Mexico’s Killings Continue
In August a group of hooded gunmen burst into a Ciudad Juarez drug treatment center, gathered together those inside and lined them up against a wall and opened fire with semiautomatic weapons. When the shooting was over, 18 people were dead. While the massacre did make the papers, probably because of the odd location, a rehab center, most of the drug prohibition-related violence doesn’t.
The city of Juarez has seen about 3,000 violent deaths since the start of 2008. In the previous week alone at least 75 people were killed in Juarez including a man who was beheaded, another suspended by handcuffs from a chain-link fence and four whose bodies were piled on a sidewalk.
Mexico just passed a law that would legalize personal possession of small quantities of illegal drugs including marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. Similar changes in the laws of Argentina were made recently as well. Brazil decriminalized drug possession in 2006; Ecuador is likely to follow suit this year. In 2006 Mexico tried to implement an almost identical reform of its drug laws and the pressure from the Bush administration was so great that then Mexican President Vincente Fox abruptly vetoed a bill his own party had written and he had supported.
More than 11,000 people have been killed nationwide since Fox’s successor Calderon launched the crackdown in December 2006. Most of the killing is a product of fighting between drug rivals over control of coveted routes for smuggling drugs to their main destination, the United States. Calderon has mobilized 48,000 troops and 5,000 federal police in the nationwide offensive. But despite the deployment of more than 9,000 soldiers and police to Ciudad Juarez alone, the killings just increase. So much for the “We just need to get tough” crowd.
Changes in the laws regarding personal possession of drugs are not going to have much effect on the sort of violence plaguing Mexico. It is not low- level drug users that are killing people. Just as it wasn’t alcoholics who caused the massive crime wave during alcohol prohibition in the US in the 1920’s and 30’s it is organized crime that fuels the violence. That won’t stop until there is a legal and regulated market for drugs. Note that Mexico is not plagued by shootings between Corona salesmen and Tecate salesmen. These changes are a sort of “Let’s dip our toe in the water and see how it feels” sort of change. Will the public react with understanding? Will street level police corruption decrease? Can we risk taking the next step toward legalization? How will the international community, and especially the US, react?
So far the Obama administration has been silent regarding these announcements from Argentina and Mexico. Sometimes silence is golden.
