Update on International Delegation to Stop U.S Arms Trafficking to Mexico

Global Exchange’s Stop US Arms to Mexico program hosted an International Delegation to Investigate the Weapons Flow to Mexico last month. Experts and gun violence prevention advocates from five countries that supply weapons to Mexico came to meet with impacted communities and policymakers in Mexico in February 2023.

We are pleased to share Chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance & Newtown Action Alliance Foundation, Po Murray’s update from the delegation.

I was honored to be invited by John Lindsey Poland from Stop U.S. Arms to Mexico, a project of Global Exchange, (and Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco, Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, Center for Ecumenical Studies, and Global Thought Mx.) to join an international delegation from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Israel, Italy, and the U.S. (including Change the Ref cofounder Manuel Oliver whose son Joaquin was killed in Parkland, John Lowy who founded Global Action on Gun Violence, and Jordan Giger from Black Lives Matter South Bend), to travel to Mexico to embark on a journey to 1) meet with gun violence survivors, survivors of the disappeared, displaced journalists, Mexican Senators, Mexican government officials, U.S. ATF agents, officials from the U.S. Embassy, and the civic society leaders and advocates; and 2) to attend the Peace Summit.

In Mexico City, we met a mother who was completely heartbroken because her four sons had disappeared. In Guerrero, a state that has been on the U.S. State Department travel advisory list due to high levels of violence and kidnapping, we met many survivors of gun violence and disappeared citizens — including a wife whose husband went to a meeting and never made it home. Now, she has little to no income to feed her children and she has been threatened and silenced. We met numerous journalists who have been threatened, silenced, and displaced. We also met one of the mothers of the 43 male students who disappeared from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College after being forcibly abducted in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico in 2014.

We learned that Mexico has strong gun laws and only one gun store that is managed by the Mexican Army. We also learned that more than 110,000 Mexican citizens have disappeared since records have been kept. U.S. weapons are contributing to Mexico’s human rights crisis. Over 70-90% of crime guns from Mexico are from the United States with most of the trafficked weapons coming from Texas and Arizona. Watch THIS excellent Vice News video on how the Mexican drug cartel is smuggling thousands of U.S. weapons from the U.S. border into Mexico- — including Barrett .50 calibers that have been used to attempt to shoot down planes. These Barrett .50 calibers would be banned if the U.S. Congress passed the federal assault weapons ban legislation. President Biden is ready to sign the bill into law. 

In August 2021, the Mexican government filed a $10 billion lawsuit against eleven U.S. gun manufacturers, including Smith & Wesson, Colt and Beretta, accusing them of marketing and selling weapons of war favored by the drug cartel and contributing to Mexico’s bloodshed. In September 2022, a federal judge from Massachusetts dismissed the case. The Mexican government is currently appealing the lawsuit and filed another lawsuit against numerous gun shops and dealers in Arizona.

The guns manufactured and not very well regulated in the U.S. are killing our children and loved ones in the U.S. and in Mexico. The trafficked weapons arm the drug cartels that supply fentanyl to the U.S. citizens and many Mexican families are being displaced to the U.S. border due to violence and corruption.

President Biden and the U.S. Members of Congress must act to stop fueling the violence in Mexico!

The journey to Mexico was overwhelming since stopping the flow of illegal U.S. weapons will be the first step towards finding peace, safety, and prosperity for the people of Mexico whose basic human rights have been stripped. We promised the survivors that we would take their stories and deliver them to President Biden, the Members of U.S. Congress, and the U.S. citizens. I made a promise to the international delegation that I will work with them to stop the flow of U.S. weapons into Mexico.

North America’s problems cannot be solved without joint action by the people and communities of the three countries in the region. Grassroots organizations, communities that have suffered the impacts of violence, inequality, discrimination and racism from Canada, the United States and Mexico are coming together this week in Mexico City for the Peace Summit to build an agenda that reflects a common reality and charts a path of actions and solutions for the region.

The event calls for a social movement among historically marginalized communities most impacted by gun violence, immigration, and climate crises to catalyze a cross-border political agenda in anticipation of the 2024 presidential elections in both Mexico and the United States.

Speakers from Global Exchange, Black Lives Matter, March for Our Lives, CIELO, and others will facilitate two days of dialogue between a diverse coalition of more than 80 organizations and over 300 attendees to develop a unified action agenda around human rights, democracy, and peace. Participants are coming from communities who suffer disproportionately from policies around these issues, including victims of gun violence, migrants, Afro-descendant and Indigenous Peoples across the region.

We have been building momentum for the Peace Summit since 2022 by hosting several community forums across the U.S. and Mexico and by sending a letter signed by over 100 grassroots organizations to President Joe Biden, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urging action on gun violence, climate change, and immigration policies across the region.

We’ve long believed that community-led change and the civic power it generates are strengthened by people reaching out, building networks, cultivating relationships, and sharing knowledge strategically.

We hope you will join us online for the opening plenary tomorrow, Feb 23rd at 8am – 11am Pacific Time. Or visit our social media channels for updates. 

Big Tech is taking on a larger and larger role in our society and our lives.

The core power and product of social media is us – our clicks, likes, attention, emojis and responses are literally all that Meta-Facebook has to sell. We reject the idea that users can’t set the terms of the deal.

On November 17th, we will bring together users, tech workers, activists, and advocacy organizations to share resources, take action, and begin to build a social media safety net that works for users and workers all over the world. 

People just like you have already helped change the conversation and take action. From online actions to log out, to in-person protests outside of Facebook headquarters, you’ve shown time and again what’s possible when we come together, even against powerful tech giants! 

YOU are what makes the Big Tech Companies profit. It is time for users to build a user-led movement to have a say in how the world’s largest social media platform impacts our daily lives and communities. Your courage and commitment mean all of us, together, can use our collective voices to take action and demand better from Facebook and lawmakers.

Can we count on you to join us at the Town Hall?

If you are affiliated with an organization, consider officially partnering with us. Here is the link for more information on becoming an official partner or sponsor of our User and Tech Worker Town Hall. 

If you cannot attend, but would like to make a contribution to the Town Hall event’s success, you can make a donation here.

The time to take back our privacy and our power is now!

Facebook Users Union is a project of Media Alliance and Global Exchange.

Visit Facebookusers.org for more information

We, the undersigning human rights organizations from the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, as well as from the Caribbean, and express our full support for the Assault Weapons Ban of 2021 (H.R. 1808), which the House of Representatives passed on July 29, as well as H.R. 2814 to hold gun producers accountable for irresponsible marketing practices. We also stand in support of greater restrictions on assault weapon exports as proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Joaquín Castro (TX-20). 

We call on Democratic leaders to highlight the human cost of U.S. assault weapons beyond the country’s borders and to support legislation to ban them internationally. Gun violence in Mexico and Central America, committed by both state and non-state forces, has grown to unprecedented levels in recent years. In Mexico, 25 percent of homicides were perpetrated with a gun during 2004 (the year the Assault Weapons Ban expired in the U.S.) However, this percentage has risen to 70 percent in 2020.

70% of firearms recovered from crime scenes in Mexico are trafficked from the United States. Successive Mexican administrations since 2006 have sought to address this gun violence with militarized strategies, with the vast majority of firearms used by state forces exported by the United States, Israel and several European nations. These weapons have not stemmed growing violence; instead, in many cases the weapons have furthered violence and forced migration.

Assault weapons are among the most demanded and used by drug cartels to commit disappearances, massacres, robberies, extortions, kidnappings and other atrocities. The effect of authorizing assault weapons in the border region, as proposed by Republican lawmakers, would be a boon to weapons traffickers, gun companies and dealers that are arming violent criminal organizations. Border-area gun dealers in Texas and Arizona already sell assault rifles with few restrictions on their illegal transfer into Mexico. 

We urge the Senate to move swiftly to ban the sale of assault weapons in all the United States, from which thousands of these weapons have been trafficked to criminal organizations. Too many people across the United States, Mexico and Central America are being senselessly gunned down by U.S.-sourced assault weapons. With easy access to military-style semi-automatic assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, many individuals have turned Mexico into a war zone filled with terror, devastation, and terrible loss.

U.S. assault weapons have also been exported to Mexican military and police units implicated in serious human rights abuses and collusion with organized crime. A study by the Mexican Commission for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights and Stop US Arms to Mexico found that 16,685 arms were lost or stolen from Mexican armed forces and state police between 2006 and 2019. Human rights violations, including disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial executions committed by Mexican security forces are rarely investigated and prosecuted in Mexico. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representatives Joaquin Castro and  Andy Levin each have spoken in Congressional hearings over the last week for greater restrictions on U.S. assault weapons exports, including to Mexico.

Military-style semi-automatic assault weapons are designed to efficiently kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time available. There is no reason for assault rifles, assault pistols, and assault shotguns to be sold on the civilian market in the United States or exported to Mexico or anywhere else in Latin America. 

It is time for President Biden to act on the climate crisis before it is too late. He should declare a climate emergency and issue critical executive orders that stop fossil fuel leases, exports and infrastructure.

With this latest Congressional setback, NOW IS THE MOMENT to push hard for Biden to use his full executive authority to take on the climate crisis.

Global Exchange is teaming up with our allies at People vs. Fossil Fuels for this action. We hope you take action with us today.

• Please call the White House & urge @POTUS to declare a #ClimateEmergency, stop fossil fuel leasing, export and project approvals, and speed a just, renewable energy transition. #PeoplevsFossilFuels.
• The White House Comment Line (888-431-7599) is open Tues-Thurs 11 AM – 3 PM EST. Please call during these hours and leave a message using the script below!
• “Hi, my name is ____, & I’m from ____. I’m calling with the #PeoplevsFossilFuels coalition. With climate disasters mounting and Congress at a standstill, we’re counting on Biden to declare a climate emergency NOW and stop approving fossil fuel leases, exports & projects.”

We are closer than ever before to a #ClimateEmergency declaration and ramping up executive actions to tackle the climate crisis. We hope you can join our movement of People vs Fossil Fuels in demanding bold climate action from Biden!

By Marco Castillo and Ted Lewis

The 9th Summit of the Americas just got underway in Los Angeles. It is the first Summit hosted by the U.S. and already the upbeat PR from the Biden State Department  – about this being a chance to bring countries from the region together to tackle big regional challenges like immigration and climate – has fizzled.

Mexican President, Andres Manuel López Obrador announced that he will not attend the summit, protesting the U.S. decision to bar Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The presidents of Honduras, Guatemala, and Brazil have also decided to stay away.

This predictable snafu could have been avoided if Biden had simply invited all the countries in the hemisphere. Instead he caved to domestic pressure from conservatives, especially wealthy Cuban exiles who insist on maintaining long outmoded Cold War frameworks of isolation and sanctions. By letting arguments over political and ideological differences take center stage the Biden Administration undermined its own diplomatic goals as well as any genuine dialogue, debate, or productive negotiation.

The Mexican president’s decision is based on principle. As this Global Exchange interview with Citlalli Hernández, General Secretary of Mexico’s ruling MORENA party underlines, Mexico has a long tradition of non-alignment and openness to political exiles. Mexico immediately recognized revolutionary Cuba in the 1950s. In the 1970s, it opened its arms to political refugees fleeing U.S. backed dictatorship in South America. In the early 1980s, Mexico even recognized the FMLN guerillas in El Salvador when the Reagan Administration was trying to crush their revolution.

Mexico’s independence from U.S. foreign policy suffered after the economic collapse of 1982 and the eventual imposition of NAFTA in the 1990s. In the 2000s, the price of getting too close to U.S. national security doctrine became clear as the U.S. backed drug war became the driver of deepening militarization and an escalating internal war in Mexico that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The decision by President López Obrador to boycott the Los Angeles Summit is a promising sign that Mexico is serious about re-establishing distance from American foreign policy while reinforcing its traditional stance of non-alignment known as the Estrada Doctrine.

Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia supported Mexico’s call to open the Summit to every nation in the hemisphere. Global Exchange also supported this call – we have always identified with the spirit of the Estrada Doctrine – and we supported Mexico’s call with a letter to President Biden asking that he invite all countries.

Now we are here in Los Angeles to speak out as citizens from across the Americas united and calling for a new relationship between the U.S. and Latin America.

Tune in, we will bring you on-the-ground reports and interviews throughout the week.

Even if our leaders are in disarray, we the people of our hemisphere will continue to respect and work together to build a civic challenge to out-dated foreign policies based on intervention and aggression against international political rivals..