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Leftist President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) wants to end Mexico’s militarized drug war.
MEXICO CITY — Juan Carlos Trujillo last saw his brothers, Jesús Salvador, 24, and Raúl, 19, a decade ago.
The two men and five of their co-workers from the Trujillo family’s scrap metal business were abducted in August 2008, after they stopped to stay the night in a little town in the Mexican state of Guerrero.
The government’s investigation went nowhere, so the Trujillo family took it upon themselves to search for their sons. But that drew attention — and death threats — from one of the many drug cartels fighting over their home state of Michoacán. So the family dropped their makeshift investigation.
“You just never stop wondering what happened, if they are okay, if they are hungry or tired or hurting, if they’re even with us anymore,” Trujillo says.
But things got worse.
Two years later, Trujillo’s other brothers, Gustavo, 28, and Luis Armando, 25, were last seen approaching a military checkpoint in the Mexican state of Veracruz — before they disappeared as well.
Trujillo is part of a massive community in Mexico: the families of the disappeared. Official statistics show that more than 37,000 people have gone missing in Mexico since 2007, though NGOs say the figure is likely much higher, as families are often too scared of retribution to report.
“Human beings aren’t built to withstand so much pain,” Trujillo, now a full-time activist for families of the disappeared, says. “Your dreams, your hopes, your plans, they all disappear.”
Since the military took to the streets to fight the increasingly powerful and violent cartels producing and trafficking drugs north to consumers in the United States, tens of thousands of Mexicans have died. And a broken police and judicial system means perpetrators are almost never held accountable for a disappearance or murder.
But Mexico’s next president, a leftist named Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has promised national reconciliation and peace and an end to more than a decade of the drug war.
López Obrador (who is usually referred to by his initials, AMLO) was elected on July 1 with the biggest margin of victory for a president in Mexico’s modern democratic history. “The failed crime and violence strategy will change,” he proclaimed during his victory speech on election night. “We will address the root causes of crime and violence.”
AMLO and his advisers have proposed sending drug war-fighting soldiers back to their barracks, pardoning nonviolent drug offenders, and boosting social programs, repeating slogans like, “Hugs, not gunshots,” on the campaign trail.
If the incoming president gets his way, this will be Mexico’s first major split from the US on crime-fighting and drugs in decades. But the obstacles are many, and it remains to be seen if the new president has the lasting support and the resources to end the drug war.
Mexico’s drug war has devastated communities for more than a decade
It’s not easy to pinpoint when Mexico’s drug war started. Marijuana and poppy (used to produce heroin) plants have long flourished in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountain range, and in the 1960s, the government started incinerating them.
This did little to stem the drug trade, and in the 1980s, Mexico’s first drug lords emerged, like the Guadalajara Cartel’s Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (soon to be dramatized in the new season of Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico).
But the latest iteration of the drug war, which has coincided with Mexico’s most violent era in modern history, began in 2006, when the newly elected President Felipe Calderón declared war on cartels and sent 6,500 soldiers to the unstable Michoacán state.
“This is a battle we have to wage,” Calderón said at the time. “Together as Mexicans, we will beat back crime.”
Calderón’s military deployment was later bolstered by the Mérida Initiative, an agreement with the United States to cooperate on the drug war. Since 2008, the US has given $2.7 billion to Mexico through the initiative “to help shape Mexico’s security policy,” while the Department of Defense gives millions more in its work with the Mexican military.
Mexico relies heavily on its military to pursue drug traffickers and bolster security in states mired in crime and corruption. In recent years, more than 130,000 military personnel have been involved in drug war-related activities on an annual basis.
And since Calderón deployed the military, the effects have been devastating. There have been 127,000 organized crime-related murders, according to Lantia Consultores, on top of the tens of thousands of people who have disappeared. Mexico recorded more murders in 2017 than in any other year in modern history, and the murder rate is already up another 14 percent in 2018.
But organized crime groups are not the only perpetrators. The Mexican armed forces, as well as federal, state, and local police, have all been implicated in atrocities.
In the case of the Ayotzinapa disappearances, when buses full of college students were reportedly intercepted by the police on their way to a march in Mexico City and handed over to a drug cartel, an independent investigation showed that high-level authorities were aware of (or even participated in) the disappearance of 43 students.
And on top of that, all this bloodshed doesn’t seem to have made a dent in drug trafficking.
According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2017 report, Mexican cartels are fueling epidemic levels of heroin use and overdose (and, more recently, fentanyl). Mexican methamphetamine production is increasing and is “particularly pure and potent.” Cocaine trafficked through Mexico is on the rebound.
AMLO’s landslide election in July, however, could drastically change the government’s response.
“You can’t fight fire with fire”
On the campaign trail, the leftist candidate repeated catchy slogans and rhymes to show his opposition to the militarized drug war. These included phrases like “Abrazos no balazos” (hugs, not gunshots), “Becarios sí, sicarios no,” (scholars yes, killers no), and “No puedes apagar el fuego con el fuego” (you can’t fight fire with fire).
He kicked off the strategy in earnest on August 7 with a town hall in the border town of Ciudad Juárez, once considered the world’s most dangerous city. (The week before AMLO arrived, 11 bodies were found bound and strangled in a house.)
“We cannot solve these violence problems with an iron fist and with more prisons,” he told the town hall’s restless crowd in a speech filled with many slogans and few specifics. “I do not believe in ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.’ We cannot fight evil with more evil.”
Before his inauguration on December 1, AMLO and his future cabinet members will travel around the country to hear citizens’ concerns and ideas on the future of drugs and security. While the plan isn’t yet concrete, they say they are determined to end Mexico’s militarized drug war.
“The strategy up until now has been to use police and military force as the first tool,” says Alfonso Durazo Montańo, AMLO’s pick to head the Department of Public Security, which would oversee the police. “While those will still be a resource, they will be the last resort. Our goal is to attack the deep roots of our security problems: political, economic, social, and cultural problems.”
He summarizes their plan in four points:
Take the military off the streets and replace them with better-trained, better-paid, more professional police
Rewrite drug laws to regulate marijuana and, possibly, poppy (which is used to make heroin) while pardoning nonviolent drug offenders
Offer reparations and support for victims of the drug war
Ramp up social programs, education, and job alternatives in violent, poor regions
Mexico’s transition away from a militarized drug war begins with better police, Durazo Montańo says. “We believe that within three years, we will have made enough progress to be able to take the military off the streets.”
It’s an ambitious goal, given how weak Mexico’s police forces are. By the government’s own analysis, Mexico has fewer than half the police officers it needs. Only 42 percent meet “basic competency” standards. Only 10 percent have been trained in criminal investigation. The average salary is barely $500 per month.
This is why calling in the military seems like an easy Band-Aid when crime overwhelms police. “The presence of the army created a perverse incentive,” Durazo Montańo says. “It creates indifference of police chiefs and governors because they know that if they fail they can just call the army and keep delaying the improvement of police forces.”
Since state governments must pay part of the salary of soldiers deployed in their jurisdiction, funds get sucked out of their own police forces. But Durazo Montańo says they will be “historic allies” of police officers. “We’ll ensure police can live a dignified middle-class life … with medical care, retirement, a good salary,” he continues.
However, like the US, Mexico has a federal government, and police forces are managed at federal, state, and municipal levels. Which means that this may be a much more complex task than it appears.
“If AMLO really wants to change things, it will be difficult, because states have to do their job too,” says María Elena Morera, director of Causa en Común, a nonprofit focused on public security. “Police and attorneys general of each state largely fail to investigate and prosecute crimes, and if they can’t solve citizens’ daily crime problems like domestic disputes or extortion, everything else won’t work.”
Only 4 percent of reported crimes in Mexico result in official punishment because of a deficit in police, prosecutors, and judges. This is one reason so few Mexicans trust the authorities, and why many feel there’s no reason to even call 911.
Beyond impunity, this means that 94 percent of crimes in Mexico go unreported. Morera says that’s where the administration should focus. “The best thing this administration could hope for would be more reports of crime,” she says. “We want citizens to feel like they can report crimes and that if they do, something will actually happen.”
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/15/176904...e-legalization
On the campaign trail, the leftist candidate repeated catchy slogans and rhymes to show his opposition to the militarized drug war. These included phrases like “Abrazos no balazos” (hugs, not gunshots), “Becarios sí, sicarios no,” (scholars yes, killers no), and “No puedes apagar el fuego con el fuego” (you can’t fight fire with fire).
The two men and five of their co-workers from the Trujillo family’s scrap metal business were abducted in August 2008, after they stopped to stay the night in a little town in the Mexican state of Guerrero.
The government’s investigation went nowhere, so the Trujillo family took it upon themselves to search for their sons. But that drew attention — and death threats — from one of the many drug cartels fighting over their home state of Michoacán. So the family dropped their makeshift investigation.
“You just never stop wondering what happened, if they are okay, if they are hungry or tired or hurting, if they’re even with us anymore,” Trujillo says.
But things got worse.
Two years later, Trujillo’s other brothers, Gustavo, 28, and Luis Armando, 25, were last seen approaching a military checkpoint in the Mexican state of Veracruz — before they disappeared as well.
Trujillo is part of a massive community in Mexico: the families of the disappeared. Official statistics show that more than 37,000 people have gone missing in Mexico since 2007, though NGOs say the figure is likely much higher, as families are often too scared of retribution to report.
“Human beings aren’t built to withstand so much pain,” Trujillo, now a full-time activist for families of the disappeared, says. “Your dreams, your hopes, your plans, they all disappear.”
Since the military took to the streets to fight the increasingly powerful and violent cartels producing and trafficking drugs north to consumers in the United States, tens of thousands of Mexicans have died. And a broken police and judicial system means perpetrators are almost never held accountable for a disappearance or murder.
But Mexico’s next president, a leftist named Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has promised national reconciliation and peace and an end to more than a decade of the drug war.
López Obrador (who is usually referred to by his initials, AMLO) was elected on July 1 with the biggest margin of victory for a president in Mexico’s modern democratic history. “The failed crime and violence strategy will change,” he proclaimed during his victory speech on election night. “We will address the root causes of crime and violence.”
AMLO and his advisers have proposed sending drug war-fighting soldiers back to their barracks, pardoning nonviolent drug offenders, and boosting social programs, repeating slogans like, “Hugs, not gunshots,” on the campaign trail.
If the incoming president gets his way, this will be Mexico’s first major split from the US on crime-fighting and drugs in decades. But the obstacles are many, and it remains to be seen if the new president has the lasting support and the resources to end the drug war.
Mexico’s drug war has devastated communities for more than a decade
It’s not easy to pinpoint when Mexico’s drug war started. Marijuana and poppy (used to produce heroin) plants have long flourished in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountain range, and in the 1960s, the government started incinerating them.
This did little to stem the drug trade, and in the 1980s, Mexico’s first drug lords emerged, like the Guadalajara Cartel’s Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (soon to be dramatized in the new season of Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico).
But the latest iteration of the drug war, which has coincided with Mexico’s most violent era in modern history, began in 2006, when the newly elected President Felipe Calderón declared war on cartels and sent 6,500 soldiers to the unstable Michoacán state.
“This is a battle we have to wage,” Calderón said at the time. “Together as Mexicans, we will beat back crime.”
Calderón’s military deployment was later bolstered by the Mérida Initiative, an agreement with the United States to cooperate on the drug war. Since 2008, the US has given $2.7 billion to Mexico through the initiative “to help shape Mexico’s security policy,” while the Department of Defense gives millions more in its work with the Mexican military.
Mexico relies heavily on its military to pursue drug traffickers and bolster security in states mired in crime and corruption. In recent years, more than 130,000 military personnel have been involved in drug war-related activities on an annual basis.
And since Calderón deployed the military, the effects have been devastating. There have been 127,000 organized crime-related murders, according to Lantia Consultores, on top of the tens of thousands of people who have disappeared. Mexico recorded more murders in 2017 than in any other year in modern history, and the murder rate is already up another 14 percent in 2018.
But organized crime groups are not the only perpetrators. The Mexican armed forces, as well as federal, state, and local police, have all been implicated in atrocities.
In the case of the Ayotzinapa disappearances, when buses full of college students were reportedly intercepted by the police on their way to a march in Mexico City and handed over to a drug cartel, an independent investigation showed that high-level authorities were aware of (or even participated in) the disappearance of 43 students.
And on top of that, all this bloodshed doesn’t seem to have made a dent in drug trafficking.
According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2017 report, Mexican cartels are fueling epidemic levels of heroin use and overdose (and, more recently, fentanyl). Mexican methamphetamine production is increasing and is “particularly pure and potent.” Cocaine trafficked through Mexico is on the rebound.
AMLO’s landslide election in July, however, could drastically change the government’s response.
“You can’t fight fire with fire”
On the campaign trail, the leftist candidate repeated catchy slogans and rhymes to show his opposition to the militarized drug war. These included phrases like “Abrazos no balazos” (hugs, not gunshots), “Becarios sí, sicarios no,” (scholars yes, killers no), and “No puedes apagar el fuego con el fuego” (you can’t fight fire with fire).
He kicked off the strategy in earnest on August 7 with a town hall in the border town of Ciudad Juárez, once considered the world’s most dangerous city. (The week before AMLO arrived, 11 bodies were found bound and strangled in a house.)
“We cannot solve these violence problems with an iron fist and with more prisons,” he told the town hall’s restless crowd in a speech filled with many slogans and few specifics. “I do not believe in ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.’ We cannot fight evil with more evil.”
Before his inauguration on December 1, AMLO and his future cabinet members will travel around the country to hear citizens’ concerns and ideas on the future of drugs and security. While the plan isn’t yet concrete, they say they are determined to end Mexico’s militarized drug war.
“The strategy up until now has been to use police and military force as the first tool,” says Alfonso Durazo Montańo, AMLO’s pick to head the Department of Public Security, which would oversee the police. “While those will still be a resource, they will be the last resort. Our goal is to attack the deep roots of our security problems: political, economic, social, and cultural problems.”
He summarizes their plan in four points:
Take the military off the streets and replace them with better-trained, better-paid, more professional police
Rewrite drug laws to regulate marijuana and, possibly, poppy (which is used to make heroin) while pardoning nonviolent drug offenders
Offer reparations and support for victims of the drug war
Ramp up social programs, education, and job alternatives in violent, poor regions
Mexico’s transition away from a militarized drug war begins with better police, Durazo Montańo says. “We believe that within three years, we will have made enough progress to be able to take the military off the streets.”
It’s an ambitious goal, given how weak Mexico’s police forces are. By the government’s own analysis, Mexico has fewer than half the police officers it needs. Only 42 percent meet “basic competency” standards. Only 10 percent have been trained in criminal investigation. The average salary is barely $500 per month.
This is why calling in the military seems like an easy Band-Aid when crime overwhelms police. “The presence of the army created a perverse incentive,” Durazo Montańo says. “It creates indifference of police chiefs and governors because they know that if they fail they can just call the army and keep delaying the improvement of police forces.”
Since state governments must pay part of the salary of soldiers deployed in their jurisdiction, funds get sucked out of their own police forces. But Durazo Montańo says they will be “historic allies” of police officers. “We’ll ensure police can live a dignified middle-class life … with medical care, retirement, a good salary,” he continues.
However, like the US, Mexico has a federal government, and police forces are managed at federal, state, and municipal levels. Which means that this may be a much more complex task than it appears.
“If AMLO really wants to change things, it will be difficult, because states have to do their job too,” says María Elena Morera, director of Causa en Común, a nonprofit focused on public security. “Police and attorneys general of each state largely fail to investigate and prosecute crimes, and if they can’t solve citizens’ daily crime problems like domestic disputes or extortion, everything else won’t work.”
Only 4 percent of reported crimes in Mexico result in official punishment because of a deficit in police, prosecutors, and judges. This is one reason so few Mexicans trust the authorities, and why many feel there’s no reason to even call 911.
Beyond impunity, this means that 94 percent of crimes in Mexico go unreported. Morera says that’s where the administration should focus. “The best thing this administration could hope for would be more reports of crime,” she says. “We want citizens to feel like they can report crimes and that if they do, something will actually happen.”
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/15/176904...e-legalization
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