Next week, John Gibler will be celebrating the release of his new book To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War, a collection of stories about Mexico’s drug war, at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco.

When: Wed, Jun 15, 2011 7:00 pm
Where: City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue at Broadway, San Francisco

City Lights Publishers describes To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War–

Combining on the ground reporting and in-depth discussions with people on the frontlines of Mexico’s drug war, To Die in Mexico tells behind the scenes stories that address the causes and consequences of Mexico’s multibillion-dollar drug-trafficking business. Gibler tells the hair raising stories of a Mexican journalist kidnapped, interrogated and threatened with death by the Gulf Cartel before being miraculously released; family members of people killed in the conflict; survivors of assassination attempts and massacres; along with crime-beat photographers, funeral parlor workers, government officials, convicted traffickers, cab drivers and others who find themselves working against, with, or for the drug cartels. Gibler sees beyond the cops-and-robbers myths that pervade government and media portrayals of the unprecedented wave of violence and looks to the people of Mexico for solutions to the crisis now pushing Mexico to the breaking point.

John Gibler is a writer based in Mexico and California, the author of Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt (City Lights Books, 2009), and a contributor to País de muertos: Crónicas contra la impunidad (Random House Mondadori, 2011). He is a correspondent for KPFA in San Francisco and has published in magazines in the United States and Mexico, including Left Turn, Z Magazine, Earth Island Journal, ColorLines, Race, Poverty, and the Environment, Fifth Estate, New Politics, In These Times, Yes! Magazine, Contralínea, and Milenio Semanal.

I’ve known John for many years, and I’ll say this; he is one of the most ‘committed-to-the-cause’ people I have the pleasure of knowing. He is courageous, thoughtful and driven in his efforts to raise awareness about the violence, militarization, and corruption happening in Mexico.

You can read the table of contents and opening chapter from John Gibler’s To Die in Mexico by downloading the pdf here.

To find out about where and when John Gibler will be speaking next, go here.

Pictured l to r: Ted Lewis, Javier Sicilia, and John Gibler at the 2011 Global Exchange Human Rights Awards

P.S. Last week John translated for Javier Sicilia at the Human Rights Awards where Mr. Sicilia received the People’s Choice Award for his work in building a movement to free Mexico from the spiraling violence of the ‘war on drugs.’ Check out the event recap here.

Thousands of people marched in Mexico this week demanding an end to the violence that continues to wrack the country.

This time, Cuernavaca, the so-called city of eternal spring, was the epicenter of protests by thousands of Mexicans that sprang up in the wake of the murders of seven youths, including 24 year old Juan Francisco Sicilia, whose father, Javier Sicilia, is a well known journalist and poet. Javier Sicilia has made his paternal grief public, giving voice to sentiments shared by countless other bereaved Mexicans.

The discovery of fresh mass graves near the U.S. Border (close to where the bodies of 76 murdered Central American migrants were discovered last year) added to the urgency of protests in several cities by a new anti-violence coalition that now includes growing numbers of Mexico’s middle class — a sector that has traditionally been politically timid.

Prior to this week’s marches, Javier Sicilia met with President Calderón who is seen by many as the intellectual author of Mexico’s drug war tragedy. Sicilia came away from those meetings unconvinced by the President’s strategy and stirred new controversy by suggesting that it was time to make a pact with the powerful criminal cartels responsible for most of the killings.

As this first hand account from Cuernavaca, where the largest of the recent marches were held, conveys the sense that the growing movement against murder in Mexico is gathering force and will not be easily silenced.

Stay tuned for updates and action request as well as information on a nationwide fall speaking tour this fall by authors Diego Osorno and John Gibler. Osorno writes for Mexico’s Milienio newspaper and recently published a best selling book on the Sinaloa Cartel. Gibler, who has spent the past two years reporting from the frontlines of the drug war, will be publishing a book on the drug war this summer. If you are interested in hosting them, please contact: ted@globalexchange.org.

This piece originally appeared as an Op-Ed in The Seattle Times.

For Mexico, 2010 is a deeply symbolic year. Mexicans celebrate 200 years of independence from Spain and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. Their government will spend $300 million on the party, but no amount of fireworks or revolutionary nostalgia can overcome the inescapable sensation that Mexico is sinking into crisis.

Drug-gang assassins recently massacred 72 Central and South American migrants. The two local and state investigators who first arrived at the crime scene disappeared and were found dead two weeks later. Gunmen killed three Mexican mayors in the past month.

In the first four years of President Felipe Calderón’s drug war, more than 28,000 people have been slain, according to the government’s own count. Yet there have been few prosecutions: less than 5 percent of these murders have been investigated. But even those who are inured to corruption and incompetence are sickened by news of a prison warden who let a death squad out at night over a period of months — driving official vehicles and armed with prison guard assault rifles — to massacre innocent people in a neighboring state.

Headlines from Mexico bleed with news of such brutal killings and government ineptitude. And even as the violence continues to build, a recession — spreading south from the United States — cuts to the economic bones of an already vulnerable Mexican population. Growing economic desperation and shocking violence have undermined Mexicans’ faith in the ability of their government to manage the economy, control the country’s streets, mete out justice, or even to remain neutral among the warring cartels seeking to control North America’s drug-trade corridors.

It sounds bad and thus it is tempting to turn our gaze away from the news of mayhem and sadistic acts of violence coming out of Mexico. But we must not, and cannot afford to, turn away. The well-being of Mexico is vital to the well-being of the United States. We are neighbors and economic partners who share a continent and a common destiny. Any effective prescription to pull Mexico back from the abyss will require cooperation — as well as introspection and substantive policy changes — from the United States.

The U.S. should openly join the conversation on strategic and selective decriminalization of drugs like marijuana and impose strict controls on gun sales along the U.S. side of our common border. Clearly, most of Mexico’s problems need to be solved in Mexico, by Mexicans, but these are two crucial steps we can take on our side of the border to reduce the flow of money and guns fueling Mexico’s drug mafias. This one-two punch would deliver a damaging blow to the criminal organizations terrorizing Mexico.

A consensus is jelling on both sides of the border that it is time to move beyond the prohibitionist dogmas that have shaped — and doomed — the drug “war” since its declaration by Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. In Mexico, a chorus of opinion leaders including former President Vicente Fox have forced open a long-pent-up debate on drug legalization. President Calderón recently made news by endorsing debate on this topic, even as he reassured Washington, D.C., of his own continued allegiance to the prohibition camp.

Americans are the prime customers for the narcotics produced in and shipped through Mexico. Despite 40 years and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the drug war’s eradication and interdiction plans, prohibited drugs are easily available across the United States today. Their illegality assures the inflated profits that sustain criminal organizations.

This fall, Californians may pass a ballot measure to end marijuana prohibition. That would be an important step, but irrespective of California’s choice, it is our federal drug and gun policies that must evolve to aid Mexicans fighting to preserve the soul of their country.

Mexicans often ask why the U.S. doesn’t ban the assault weapons that can still be legally purchased on our side of the border. The lamentable answer: powerful gun lobbyists successfully defend the legal sale of “single-shot” assault rifles even as they are routinely smuggled into Mexico where a simple tweak renders them fully automatic and ready to fire hundreds of rounds per minute in the hands of drug-cartel assassins.

Eighty percent of the 75,000 guns Mexican authorities seized from criminals during the past three years came from the U.S. This fact underscores the need to reclassify control of gun sales along our frontier as a matter of national security.

Putting the squeeze on the pipeline of money and weapons that feed Mexico’s inferno would be the best Independence gift we could give Mexico. It would help more than any amount of guns, money, training and electronic spy data we might provide to Mexico’s unreliable Army and police.

Ted Lewis directs the Mexico Program of Global Exchange. He has organized elections and human-rights observation there since 1994.