Global Exchange has established a partnership with the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), the nation’s leading organization promoting alternatives to the drug war that are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. DPA works to advance policies that reduce the harms of both drug use and drug prohibition. DPA works nationally to change U.S. laws and practices to ensure that our nation’s drug policies no longer arrest, incarcerate, disenfranchise and otherwise harm millions – particularly young people and people of color who are disproportionately affected by the drug war.

This year, leaders of Mexico’s peace movement will be headliners at the DPA sponsored International Drug Policy Reform Conference held from November 2-5, 2011 at the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles, CA. Javier Sicilia and others, including John Gibler, author of To Die in Mexico, will present at the “Spotlight Session” on “The Bi-National Movement to End the Drug War in Mexico”. The panel will address how the drug war leads to the criminalization and incarceration of hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. every year, creating extraordinary obstacles that often prevent full participation in community and civic life – for instance, gaining employment can often be nearly impossible when employers won’t hire people with criminal records. The Conference website states: “This important discussion will provide conference participants with tools to fight discrimination based on arrest or conviction records. Speakers will highlight numerous successful campaigns, led by formerly incarcerated people, which suggest new strategies and possibilities for removing barriers to employment, housing, and other vital components of community life.”

This biennial event brings together over 1,000 attendees, from more than 30 different countries, who believe that the war on drugs is doing more harm than good. This year’s co-hosts include the Harm Reduction Coalition (HRC), the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Open Society Foundations (OSF), and Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP).

DPA is actively involved in the legislative process and seeks to roll back the excesses of the drug war, block new, harmful initiatives, and promote sensible drug policy reforms. As a result of our work, hundreds of thousands of people have been diverted from incarceration to drug treatment programs, hundreds of thousands of sick and dying patients can safely access their medicine without being considered criminals under the law, and states like California have saved more than $2.5 billion by eliminating wasteful and ineffective law enforcement, prosecution and prison expenditures.

To sign up for the International Drug Policy Reform Conference learn more here.

 

The following was originally sent to the Mexico News list. Be the first to get latest news and action alerts from our Mexico program by signing up to the list

Mexican President Calderón has broken his public pledge made to Mexican peace movement representatives to evaluate steps taken by the government since an internationally televised dialogue held in the Chapultepec Castle, three months ago.

Contending that the president reneged on his promise, peace movement leaders have challenged him to honor his word by moving ahead with plans to convene, as agreed, at 10:00 AM on October 7 at the Chapultepec Castle with or without the President and his cabinet.

Calderón’s eleventh hour reversal came just a week after the “Caravan to the South” –organized by Mexico’s peace and justice movement — completed a two week, 3,900 kilometer loop through Mexico’s long-troubled and increasingly violent southeastern states. Led by Javier Sicilia and others who have lost loved ones in Mexico’s still expanding war, the 30 vehicle bus and car convoy plied the highways and back roads of Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco and Veracruz.

Movement leaders, now back in Mexico City, had been preparing to meet with Calderón despite his stubborn insistence that his decisions to militarize the enforcement of drug prohibition is absolutely correct, or at least irreversible. Even with little or no visible progress, movement leaders were prepared to continue talks on a broad range of topics related to the war and its victims –until Calderón closed the door to dialogue.

Now the movement is planning an unprecedented gathering of war victims on October 7th. They will put their positions forward and announce new peace movement actions for Day of the Dead (Nov 2), Constitution Day (Nov 20), and beyond.

Please check the movement website for possible broadcast details for the Oct 7th events.

Also coming up in October is a month-long speaking tour with investigative journalists, John Gibler and Diego Osorno, on the political uses of the drug war. See the full listing of dates and locations of the tour.

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

See NYTimes’ recent profile on Javier Sicilia, “Can This Poet Save Mexico?”

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.

People rally near the cathedral in Morelia, Mexico as part of a campaign against violence called 'Peace Caravan. / Reuters

Key Juárez Human Rights Organization Broken Into by Federal Police as Peace Caravan Makes its Way North

Last Sunday night, just after eight o’clock, Mexican Federal Police violently broke into and searched the offices of the Centro de Derechos Humanos, Paso del Norte. This Center, led by Father Oscar Enriquez, has played a pivotal role in building Mexico’s national peace movement and is a Global Exchange partner.

The Center is also a principal organizer host of the Peace Caravan, led by poet Javier Sicilia, that will arrive in Ciudad Juárez this Thursday night to discuss and sign the “National Pact for Peace with Justice and Dignity” which was described in a previous post.

Please join Global Exchange and dozens of other organizations in letting U.S. authorities know that we are deeply disturbed by this criminal action by Federal Police — clearly aimed at intimidating the courageous Mexicans who have been speaking out for peace.

TAKE ACTION

Write to:

  • Arturo Valenzuela, United States Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affair, valenzuelaaa@state.gov

And copy on the e-mail:

Ask (in your own words) for the following things:

  • That the the Mexican Attorney General’s office (Procurador General):

a) give a detailed explanation of the operation,
b) make a complete investigation of what occurred and by whose orders, and
c) punish those officials and police officers responsible for this incident.
d) That the State Department make a public statement in support of the peace initiatives undertaken on the Caravan and condemn this attack on human rights defenders.

Thank you for your support.

Earlier this month, we reported on mass mobilizations against the drug war that stretched from Ciudad Juárez to San Cristóbal, partnered with solidarity movements around the world. At the May 8th demonstration in Mexico City, the National Pact for Peace, or Pacto Nacional, was first presented calling for, among other things: ending the militarization of the effort to control drug trafficking which is fundamentally a public health issue; challenging official corruption and impunity that have crippled genuine investigations and law enforcement; and opposing the economic monopolies that have robbed the wealth of the poorest Mexicans, leaving millions of youth with few productive options.

Javier Sicilia has been a driving force behind the Pacto Nacional that opponents of President Calderon’s drug war will sign in Ciudad Juarez on June 10th. A summarized English translation of the Pacto that lays out the broad demands of the growing movement can be found here.

Javier Sicilia will travel to the United States next week to receive the Global Exchange “People’s Choice” human rights award for the peace movement that he has sparked in the wake of his son’s death. If you are in San Francisco, you will be able to see him at the 7:00 PM awards ceremony. He will also be speaking to the media on June 1st at a 10 AM press conference at Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission Street, San Francisco CA 94110.

In other Mexico news, on June 15th, John Gibler’s new book, To Die In Mexico, will be released at City Lights Books in San Francisco. Please note that Global Exchange is sponsoring a U.S. tour of both Gibler and author Diego Osorno (El Cártel de Sinaloa) this fall. Please get in touch with me at ted@globalexchange.org if you are interested in hosting them to address audiences at schools, churches, union halls, and other organizations in your community.

Mexico’s weekend of mobilizations against the drug war stretched from Ciudad Juárez to San Cristóbal. Javier Sicilia, who called for these actions, led a hundred thousand supporters into Mexico City’s Zocalo on Sunday after marching three days from Cuenavaca.

The actions reveal a sea change in Mexican public opinion and have forced open a new national dialogue in Mexico while making headlines and inspiring support actions around the world.

The looming question is: What now? How can this dynamic new movement sustain and build the momentum for change? If you are in the Bay Area, here are three ways you can be involved in that conversation during the next month:

  • On May 18, Pietro Ameglio, a Mexican nonviolent activist and close advisor to Javier Sicilia will speak in San Francisco as part of a series of Bay Area appearances. 7:00 PM at the Center for Political Education 522 Valencia in the Mission District.
  • On June 1, Javier Sicilia will visit San Francisco to build international support for Mexico’s peace movement and to accept the Global Exchange Peoples Choice Human Rights Award — that many of you helped him win. Please come out to support him.
  • On June 15, Global Exchange ally, John Gibler, will present his new work, To Die in Mexico, an unflinching examination and critique of the drug war: 7:00 PM at Citylights Books in San Francisco.

Hope to see you at these events.

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.

The following piece was written by Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy in Mexico City at www.cipamericas.org.

The presidential meeting this week between Mexico’s Felipe Calderon and Barack Obama looked from the outside like a hastily arranged exercise in damage control. But while most analysts emphasized the tensions between the neighboring nations going into the meeting, the real crisis behind the visit was the failure of what the two leaders most strongly agree on: the war on drugs south of the border.

Following a lengthy closed meeting, the presidents stood before the cameras to reaffirm their mutal commitment to a war that has cost 35,000 Mexican lives since 2007, with the death toll rising by often 50 homicides a day. Obama affirmed the U.S. strategy of increased engagement in the Mexican drug war, stating “We are very mindful that the battle President Calderon is fighting inside of Mexico is not just his battle, it’s also ours.” He promised to deliver $900 million this year of funds appropriated under the Merida Initiative, a security agreement launched in 2007 by the George W. Bush adminstration and extended indefinitely under Obama.

The binational relationship suffered some serious blows in the weeks preceding Calderon’s Washington visit. The release of thousands of Wikileaks cables between the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and the State Department revealed U.S. officials’ deep concerns regarding the Mexican government’s capacity to carry out its high-risk war on drug cartels and wavering public opinion. Cable 10MEXICO83, for example, states that “the GOM’s (Government of Mexico’s) inability to halt the escalating numbers of narco-related homicides in places like Ciudad Juarez and elsewhere… has become one of Calderon’s principal political liabilities as the general public has grown more concerned about citizen security.” The cable cites “official corruption”, inter-agency rivalries, “dismal” prosecution rates and a “slow and risk averse” Mexican army.

In an interview with El Universal, Calderon responded angrily, calling the statements exaggerated, the ambassador “ignorant” and citing a lack of inter-agency coordination within the United States. Continued releases of the cables by the Mexican daily La Jornada promise more embarassments for both governments in attempting to portray a confident and united front in the drug war.

Tensions also followed the assassination of Jaime Zapata, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in San Luis Potosí on Feb. 15. Although the Mexican government has arrested the alleged attackers–members of the Zetas drug cartel–the incident highlighted the risks of the drug war cooperation and the power of the cartels. The Mexican government’s contradictory statements on what happened and the army’s absurd hypothesis that the assassins did not know they were attacking U.S. agents (the agents’ car bore US diplomatic plates) only deepened perceptions of a lack of transparency. Within Mexico, the incident heightened fears that the U.S. government would demand more direct involvement, in particular a lifting of the ban on foreign agents bearing arms within Mexican territory.

A recent spate of comments from high-ranking U.S. officials served to fan the flame of distrust of the U.S. government. Sec. of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano’s speculated out loud of possible links between Mexican drug cartels and Al Qaeda, and Undersecretary of the Army Joseph Westphal characterized organized crime in Mexico as an “insurgency”, while openly raising the specter of US troops being sent in. Mexican columnists and anti-miliarization activists have intensified criticism of U.S. growing involvement in the country’s national security.

These tensions arise from the commitment of both governments to deepen and reinforce a military alliance based on a drug war that is rapidly losing the support of their populations and proving itself counterproductive. The central concern of the presidential summit wasn’t the relatively superficial frictions between the countries, but the desire to bolster the beleaguered drug war.

Despite talk of a deteriorating relationship, in fact the Calderon and Obama administrations are overseeing the birth of historically unprecedented cooperation between the two nations.

The problem is that nearly all of that cooperation centers on the severely flawed approach to confront transnational drug-trafficking. The Mexico City US Embassy has expanded into a massive web of Washington-led programs and infrastructure. The controversial Merida Initiative, up for another round of funding in Congress, has allocated more than $1.5 billion to help fight Mexico’s drug war with devastatingly negative effects. In addition to the rise in violence, the binational relationship, which should be multi-faceted and focused on peaceful co-existence, has been hijacked by proponents of a war model to reduce illicit drug flows to the U.S. market and confront organized crime where it is most powerful—in brutal battle. The Pentagon is thrilled with its open access to the Mexican security apparatus and the Calderon government—entering election mode—needs the political and economic support for its flagship war policy.

But the new relationship forged in war rooms is bad news for the Mexican people. Polls now show that the majority of the population does not believe its government is winning the war on drugs and feels the social costs are too high. A new movement called No More Blood has taken hold throughout the country and regions like Ciudad Juarez, where militarization has been heaviest and not coincidentally violence has taken the highest toll, have seen the rise of grassroots movements to defend human rights, call for an end to militarization and put forward alternative strategies. Among their demands is to rechannel scarce resources away from the attack on cartels to address social needs, restore the armed forces to their constitutional mandate of national defense, and end impunity for crime by fixing the judicial and public security systems and attacking government corruption.

It’s also bad news for the U.S. public. Opening up a war front in Mexico has not only destabilized our closest neighbor, but also drains resources needed in U.S. communities. The government-funded contracts granted Blackwater and Blackhawk to fight Mexico’s war could be used for schools in crisis. With an on-going econimc crisis and two wars across the ocean, the prospect of long-term involvement south of the border hurts all but the flourishing war economy.

Presidents Obama and Calderon could have used this meeting to rethink the strategy. Both have at times indicated a need to defuse the drug war by turning more to health-oriented approaches to drug consumption and backing off the cops and robbers persecutions by adopting more sophisticated methods of dismantling financial structures and carrying out more focused intelligence operations.

A wide range of alternative policies exist to supplant the endless drug war. Human rights concerns, along with longterm effectiveness, should dominate in considering which of these to adopt. Mexico’s drug war has generated death, an erosion of rule of law, increased gender-based violence and has significantly altered daily life in many parts of the county. This crisis should have elicited a modicum of self-criticism and willingness to consider reforms from the leaders who developed the strategy.

Instead, the presidential summit made a show of putting the binational relationship back on track—in precisely the wrong direction.

Earlier this week we sent you the announcement of a high profile public fast starting on Jan 29th — the first anniversary of a massacre of 18 teenagers in the Villas de Salvárcrar neighborhood of Juárez. On this day, there will also be a bi-national rally taking place on the border between El Paso and Juárez.

Global Exchange is organizing a small delegation from San Francisco to join the fasters from across Mexico. Stay tuned to this blog for updates from Juárez.

Also, we repeat our requests that you send letters of support to the organizers of this event:

Centro de Derechos Humanos Paso del Norte
cdhpasodelnorte@hotmail.com
With Copies to:
Felipe Calderon, Mexican President, felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx
César Duarte, Chihuahua Governor, despachodelejecutivo@hotmail.com

Sample texts in Spanish and English.

It is clear that this tragic violence is fueled by U.S. military aid to Mexican security forces through the Merida Initiative. Help us grow our petition of calling on the Obama Administration to uphold human rights and halt drug war aid to Mexican security forces.

We also wanted to acknowledge the passing of two wonderful men who, in very different ways, gave unstintingly of themselves to the most downtrodden — “los de abajo”— in Mexico.

The remarkable life and transformation life of Bishop Don Samuel Ruiz is encapsulated in this obituary by Laura Carlsen.

John Ross, the rebel journalist who often gave us permission to republish his provocative missives is remembered here.