drug war - Global Exchange

The “Voices of the Victims” tour is calling for an end to a drug war that has killed over 70,000 people in Mexico since 2006. The tour begins an 11 city bi-national tour starting in Denver at the Drug Policy Alliance meeting on October 23rd.

Following last year’s unprecedented 27-city Caravan for Peace, this year’s tour will once again feature Javier Sicilia and will put faces and stories to the horrible statistics and help facilitate an honest discussion about the failed war on drugs that includes acknowledging the suffering of real people.

The discussion about potential alternatives to the current drug policy regime has gone from quiet whispers to more assertive calls for action in many countries across the hemisphere.

Since last year’s caravan journey across the United States there have been undeniable shifts in attitude on drug policy, gun safety, and even immigration policy.

For the first time ever opinion polls reveal that more Americans favor decriminalization of drugs than oppose it.

Immigration reform legislation is now being seriously debated in the US Congress.
Gun safety legislation has stalled after a major effort, but will likely come back to the forefront.
And importantly, citizens in Colorado and Washington voted to regulate marijuana.
In South America, Uruguay will legally regulate marijuana at a national level.
And at the urging of Colombian President, Jorge Santos the Organization of American States (OAS) organized a broad international study group earlier this year to issue a scenario report on drug policy reform options in the Western Hemisphere.

A broad consensus on both the need to rethink drug war dogmas and to regulate marijuana as a simple and logical first step is forming among health professionals, police, local politicians, business leaders and the public.

The Voices of the Victims tour aims to advance the debate about solutions, specifically as it relates to the escalating violence in Mexico, the mass incarceration in north and the failures of the current models in dealing with the issue.

Kicking off in Colorado, 18 representatives from the Mexican victim’s organization the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity will participate in panels looking to discuss alternatives to current drug policy. In Seattle the group will be hosted by the ACLU and will look to build on the success of the popular ballot initiative to regulate marijuana.

Crossing the border into Canada the Voices tour will be meeting with public health and harm reduction experts to look at alternative ways to deal the drug issue. Community events in San Francisco and Los Angeles will focus on the Poetics of Protest and Policy and Javier Sicilia’s unique story.

“Our purpose is to honor our victims, to make their names and faces visible,” Sicilia said. “We will travel across the United States to raise awareness of the unbearable pain and loss caused by the drug war – and of the enormous shared responsibility for protecting families and communities in both our countries.”

Palo Alto organizer, Ruben Martinez says: “Sicilia comes with a profoundly moving story and message. His 24 year old son Juan Francisco was killed in a cartel-related crime in 2011. Sicilia made his pain and rage public with an open letter with the refrain “Estamos hasta la madre!” (colloquial Mexican Spanish for “We’ve had it!”), calling on all sides of the conflict — including Americans, whose drug and gun market is fully implicated — to a moral reckoning. He is a founder of Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, and has led several marches and caravans across Mexico and the U.S.”

The tour will continue to:

Tucson, AZ Nov. 1-2
Toronto, ON Nov. 4
Ottawa, ON Nov. 5
Chicago, IL Nov. 6-7
Los Angeles, CA Nov. 8 -10
Washington, DC Nov. 12,13
and ends in Jackson, MS Nov. 15

TAKE ACTION

Keep an eye out for updates from the Voices of Victims tour right here on our People to People blog.
Subscribe to this blog to receive new posts as soon as they are published!
Follow hashtag #VoicesofVictims13 to keep up to date about the Voices of Victims tour.

President Obama travels to Mexico today to meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Obama’s visit comes at a time when President Peña Nieto is riding a wave of adulation, especially in international media. Nevertheless, as analyst John Ackerman points out in Foreign Policy this honeymoon effect is unearned and is likely to be short lived because the underlying Mexican realities of widespread violence, rampant corruption, and harsh inequality remain unaddressed.

In today’s Los Angeles Times, Mexican poet and peace activist Javier Sicilia emphasized the need for both presidents to focus on curbing drug war violence. The following piece is reproduced from the Los Angeles Times. Join us next week on a conference call featuring Javier Sicilia and others to hear about the visit and discuss next steps with allies from the Mexican and U.S. peace movement, next Wednesday, May 8 at 12PM Eastern. We will discuss work on weapons trafficking, drug policy reform, and other important topics. RSVP to ted [at] globalexchange [dot] org.

President Obama has much to discuss with Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, when they meet in Mexico City this week. No issue, however, is more urgent than the search for peace, justice and dignity for and between our peoples.

For seven years, Mexico has been living a nightmare. More than 70,000 people, by some estimates, have been killed and thousands more have been disappeared in the wave of criminal and institutional violence of Mexico’s war on drug cartels. The collateral damage is a humanitarian tragedy that requires our leaders to have deep and frank discussions about how to transform the failed policies exacerbating the violence.

Our countries need to work together in prioritizing public health and regulation over a strategy that makes suspected drug offenders into military objectives. The effect of four decades of Mexico’s drug war has been, ironically, to strengthen and enrich the very criminals we oppose. We also need urgent common action to shut down the torrent of guns being smuggled from the United States into Mexico, and into the hands of criminals, at a rate of more than 200,000 a year.

For me these issues are personal and transcend ideology, politics and even nationality. One of the victims of the violence was my 24-year-old son, Juan Francisco. He was an athletic, studious young man with no connections to the criminal world. In March 2011, he was murdered with six friends by cartel hit men.

Why were they killed? Because two of the boys tried to get back some tools stolen from the parking lot of a local gang-run nightclub. My son was enlisted by his friends to help. They were kidnapped, beaten, stripped, spit on, tortured and slowly asphyxiated.

We are certain Obama understands how insidious and dangerous this indiscriminate violence is, and the way American drug laws and gun laws empower it.

When it comes to guns, the consensus in Mexico is broad: Students, workers, elected officials and especially police and soldiers all know they would be safer if the United States effectively cracked down on gun traffickers, instituted background checks for all gun buyers and ended sales of military-style assault weapons.

The hard truth is that weak U.S. gun laws allow for conversion of drug trade profits into contraband weaponry in the hands of the very criminal organizations terrorizing Mexico. Most of these weapons can be legally purchased at any of 8,834 U.S. federally licensed firearms dealers in your border states, as counted by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and then resold at a profit to a smuggler.

Obama’s initiatives would have made this massive and continuous arming of Mexico’s criminal organizations significantly more difficult. In Mexico, we were deeply disappointed when the U.S. Senate rejected popular, modest and eminently sensible measures to make it slightly harder for criminals, smugglers, the mentally ill and the cartels to get their hands on powerful weapons.

We urge Obama and Peña Nieto to use all their available executive powers to stem the tide of smuggled weapons and to support legislative and electoral efforts to overcome political inertia and roll back the power of the light arms industry and their political front groups like the National Rifle Assn.

But let’s be clear. Presidents are not all-seeing and omnipotent. They need to be supported, nudged, cajoled, convinced, assisted and otherwise pressured to work on the right causes and make good decisions. It is the role of an engaged citizenry to make that happen.

After my son’s death, our Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity arose. We pushed Mexico’s former president, Felipe Calderon, into a series of public dialogues and directly challenged his militarized approach to fighting the gangs. We mobilized enormous caravans of consolation and hope led by victims of violence. Dozens of buses rolled through Mexico’s worst conflict zones. Yet we knew that to end the killing, drug policy had to evolve. That meant crossing the border.

In August, I embarked on a 35-day, 125-person caravan across the United States. More than 200 U.S. organizations helped us with events in 27 cities focused on guns, money laundering and immigration justice. We underlined the need for the Obama administration to walk its talk of an evidence-based, public health model for drug policy. Yes, work to cut U.S. demand for drugs by devoting more resources to help addicts to recover and young people to make healthy choices. But to effectively shrink the profits of the illegal market, we must also consider regulating widely used recreational drugs.

In November, the citizens of Washington state and Colorado voted to start draining the coffers of criminal drug traffickers by establishing sensible state regulation of marijuana. We hope our leaders are listening.

As our presidents meet, let us wish them clarity and strong heart. We, the people on both sides of the border, will be very attentive.

Join us next week on a conference call featuring Javier Sicilia and others to hear about the visit and discuss next steps with allies from the Mexican and U.S. peace movement, next Wednesday, May 8 at 12PM Eastern. We will discuss work on weapons trafficking, drug policy reform, and other important topics. RSVP to ted [at] globalexchange [dot] org.

Mexican poet Javier Sicilan destroyed a gun during the Caravan for Pace this summer, 2012.

Mexican poet Javier Sicilia destroyed a gun during the Caravan for Peace this summer, 2012.

Millions of anguished conversations about the murder of so many small children at a Connecticut elementary school have produced new resolve to do something. As the holiday season starts, there is a palpable wave of revulsion against the gun industry, the gun fanatics, and the powerful lobbyists who have intimidated our political representatives into allowing all manner of guns – even military style weapons – to be widely and easily available.

Now, with a sense of sea change in public attitude, politicians are waking up. Several unlikely Democrats have spoken in favor of the initiative by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D. CA) to reintroduce the now expired ban on assault weapons she successfully championed in the mid 1990s. Meanwhile, for the first time, the Obama Administration is tentatively articulating leadership on gun regulation. If President Obama commits to strong and sensible gun regulation, we should have his back.

This new commitment to at least talk about gun restriction is heartening. Nevertheless, those, such as myself, who have watched previous waves of horror sweep in, and then recede in the wake of other gun-murder outrages, know we need a broad and resilient coalition against gun violence. We have to be able to win battles now as well as in future confrontations with gun industry interests.

A coalition that can effectively parry the U.S. gun lobby needs to work at a local, state, national, and international level. Locally, we need to involve the representatives of communities and neighborhoods most affected by the more than 30,000 annual gun homicides in the United States in the evolving conversation about how to make our communities safe. At the state level we need to work with legislators like California Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) who is working (with our partners at the Brady Campaign and other Senators like Kevin de Leon, (D-Los Angeles) to make California a laboratory for sensible and exemplary gun policies.

At the national level we need vision and leadership from an Administration that has not previously engaged the difficult politics of gun control. For more than a year, we have worked with allies from Mexico, Washington and important networks like Presente.org to petition Obama to use executive power to ban the import of assault to the U.S. This request to President Obama was a central element of the Mexican Caravan for Peace that crossed the country last summer, led by victims of the wave of violence 60,000 and counting – fueled by drug profits and guns smuggled from the U.S.

Candlelight vigil at East Los Angeles Church for Caravan for Peace

Restoring the ban on assault weapons, as Senator Dianne Feinstein seeks to do, would be a vital first step that would go much further than any available executive action to limit access to military style assault weapons. But passage, even such a common sense bill, is by no means guaranteed. Those who profit from the gun trade and their lobbyist enablers like the NRA have a strong grip on the leash of legislators, especially the Republican who control the House of Representatives.

For sensible gun control measures to succeed, the local political math must change. That is why sea change moments – when Washington’s policy silos disappear momentarily and the grief of a few moves the hearts of millions – are so important.

Such a moment came in Mexico when the Mexican President Calderón suggested that 14 teenage victims of an October 2010 massacre at a birthday party in the border town of Ciudad Juarez were linked to organized crime. In fact, the teens were all football players mistakenly targeted by cartel hit men. Later, when the boy’s mothers confronted the President about this during a televised meeting the video of the encounter went viral and caused an opinion watershed and eventually a powerful movement led by victims of Mexico’s drug war. This is the same movement that crossed the border to dramatically make the case for steps to regulate assault weapons in 29 US cities last summer.

As the New Year dawns and members of Congress will likely face decisions about how to weigh in on restoring the assault weapons ban and other possible gun control legislation. We must keep alive the urgency of these initiatives even as attention to the families and victims of Newtown recedes.

Constituent pressure on specific members of Congress will be key to any legislative success. Additionally, the voices of people from both sides of the border with loved ones lost to this long plague of gun violence bring a powerful and morally urgent voice to this conversation. There is no question that banning assault weapons would benefit the security and safety of Mexican border communities. Ending the large scale smuggling of assault weapons used by criminals throughout Mexico is human and national security priority.

As the year closes people gather. I hope we can all look each other in the eyes and muster the courage to ask what kind of world we want to live in and how we can love and work together to get there.

TAKE ACTION!

Please join the call on President Obama to stop the flow of assault weapons into our communities.

Most of the 60,000 people killed in Mexico as a result of the “Drug War” were killed with guns sold in the U.S. Tell President Obama that you don’t want greedy gun merchants selling assault weapons, built for war, into our communities where they are then used to massacre tens of thousands of innocent people on both sides of the border.

The Mexican Peace Caravan that crossed the United States last summer was bracketed between elections. It began in Tijuana, just six weeks after Mexico’s July presidential election, and concluded in Washington just six weeks before Obama’s re-election. Now, as 2013 is dawning, Mexicans can begin to see the outlines and true colors of their return to PRI rule.

On Dec. 1, in the final act of his blood-drenched presidency, Felipe Calderón passed his tri-color sash to incoming PRI strong-man, and now President, Enrique Peña Nieto. The handover was backlit by protest and chilled by concerns about what it means to hand Mexico’s executive branch back to a party that, until 2000, had absolutely controlled — and corrupted — the nation during 71 years of unbroken one-party rule.

Of course, millions of Mexicans voted for Peña Nieto last July. Some undoubtedly yearn for the peace and security they associate with the earlier era of PRI domination. To suppose that restoring the PRI’s power might facilitate clandestine contact with major drug trafficking organizations is not unreasonable. In decades past, such ties have reportedly allowed PRI operators to communicate with, take bribes from, and exert significant influence on major drug trafficking organizations. The current vision is of a restored pax mafiosa that could reset or even free the country entirely from the disastrously aggressive drug war policies of outgoing President Calderón.

Few say so publically, but whispers that Peña Nieto should somehow reach out to the drug bosses are widespread. Peña Nieto decried this notion in a New York Times op-ed the day after the election, but speculation continues about the possibility of a pact that could effectively legalize the wealth of the big traffickers in exchange for peace and their eventual conversion to legal enterprise. Such an amnesty brought the Kennedys and countless other American families back into the fold after U.S. alcohol prohibition was lifted in 1933. More recently, large drug syndicates in South East Asia’s golden triangle have paid steep one-time taxes to repatriate capital into the legal economy as part of a broader deal aimed at ending their participation in the drug trade.

Yet, in fact, even if Peña Nieto did want to return Mexico to an imagined earlier era of tolerance or otherwise evolve drug and security policies, it won’t be easy. This is especially true due to continuing U.S. rejection of real discussion about international drug policy reform. Yet ongoing prohibition guarantees continued drug mega-profits that are a siren song for the most ruthless criminal elements. This grim reality, in combination with strong U.S. pressures to stay the drug war course, severely limits the options and flexibility of Mexico’s new president.

Peña Nieto also faces a suspicious civil society and energized opposition. More than 60% of the electorate rejected the PRI and voted for opposition candidates. A significant social movement arose to oppose his election under the broad banner of Yo Soy 132. This group continues to organize on both sides of the border and was an essential part of gathering grass roots support for the Peace Caravan in several key cities.

Millions of Mexicans fear the PRI will resort to its authoritarian playbook while it pushes the same brutal mix of neo-liberal policies the party forced into place at great cost to Mexico’s economic sovereignty and well being during the crisis ridden 1980’s and 90’s.

But the realities of deepening poverty, inequality, and humanitarian crisis don’t stop Mexico’s plutocrats and their enablers from smearing lipstick on the pig of an economy that has left a majority of Mexicans in poverty. I recommend this article “Mexico’s New President Is Off to a Troubling Start” that UNAM professor John Ackerman just published in The Atlantic Magazine. In it, Ackerman repudiates highbrow happy talk about Peña Nieto and the Mexican economy currently emanating from Washington establishment sources such as the Woodrow Wilson Institute, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Many agree that Mexico urgently needs to undertake thorough and difficult internal reforms. To be effective, such reforms must challenge impunity all the way to the upper echelons of the military and Federal Police as well as top political and corporate circles. Washington officials and the Obama administration have shown little stomach for pushing such actions on Calderón. Similarly, Obama gave no visible signs of pushing Peña Nieto on such reforms during their first encounter in late November. Pressure for change must come from somewhere else. That is why we must continue to build the movement against the drug war into an unstoppable force.

The violence unleashed in Mexico during Calderon’s six long years has resulted in 60,000 murders but resolved nothing. In fact, drug trafficking organizations have thrived, diversified, and some think that they have deepened their penetration and corruption of Mexico’s institutions during this period. Any genuine change starts with an end to the drug war.

Last summer, victims and activists from Mexico rolled with people from across the United States for a 5,700 mile-journey through 29 cities. They had the support of Global Exchange and more than 200 other U.S. organizations who shared the ambitious goal of revealing how Mexico’s murder epidemic is rooted in more than forty years of deadly and fruitless drug war fostered, funded, and implemented by the United States.

The caravan relentlessly made the case for concerted action north of the border to regulate drugs more sensibly in order to remove the hyper-profits of illicit drug trafficking. Such a move could dramatically reduce the large scale brutality in Mexico, slow southbound gun smuggling, reverse mass incarceration trends in the U.S., challenge corruption on both sides of the border, and address the distortion of our national security priorities.

Mexican peace movement organizers are calling for a meeting in early 2013 to evaluate, strategize, and strengthen ongoing work between the organizations and peoples movements that built the Caravan on both sides of the border. They know the momentum around drug policy is on the side of reformers.

Recent elections in Washington state and Colorado are potential harbingers of a mature, new approach to drug policy that embraces regulation and public health metrics instead of the “just say no” militarization we have lived with for decades. Domestic and international opinion is moving faster than the politicians. And on a range of related questions — like the absurd legality of assault weapons for civilians or ill-advised U.S. support of Mexico’s military security apparatus — our job is to keep the debate moving and force them to catch up.

For the past few months, we have been working hard with our partners in Mexico to bring the message of Mexico’s peace movement north of the border to the United States.

Mexico’s Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) has now made the call for a major international peace caravan in the USA this summer.

The caravan, led by Javier Sicilia, the Mexican poet whose son was murdered just one year ago and is the founder of the MPJD, will begin in August and run from San Diego to Washington, DC. Victims of violence from both south and north of the border will join the caravan and aim to reframe the debate by calling for an end to the “drug war” and its tragic consequences at a pivotal moment between Mexican and U.S. presidential elections.

In the lead-up to the caravan, Javier Sicilia will be in the U.S. to speak in cities across the U.S. about why we need to build an international movement to end the war for prohibition, stop southbound gun smuggling, and reverse the alarming militarization of North America.

Javier’s first speaking event will be on April 4th in San Francisco, and will end in New York City May 10th. Cities to be visited include San Francisco, Stockton, San Jose, Los Angeles, Tucson, El Paso, Chicago, and New York. For a full listing of his speaking dates, please refer to our website.

Please spread the word about the speaking tour. Global Exchange is coordinating closely with the MPJD and will advise in future emails about how you can contribute to, join, or otherwise support the caravan.

If you would like us to contact you directly about how you can help, please send a message and/or question to mexico@globalexchange.org with the subject line, “Help with Caravan.”

John Lindsay-Poland, Senator De León and Kirsten Moller at California capitol building in Sacramento

On January 10, 2012 on behalf of Global Exchange I joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Brady campaign in the California Capitol building in Sacramento to provide a support testimony for Senator De León’s Senate Joint Resolution No. 10 that calls for a comprehensive approach to stop the trafficking of illegal weapons and ammunition across the border into Mexico.

The resolution which passed the committee by a majority will be submitted to the full legislature later this spring.

It urges the President and Congress to pursue a comprehensive approach to stem the trafficking of illicit United States firearms and ammunition into Mexico enhancing collaboration among local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies by:

the allocation of a permanent source of federal funding to sustain local and state law enforcement operations to combat firearms trafficking and other border-related crimes,
the redirection of federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and United States Customs and Border Protection resources towards this effort,
reenactment of a strong federal assault weapons ban, along with a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines,
stronger federal authority to crack down on corrupt gun dealers,
extending Brady criminal background checks to all gun sales, including all sales at gun shows to prevent firearms trafficking, and the maintenance of firearm purchase records to help law enforcement track down armed criminals and solve gun crimes.

Here is the statement we made yesterday:

We’ve travelled here today to testify on this measure to control firearms trafficking because we’ve been convinced by our Mexican friends and colleagues that loose regulation of firearms in the U.S. facilitates a massive illegal weapons flow to the South that, in turn, helps fuel a bloody conflict that has resulted in the murder of at least 45,000 Mexicans since the end of 2006. Sen. DeLeón’s SJR 10 resolution brings needed attention to this too often ignored issue while suggesting practical measures to reduce weapons smuggling.

As SJR 10 documents, Mexico has experienced a terrifying spiral of violence following an escalation of the war for drug prohibition by President Felipe Calderón at the end 2006. The underlying causes of the war and for the spiking body count are complex and controversial, but there is broad consensus across most sectors in Mexico that easy access to weaponry smuggled from the United States is a major contributing factor to the growing mayhem.

SJR 10 correctly identifies the urgent need for action at the Federal level –by Congress and the President to cooperate in developing comprehensive limits on the trafficking of weapons and ammunition into Mexico.

In 2012 Alianza Civica (Civic Alliance), – traditionally Mexico’s premier election observation and electoral watchdog organization asked Global Exchange and other US human rights organizations to join them in a Mexican led petition campaign that echoes the concerns voiced in SJR 10 in terms of limiting the import of assault weapons to the United States and providing far stricter enforcement powers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

This campaign against weapons smuggling has been given full and explicit support by Javier Sicilia, the renowned Mexican poet who, along with other victims of Mexico’s violence, is leading a massive peace movement he helped found after his son was murdered — along with six young friends — in March last year.

In recent months, even leaders of this peace movement have been targeted. On November 28th, Nepomuceno Moreno Núñez, a prominent movement activist, was gunned down in his home town of Hermosillo, Sonora in northwestern Mexico.
His offense? Being persistent in seeking justice in the case of his 18 year old son Jorge Mario Moreno León, who was kidnapped and disappeared in July, 2010.

California can send an important message to Washington with the passage of SJR 10. Please support this important Resolution.

Mexico’s Peace with Justice and Dignity Movement looks north of the border

After months of marches and caravans covering thousand of kilometers of Mexico’s highways and back roads, Javier Sicilia, other family members of murder victims, along with a small support team, traveled to Washington, DC and Los Angeles, CA at the invitation of Global Exchange.

They came with the goal of making the movement more visible in the U.S. and to talk about three things:

breaking the Pentagon’s co-dependency with Calderon’s failed and duplicitous war strategy;
challenging lax U.S. regulation of assault weapons that allows thousands of guns to be smuggled into Mexico and criminal hands every week (please sign the petition);
ending drug prohibition policies that have led to 40 years of a foolish, counter-productive, and ever more bloody “war” on drugs.

The decision to more deeply engage the public and officials in the United States is based on a recognition by the movement that any real and lasting solutions to the crisis of violence and impunity that has exploded during Mexico’s drug war will require deep changes on both sides of the border.

In Washington, they gave testimony to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and the head of Human Rights Watch (which just delivered a scathing report on torture by Mexico’s military including the elite marine units favored by President Calderón). In events organized by our partner, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), they also met with Obama Administration officials, key Senate offices and addressed the public at a forum hosted (and videotaped) by the Woodrow Wilson Institute.

Ted Lewis and Javier Sicilia at #OccupyLA

In Los Angeles, Sicilia was a headliner at the International Conference of the Drug Policy Alliance attended by over 1,000 advocates and organizers from around the world. During his brief visit Sicilia visited the Occupy Los Angeles, met with reporters and editorial board members, spoke at a large open air rally against the drug war in MacArthur Park, and gave TV interviews broadcast nationally on Univision and Telemundo.

At the Drug Policy Conference, Sicilia took part took part in a roundtable conversation I facilitated on “Mexico’s Crisis and the Bi-national Movement Against the Drug War”. The wide ranging discussion also featured: Brisa Maya, Director of Mexico’s National Center for Social Communication (CENCOS); John Gibler, Journalist and Author of To Die In Mexico; Zulma Mendez, Director of the Pacto por la Cultura in Ciudad Juarez; Diego Osorno, Journalist and Author, El Cartel de Sinaloa; Victor Quintana, social leader and Former Congressman from Chihuahua; and Susie Byrd, a City Council Representative from El Paso, Texas.

The conversation probed the causes of Mexico’s anguish and the terrible forces tearing and testing the fabric of the nation. For the United States, Mexico’s emergency tests our national character and ability to learn as people and neighbors.

The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity has plans to do more in the U.S. during 2012 as both Mexico and the U.S. face presidential elections. Mexico’s crisis and the urgent need to address it need to be put front and center whenever and wherever possible.

While in the U.S., Javier Sicilia gave voice to the idea that the same impulse to seek deep structural reforms that inspires the movement in Mexico is reflected in the Occupy Wall Street and other surging movements that aspire to break the death grip of money and power over our democracies. We are all in this together.

Our friends from Mexico will be back up north soon and will be looking for your help to take the struggle for peace to the next level. Stay tuned and refer your friends to our e-mail list.

Like the caravan that traveled through Mexico’s brutalized north to Ciudad Juarez last June, the caravan south was joined by hundreds of Mexicans determined to shine national attention on hidden sorrows and horrors caused both by long standing political repression in the south as well as the new national dynamics of criminal and state violence. Local organizations staged public marches and meetings, large and small, in the dozens of cities and towns the caravan visited. During these events, a specialized team set up tables to take testimony and give assistance to local citizens ignored by, ill-attended by, or too afraid to speak-up to local and other authorities.

For Micaela Cabañas Ayala, the link between past repression and today’s is painfully clear. She is the daughter of Lucio Cabañas the peasant school teacher turned guerrilla leader who was killed by the Mexican Army in the 1970s. But she joined the caravan as a victim of recent violence. Her mother Isabel Ayala and her aunt Reyna Ayala were killed on July 3 in Xaltianguis, outside of Acapulco. She and other family members are now seeking asylum in the U.S.

The caravan is an expression of a new movement, born of urgent necessity and led by victims. It is powered by resonant truths, spoken from the hearts of mothers, fathers, sister, daughters, sons, brothers, and others whose sorrow is compounded by the absence of justice and the infuriating corruption in Mexico’s judicial, police, and military institutions. The moral compass of these leaders is strong and accurate, but the complex and difficult task of connecting with and convincing their fellow citizens is incomplete.

Most Mexicans, undoubtedly, share the movement’s goals of peace and justice with dignity, but not necessarily its non-violent vision. Fear predominates and polls continue to show majority support for President Calderon’s aggressive use of the Army and military tactics. Connecting with the Mexican public was the goal of the caravan, but that road is still long and, even as the caravan was underway, events elsewhere cast ominous shadows across the path.

In Washington, Rep. Connie Mack, the Chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee previewed dangerous new Republican election-year talking points. “Mexican drug cartels have evolved into…the greatest national security threat faced by the United States with the ability to severely damage the U.S. economy”, says the Florida Republican. Criticizing the Obama Administration’s implementation of the Bush era military package called the Merida initiative, Mack calls for a multi-agency “counter insurgency strategy” to “combat insurgent activities, such as violence, corruption and propaganda near our border.” Rejection of this barely disguised call for military intervention was fast and furious across Mexico’s political spectrum, but the specter of deeper U.S. intervention has clearly been set loose.

Another deeply disturbing event was the public hanging of two mangled bodies from a pedestrian bridge in the border city of Nuevo Laredo on the eve of Mexico’s independence celebration. The victims, a young man and woman were alleged have denounced drug cartel activities on social networking sites, according to hand written signs left at the scene. These murders were especially chilling given that traditional print and electronic media have long ceased reporting on widespread criminal activity. Despite its limitations, social media was the last authentic information channel. Traffickers drove their point home. The hangings were followed just days later by the beheading of the editor-in-chief of Nuevo Laredo’s Primera Hora newspaper. Her killers placed her decapitated head with her computer, mouse, cables, and headphones.

A macabre detail (visible in the accompanying photo) that passed unmentioned in most coverage of these so-called “twitter murders” was the exit sign for a branch office of Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), the organization responsible for conducting the July 2012 presidential elections. The killers made no mention of the IFE, but intentional or not, the appearance of the familiar IFE logo in the crime photo was a reminder that just ten months prior to the 2012 presidential elections, basic conditions for free and fair elections — physical security, freedom of movement, and the freedom to speak without fear of retaliation — simply do not exist in significant regions of Mexico.

Yet another shocking leap in violence took place just days after the peace caravan left Veracruz, a major port city on the Gulf of Mexico, now engulfed in conflict. Thirty-five cadavers, some with signs of torture, were dumped — in full public view during evening rush hour in the center of the city. The bodies were left abandoned in two trucks, just a kilometer from where Mexico’s top state and federal prosecutors and judiciary officials would meet in a closed-door, national strategy meeting the following day.

Without a doubt, Mexico’s peace advocates have a long and taxing road ahead. They need many things, including reliable and strategic allies north of the border who can organize to reform U.S. drug policies, stop southbound gun smuggling, and challenge the flawed military/security priorities the U.S. pushes on Mexico.

It won’t be easy to shift U.S. drug policies away from the costly prohibition-enforcement-incarceration model that has made the drug trafficking obscenely profitable for the last forty years. But there is little doubt that a well -resourced public health strategy would be less expensive and more effective.

The NRA and their allies will fight any effort to limit and more closely track the sales of assault weapons that are the weapons of choice for the cartels. We need all hands on deck to expose the extremists and build a coalition to turn off the open spigot of assault weapons and other criminal firepower gushing into Mexico.

The biggest challenge of all may be how to transform the current military priorities of the drug war so as to instead channel resources to support community policing, build effective investigative capacity, restore community confidence in police and strategically fund educational and economic alternatives to the drug economy.

Help us connect the dots to build a powerful movement for peace in Mexico north of the border. Click the links above to see some of what we are doing and who we are working with to get it done.

For more news on the caravan, see Calderón breaks word to Javier Sicilia: Movement responds.

This month:
Stop the Drug War Speaking Tour: John Gibler and Diego Osorno – Oct 10-Nov 4 in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; El Paso, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; Mexico City, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles.

This post was originally sent to the Mexico News updates e-mail list. Be the first to received urgent news and actions from Global Exchange by signing up to our e-mail lists.

We are sending information on how to watch the extraordinary meeting planned on Thursday, June 23 between Javier Sicilia — together with his close advisors, and a group of family members of drug war victims – with President Calderón and his war cabinet.

This meeting represents a major milestone for the growing anti-war movement in Mexico. It is a moment of opportunity and peril. The opportunity is for the movement to speak directly to the Mexican public about the atrocities inherent in the current drug war model and the urgent need to change it. The peril is that the vast public relations machinery of the presidency could paint the moment to win Calderón points for listening, while ignoring the movement’s challenging call for deep change and reform of Mexico’s failing institutions.

You can view the meeting live at: http://www.milenio.com/portal/tv_live.html
Also view it on TeleSur: http://www.telesurtv.net/secciones/canal/senalenvivo.php
Listen to it on Radio Chinela: http://radiochinelo.mx/ and Radio Centro http://radiocentro.com.mx/grc/la69.nsf/vwAll/APAO-53JQ2Y

The televised public meeting begins at 10:00 AM on Thursday, June 23rd Mexico City time. (This means 11:00AM Eastern; 10:00AM Central; 9:00AM Mountain; and 8:00AM Pacific)

Stay with Global Exchange as we continue to provide you with updates and analysis on the growing anti-war movement in Mexico.

This update was originally sent to Global Exchange Mexico e-mail list. Be the first to receive urgent news and actions by signing up for Global Exchange’s e-mail lists.

We wrote last week about Federal Police breaking into the Paso del Norte Human Rights Center in Ciudad Juárez, an important host of the Caravan for Peace that was travelling 3,000 kilometers north to Juárez through cities hard hit by the drug war like Morelia, San Luis Potosi, Torreon, and Monterrey.

Many people wrote to U.S. officials about this atrocious break-in. The State Department response of privately expressing concerns to Mexican officials and publicly praising the spirit (though not the demilitarizing goals) of the caravan would not have happened without pressure. The Caravan arrived safely in Juárez last Thursday.

The Caravan Arrives In Juárez

I met the Caravan on the outskirts of Juárez on Thursday evening as part of a noisy and expectant crowd of hundreds that swelled into more than a thousand as we waited hours in the sun and then descending darkness to welcome the 20 some buses and dozens of cars that had joined in. The caravan was late — mostly due to making repeated stops to speak with large groups of people who spontaneously organized to show their solidarity and give testimony along the route.

As you can see in the news reports we linked in the first paragraph, stories of pain, death, and victimization were a constant in all the meetings along the way. The leaders of the caravan, including Javier Sicilia, who was honored and spoke in San Francisco just days before at the Global Exchange Human Rights Awards Ceremony, listened and made careful note of the chillingly similar stories of brutality and impunity including horrors inflicted by army, police, criminals, and others.

Ted Lewis, Javier Sicilia and John Gibler at the 2011 Human Rights Awards Gala

What impressed me the most about the arrival of the Caravan in Juárez that night was the response it elicited from ordinary residents, shopkeepers, truck drivers, and others along the usually abandoned and eerily quiet streets of Juárez. Instead of spending evenings inside shuttered houses and behind multiple gates and padlocks as residents of Juárez have become accustomed to doing in recent times, people surged into the streets; whole families clustered on street corners at 10 PM to join smiling citizens who stopped to wave and in some cases, hold up handmade signs of welcome. The mood was infectious and spirits remained high even as a vast welcoming crowd in Villas de Salvarcar — a neighborhood shaken in 2010 by one of the war’s worst massacres – listened to a series of speeches and testimonies that lasted until one in the morning.

Building the Movement

On Friday morning, movement organizers met again on the campus of the University of Juárez. The aim was to discuss and clarify the goals of the movement, as well as to propose concrete steps for further action to build the movement and challenge the failed drug war strategy and its supporters on both sides of the border. The results of these meetings included calls for drug policy reform, ending the Merida Initiative, pressuring the U.S. to take measure to end gun trafficking, and to end the dangerous militarization of a public security. In the wake of the meetings, some tactical and other disagreements over emphasis have emerged, giving this powerful and morally grounded movement some difficult growing pains.

Global Exchange is supporting a number of campaigns to end gun trafficking, challenge the U.S. to get serious about drug policy reform (this week marks the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s launching of the drug war in 1971), and end the Merida Initiative. Please check out the links in this paragraph for more information.

On Saturday, movement organizers crossed the border to headline a rally and multiple press conferences in El Paso, Texas. One of the most notable events of that day was the announcement that Cipriana Jurado Herrera had been granted political asylum in the United States — which she had sought based on her mistreatment at the hands of the Mexican Army. The granting of her petition, which exposes the routine abuses of the Mexican military, is unprecedented.

Protest from the Air

On Sunday, far away in California, another event that shows the growing reach of Mexico’s peace movement took place. A small plane pulling a banner with the now familiar logo of the No Más Sangre (No More Blood) movement saying “40,000 Dead! How Many More?” passed above Stanford Stadium where Mexican President, Felipe Calderón, was about to give the commencement address to the graduating class of 2011. The fly over, which lasted for 15 minutes of the president’s 18 minute speech, was barely mentioned in U.S. publications, but created a firestorm of TV and front page news coverage across Mexico, where public challenges to the President are rare.

Articles and cartoons generated in the wake of the action are documented on this excellent Facebook page. This homemade video clip of the action has been posted widely and has already been viewed tens of thousand of times.

We will continue to update you on this growing peace movement in Mexico, and encourage you to sign our petition encouraging the Obama Administration to put an end to the Merida Initiative.

“Voices of the Victims” Tour Starts Today Calling for an End to Drug War in Mexico