Out
from the Shadows: First Latin American Anti-Prohibition
Summit Convenes in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico
The first hemispheric conference organized to call for an end
to
prohibition and the drug war took place in Mérida, Yucatán,
Mexico,
Wednesday, February 12 through Saturday, February 15.
Some 300 academics,
activists, government officials, journalists
and legislators from the United
States, Latin America and Europe
gathered at the Out from the Shadows: Ending
Drug Prohibition in
the 21st Century conference to seek new approaches to
drug policy
centered on regulation and legalization of drug consumption
and
the drug trade. Sponsored by DRCNet, with the cosponsorship
of
the Transnational Radical Party's International
Antiprohibitionist
League and Narco News, and hosted by the Yucatán newspaper
Por
Esto! and the Autonomous University of the Yucatán, Out from
the
Shadows brought together for the first time the many disparate
voices
calling for drug legalization in the Americas.
Argentine harm
reductionists exchanged tips with their Mexico City
counterparts, North
American activists met with Andean coca
growers and their supporters, Mexican
marijuana activists mingled
with Brazilian legalizers, and legislators from
five Latin
American countries came face to face with a hemispheric
drug
reform movement in all its diversity. In two days of speeches
and
workshops and innumerable informal encounters, advocates of
drug
legalization in the Americas began to take the first steps toward,
as
DRCNet's David Borden put it in his opening
remarks,
"demarginalizing our viewpoing and shifting it into the
mainstream
of the public debate."
But it was the grand old man of
Latin American legalizers, former
Colombian Attorney General Gustavo
de Greiff, who set the tone for
the summit in his opening
address. Calling the policy of drug
prohibition "a failed policy, an
erroneous policy," de Greiff
bluntly observed that it is "a strategy that
does not work."
Citing years of drug war in his home country, the
bespectacled,
white-haired scholar noted that, "It is illogical to think we
can
suppress drug use or drug consumption. It is a big
lie."
There is a better way, he said. "We need a politics of
regulation
of drug production and consumption, one that includes education
on
the dangers of drugs and treatment for the fallen," he told a
rapt
audience. "The policy of legalization is not a policy
of
supporting drug use," he added, "but a strategy designed to ruin
the
business of the narcos and the corrupt, and to help the
addict." De
Greiff also touched on another theme popular with
speakers and attendees
alike: the malignant role of US drug
policy on the countries and
societies of the hemisphere. "Other
countries have to follow US policy
because of economic and
political pressures," he lamented.
It was a
theme taken up the same day by Por Esto! publisher
Mario
Menéndez, who accused US officials not only of foisting a
failed
and destructive prohibition policy on the hemisphere, but
of
actively abetting the trade. "The US is the biggest consumer
drug
market in the world," he said. "The drugs enter the US because
of
corruption. All that cocaine... the US authorities who say
they
are fighting drugs allow the smugglers to enter because the
US
receives the benefits. In Mexico, the government gives orders
to
let pass the drugs that enrich the US. They talk about
getting
the narcos, but they don't chase the powerful ones. This
is
business," he said. The US has a long history of cooperating
with
the drug trade, he added, citing the World War II-era deal
with
Italian mobster Lucky Luciano as well as Oliver North's dealing
with
cocaine-trafficking Contra "terrorists" in the 1980s. "Where
are those
famous puritan principles?" he asked. "What moral
principles are we
talking about?"
For Menéndez, too, the correct policy was clear.
"The politics of
Por Esto! is to legalize," he said. "The drugs must
be
distributed free to addicts in health centers, and we must have
a
campaign of education and rehabilitation. Drug prohibition is
a
perversion," he thundered. "You in the US have your prisons
full
of low-end drug offenders; they go in and they are not human
beings
anymore when they come out. US prisons are like factories
for drug
dealing; people come out as a labor force for organized
crime. And now
it is happening here."
But if Menéndez' call for legalization was
uncontroversial at the
conference, his attack on the US provoked Drug Policy
Alliance
(http://www.drugpolicy.org)
director Ethan Nadelmann to respond
the next day.
Nadelmann's reply both illustrated the difference
in perspectives between
North and South and represented an attempt
to create a dialectic to bridge
that divide.
"I want to challenge you to think in new ways about the
forces
behind the war on drugs," Nadelmann said. "Our capacity
to
organize and to act strategically depends on how sophisticated
our
analysis of the problems is. We cannot interpret all
information
through a single lens, and understanding what drives US
drug
policy is not so simple. I don't believe the war on drugs
is
driven primarily by economics," he added, conceding that there
are
economic interests that do profit from the drug war. "But the
war
on drugs is fundamentally in opposition to US economic and
strategic
interests."
Instead, Nadelmann continued, the motivating force behind US
drug
policy is "a quasi-religious imperative that comes from deep
within
our culture." In that sense, he added, US drug policy in
Latin America
is largely a projection outward of US domestic
policy. "For you in
Latin America who see the tremendous harms
committed by my government, know
that millions are also suffering
in the US. And for those of you who
ask, 'why doesn't America
crack down harder at home,' I ask you to please
stop saying that.
Instead, we must build alliances across borders, across
left and
right, across the lines that divide worker and
businessman."
With that appeal, Nadelmann touched upon another division
within
the hemispheric drug reform movement: the ideological
divide
between a Latin America historically more attuned to
socialism,
populism and anti-imperialism, and the libertarian impulse
so
prominent in the US drug reform movement and, increasingly,
within
Latin America itself. That tension was illustrated during
the
address of Fernando Buendía, advisor to new Ecuadorian
President
Lucio Gutierrez and a leading official of Pachakutik
Movement, the
political branch of the nation's largest indigenous
organization,
CONAIE, and the driving force behind Gutierrez's
electoral
victory.
Buendía gave an eloquent speech, rooted in the
traditions of
Western dissent, in which he called drug abuse a result of
the
"crisis of Western civilization," which worships reason but
destroys
the social fabric. "Savage capitalism," said Buendía,
"destroys human
community and converts us into a set of atomized
consumers. It
decomposes ancient social bonds among families and
communities, and people
look to fill the immense vacuum with
drugs. The war on drugs is part of
savage capitalism," Buendía
argued.
While his remarks were
well-received by many in the audience,
Costa Rican legislator Rolando
Alvaro, for one, grimaced
noticeably and shook his head at
times. Alvaro, a member of Costa
Rica's libertarian-leaning Movimiento
Libertario party, had
earlier told the conference he hoped for the triumph of
the same
Western reason that Buendía criticized. How the tension
between
the libertarian call for individual rights and the Latin
American
concern for community and society plays out will undoubtedly be
a
point of continuing concern as drug reformers of the left and the
right
seek to forge a unified movement.
But ideological and other divisions at
Mérida should not be
overstated. Most of the conference, both in formal
sessions and
in informal conversations, centered on addressing the
concrete
problems of creating a hemispheric movement for regulation
and
legalization. Whether it was Uruguayan Deputy Margarita
Percovich
calling on neighboring Brazil to step forward on drug
reform,
Mexico City harm reductionists seeking to forge links with
their
Argentine counterparts, the Bolivian delegation calling on the
rest
of the hemisphere to support its struggle on behalf of coca
farmers, or
Transnational Radical Party Members of the European
Parliament urging Latin
American governments to support change in
the United Nations conventions on
drugs, the primary focus of the
conference was not debating differences but
finding ways to work
together.
The Bolivian delegation certainly had
little time for
philosophical questions. With their nation in flames --
fighting
between police and soldiers left 19 dead in Bolivia the day
before
the conference started (see related story below) -- the
Bolivians
arrived without their most prominent leader, Congressman
Evo
Morales, who had initially planned to attend. But
Congressman
Felipe Quispe, El Mallku (high leader) of the
indigenous Aymara
Nation, did make it to Mérida, where he gave a heartfelt
address
vowing never to surrender to the coca eradicators in La Paz
and
Washington. "Coca may be a poison for the white man, but it is
a
blessing for the Indians," said Quispe. "Coca is everywhere.
There
is no other agricultural production in the coca areas. This
is our
livelihood; it buys us food to eat and clothes to wear. If
we can't
grow coca, what will the government do? They want to
stop us, but it is
impossible."
The Bolivian government cannot win, said Quispe, because
its
soldiers and police do not want to die for coca eradication.
"We
are willing to die for our coca," he vowed. "Coca or death!
The
government will never win because the Indians are mobilized and
we
will not stop here. In the eyes of the elite, my brown face
makes
me invisible, but the middle ranks realize they will never win.
We
demand respect," said Quispe, "we demand respect for our
traditions and for
the coca plantations."
And if, as Quispe argued, "coca is everywhere,"
that was certainly
evident in Mérida. Many conference attendees sampled
coca leaves
and coca candy courtesy of Peruvian coca expert Baldomero
Cáceres
and the delegation from the National Association of
Coca
Producers. (Meanwhile on the streets of Mérida, a
conservative
and relatively isolated provincial city, both cocaine powder
and
crack could be procured quickly and cheaply by any
interested
party.)
Cáceres and Quispe were not the only ones waving
coca leaves. In
an emotional speech, Peruvian cocalero leader
Nancy Obregon from
the Huallaga Valley, told the conference
that her people would
never give up their coca. "For us, the sacred
coca leaf is our
life," she said. "It is our history, our economy, it
provides the
education for our children. It is the source of our
history and
the source of our heritage," explained the
35-year-old
subsecretary general of the Peruvian Confederation of Coca
Growers
(CONCPACCP). And Obregon called for stronger struggle against
the
machinations of Washington, exhorting her audience to stand
tall
against eradication. "What is it we lack to confront
Washington?"
she asked. "Is it courage? Do we lack the
will? We lack
dignity, my friends, and to regain this dignity, we must
fight to
achieve our objectives."
For Cáceres, too, the leaves of the
coca plant are "holy leaves, a
gift from Father Son and Mother Earth.
But I can't take them to
the US." How can a plant be illegal?, he
asked. "These are
medicinal plants, not drugs." Cáceres also
urged a reevaluation
of attitudes toward drug use. "I smoke marijuana
and I am not
disturbed, but the psychiatrists say I am an addict," said
the
sixty-something academic. "Also, I drink alcohol. Therefore I
am
a complete lunatic in the eyes of Catholic Lima, which believes
in
sin."
It was not sin on the minds of parliamentarians in
attendance, but
changing the global prohibition regime. "Los dos
Marcos," the
Italian Radical tag-team of Marco Perduca and
Marco Cappato,
entranced legislators and activists alike
with their discussions
of efforts to reform the system of UN conventions that
dictate the
bounds of the permissible in national drug policies. UN
anti-drug
strategy will be evaluated at a meeting in Vienna in
April,
Cappato said. "A reevaluation of the failed war on drugs
is
possible at the UN," he noted. "We are coordinating
legislators
from around the world and we are talking about how to unite
to
take our efforts to the next level."
While urging governments to
cooperate in amending or revoking the
UN conventions, Cappato also called for
other forms of political
action. "We need proposals for governments to
take to Vienna," he
said, "but we must also go to the streets. We are
right, but
being right isn't enough. The prohibitionists seek to
impede
debate, so we must transform our ideas into political action,
into
popular action."
Likewise, Colombian senator and former
chief justice of the
Colombian Supreme Court Carlos Gaviria was more
interested in
human rights than morality. Gaviria, who authored the
1994
decision legalizing the use and possession of drugs in Colombia,
also
called for legalization as the only workable solution. "The
drug
problem must be seen as an economic and human rights
problem," he told the
conference. "The only solution is
legalization, but it will be a long,
hard process." Drug
consumption by itself should not be within the
purview of the
state, he added. "Just taking drugs in itself does not
hurt the
rights of others, and a democratic, pluralistic state
cannot
justify this. There is no worse dictatorship than that
which
seeks to impose its ideas over all others."
But the current
Colombian government of Alvaro Uribe is heading in
a different direction,
Gaviria told DRCNet. "They are seeking a
referendum to recriminalize
drug use," he said. "This is a very
repressive position from a very
repressive government. It remains
to be seen whether they will be able
to accomplish this."
But while Colombia under its current leadership is
heading
steadfastly backwards, other governments in the region may be
more
amenable to change, according to various conference
participants.
Uruguayan legislator Margarita Percovitch told the
assembly
efforts are underway at home to create more progressive
drug
policies. And although Brazilian Deputy Fernando
Gabeira could
not attend the conference, he sent a statement in
which he vowed
to work for change under the new government of President Lula
Da
Silva. Similarly, Ecuador's Buendía told DRCNet that while
the
new government there has barely had time to take office, it
was
reviewing drug policy and that Ecuador had already decriminalized
drug
use. But consumption is not the problem in Ecuador, Buendía
said, the
problem is the drug traffic and the resulting "sinister
proposals like Plan
Colombia, that seek to militarize and control
the region."
For all the
talk about coca and the drug war in South America, the
conference took place
in Mexico, and delegates from the host
country also had plenty to say.
Mexican congressman Gregorio
Urias German from the state of
Sinaloa, long a hotbed of the drug
traffic, called for bringing the debate on
drug policy to a new
level. "If we can't even discuss the alternatives,
if we can't
even admit the drug war is a failure, then we will never solve
the
problem," Urias argued. Existing forums, such as the UN and
the
Organization of American States, are not fruitful places to
advance
this discussion, he said, "because only the repressive
policies of the United
States are discussed at these forums."
Instead, Urias said, he has been
working with a group of Latin
American parliamentarians to advance discussion
of the issue.
But while Urias averred that his interest was "the majority
of
society, not drug users," members of the Mexican pro-marijuana
movement
spoke of an emerging drug consumers' movement in there.
Members of groups
such as the Mexican Association for Cannabis
Studies (AMECA), magazines such
as Generación, and web sites such
as Ricardo Sala's vivecondrogas.com,
described the growth of the
movement in Mexico, regaling attendees with tales
of the Million
Marijuana Marches in Mexico City and the nascent struggle to
open
a space for pot-smokers in a country that remains a leading
marijuana
producer. Similary, Julio Schnell of head.com.mx
described the
emergence of activism around hemp issues in Mexico.
And Cuban-born Mexican
resident Sylvia Maria Valls would have been
at home at any US pro-pot
rally. "We must revoke any laws that
criminalize the use of these
plants," the activist grandmother
said. "Cuban independence hero Jose
Marti once said 'the final
struggle is between false erudition and true
knowledge,'" she
continued. "We must trust the wisdom of our
people."
A single report cannot do justice to all that occurred in
Mérida
-- the workshops on social movements, organizing for Vienna,
and
attacks on freedom of the press in the name of the drug war;
the
panels on legislative efforts, the informal gatherings and
much
more. DRCNet will be providing videotapes of the
entire
conference in the near future, as will Italy's Radio Radicale,
and
interested readers may also want to visit the Narco News web
site,
which is already full of reports from the 26 young
journalists
awarded scholarships by the Narco News/Por Esto! School
of
Authentic Journalism who covered the conference and who retreated
this
week to Isla Mujeres off the Cancun coast for more studies.
The Mérida
conference was a first for the hemisphere, and numerous
participants told
DRCNet that while no concrete proposals resulted
and no manifestos were
drafted, the conference was the beginning
of something bigger.
Enthusiasm for making the conference an
annual event was also high, with the
refrain "next year in Rio,"
being heard repeatedly. Alternately,
Ecuador's Buendía suggested
that DRCNet bring a delegation to the annual
Global Social Forum,
which will convene next January in Quito.
And as
a first try, the conference was not perfect, or at least,
some participants
had suggestions to make it better. A number of
attendees complained of
a lack of time for discussion or
questions. "It might have improved
matters a bit if we could have
had questions and comments at the end of long
speeches," said
Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt of the London-based
Mordaunt Trust and
editor of the Users' Voice, a British harm
reduction publication.
That critique was echoed by Silvia
Inchaurraga of the Latin
American Harm Reduction Network.
"Some people came from very far
away and had many things to discuss, but
didn't get a chance to do
so," she told DRCNet. "And perhaps we should
have had a
declaration or manifesto of common purpose," she added. "We
also
need more clarity about different models of legalization
or
regulation and the distinctions between decriminalization
and
legalization. This is not something that is necessarily clear
to
the Latin Americans."
And though conference organizers strove to
maintain a strong focus
on Latin American voices, attendees from throughout
Latin America
had a complaint they didn't expect -- more of the speakers
should
have been from the US.
But all in all, conference attendees
seemed uniformly happy to be
there and pleased with the results. They
were, after all, present
at the birth of what promises to be a vigorous and
growing
hemispheric drug reform movement that can play a vital role in
a
global effort to end prohibition in the 21st
century.
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