Mexican Drug War

The United States has spent over $1 trillion promoting democracy in far-flung Iraq and Afghanistan while friendly neighbor Mexico gets a fraction of that in its prohibitionist fight against drug trafficking organizations. Mexico's frustration with Washington's priorities has plunged ties between the two allies to their lowest ebb in years. Last year alone, the U.S.-backed campaign claimed the lives of over 15,000 people in Mexico -- that is more than double the combined civilian deaths reported in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the United States has spent over $1.2 trillion in the past decade.

Another lesson in the futility of drug prohibition: Drug smugglers are using low-flying aircraft that look like motorized hang gliders to circumvent new fences along the U.S. border with Mexico. The planes, which began appearing in Arizona three years ago, are now turning up in remote parts of California and New Mexico. And in a new twist, the planes rarely touch the ground. Pilots simply pull levers that drop aluminum bins filled with about 200 pounds of marijuana for drivers who are waiting on the ground with blinking lights or glow-sticks. Within a few minutes, the pilots are back in Mexico.

The Economist reports on recent brutal killings and mass graves in Mexico. The killings undermine the government’s claim that drug prohibition war casualties are almost all criminals.

With the current session of Mexico’s Congress scheduled to expire Friday, members of Mexico’s House of Deputies have less than a week to deliberate over extremely controversial changes to the country’s National Security Law that would give the President the power to deploy Mexico’s Armed Forces against broadly defined internal threats to Mexican national security. PT and Convergencia parties say that the 83-page initiative to change the law constitutes a threat to individual liberties and could create a state of exception in Mexico that would effectively put the country under military control. They remain deeply skeptical of proposed changes to the law, which advocate, among other things, the monitoring and recording of private communication for intelligence-gathering purposes. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch have drawn attention to frequent abuses by the Mexican military and contend that there is a widespread systemic failure to prosecute human rights violations in Mexican military courts.

While much of Mexico's mainstream media, especially television stations and local newspapers, has shied away from covering killings and naming the drug trafficking organizations involved, a blog and its anonymous curator publish graphic details of spiraling prohibition violence. At Mexico's "blog del Narco" the images are gruesome and unedited: a dead man in a sports jersey with his face covered in dried red blood and grey sand; a woman hanging from a rope above a busy urban over-pass and naked bodies lined up on the ground displaying clear, uncensored, signs of torture. Some recent headlines from the site include: "Entire town taken hostage by Gunmen in Chihuahua"; "Eleven year old arrested in Acapulco with AK 47"; "Sinaloa cartel welcomes new police chief with tortured body"; and "Mass narco grave, 60 bodies found, total 148 corpses".

Drug trafficking organizations gunmen have been attacking Mexican border towns once thought to be safe from the country's rampant drug prohibition violence. The cities of Miguel Alemán, across the border from Roma, Texas, and Ciudad Mier have come under siege.

In early April, thousands of Mexicans poured into the streets in over 20 Mexican cities to raise their voices in a chorus of protest against the government's ineffective and increasingly unpopular military campaign against drug trafficking organizations. These mass mobilizations mark some of the most heated condemnation yet of violence and impunity associated with President Calderón's U.S.-supported "drug war." The day of protest has been described as a historic "sea change" in Mexican public opinion.