug users and Mexico is, you know, not only a transit country but also a producer country and a consumer country,
the idea that drug users are criminals and the idea that drug use is associated directly with organized crime
is still an idea that is out there and we need to change that if we are to respond in a different way,
many people are afraid of responding, you know, offering treatment, offering prevention strategies,
even offering harm reduction, not as much because of what harm reduction entails, but because they think
you know, "what we're doing is fostering organized crime".
You have to divide the world of the drugs from the world of the crime,
and then focus on organized crime in a very different approach. The State has to gain, again,
the control of the market, making regulations out of it, and that's they point where we're at,
we are proposing regulations for different drug markets in Mexico.
Is there any political support for the idea of legalization in Mexico?
I think there are politicians that have started to talk about the issue of legalizing drugs,
some drugs, not all drugs; and I think we need to debate that.
What types of drugs should be legalized? And what are the consequences? Are they gonna be paying taxes for that?
What is that money on taxes going to be used for? And I think education on not to use drugs should be the issue.
I'm not saying that we should legalize all drugs, but I think that we need to debate
and see what are gonna be the consequences if we do that.
If that's going to resolve any of the problems.
We have to discuss legalization of different drugs
and this has to also be discussed, widely discussed in the United Nations,
and in this case, I think that we should adopt common policies if we want to be effective
in the results to obtain. -In 2012 we have a new government coming into place,
at the presidential level, we don't have many expectations of them but we have to learn from the past
from the, you know, very failed experiment that we had with the war on drugs and we want to make sure that
all these opinions, the debate that's been opened, it continues to be there and that we use that
and move foreword and not stay there.
Explore the alternatives of the war on drugs!