{"id":2189,"date":"2011-04-14T22:33:59","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T02:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/no-mas-guerra-de-las-drogas.html"},"modified":"2011-04-14T22:33:59","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T02:33:59","slug":"no-mas-guerra-de-las-drogas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/no-mas-guerra-de-las-drogas.html","title":{"rendered":"No mas Guerra de las Drogas"},"content":{"rendered":"The war on drugs is not a metaphor in Mexico:\nfor four years the Mexican Army has fought drug traffickers\nin the streets.\nWith no success and 40,000 dead, many of them collateral damage.\nThe people have had it with that:\nNo mas Guerra de las Drogas!\n

\nAl Giordano wrote 7 April 2011,\n\nAnd This Is What History Looks Like in Mexico<\/a>\n\n<\/a>\n

\nYesterday, multitudes took to the streets in more than 40 Mexican cities –\nand in protests by Mexicans and their friends at consulates and embassies\nin Europe, North America and South America – to demand an end to the\nviolence wrought by the US-imposed “war on drugs.”\n

\nWhat? You haven’t heard about this? Or if you have heard something about\nit, did you know that it is the biggest news story in the Mexican media,\non the front page of virtually every daily newspaper in the country?\n

\nA sea change has occurred in Mexican public opinion. The people have\nturned definitively against the use of the Mexican Army to combat against\ndrug traffickers. The cry from every city square yesterday was for the\nArmy to return to its barracks and go back to doing the job it was formed\nto do; protect Mexico from foreign invasion and provide human aid relief\nin case of natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes. Since\nPresident Felipe Calder\u00f3n unleashed the Armed Forces, four years ago,\nto combat drug trafficking organizations, the violence between it\nand the competing narco organizations has led to a daily body count,\nwidespread human rights abuses against civilians, and more than 40,000\ndeaths, so many of them of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire\nand used by all sides in the armed conflict that still has no winners,\nthat never will have any winner.\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWhat woke up the people of Mexico, or, rather, who?\n\n\n

\n<\/a>\nA fast moving series of events that began on March 28 have converged to\nusher Mexico into its very own “Arab spring.” And it began just outside\n“the City of Eternal Spring,” Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos, about\nan hour south of Mexico City. Narco News has been covering these events\nfor the past week (sadly, we are so far the only English-language media\nto do so at each step of the story, even as it has huge consequences\nfor United States drug policy not only in Mexico but throughout the\nworld and at home). On that date, in the town of Temixco, seven young\nmen were assassinated. These were kids with jobs, who went to school,\nmodel kids, not criminals. And one of those kids, Juan Francisco Silvia,\nwas the son of a nationally respected journalist and poet, Javier Sicilia,\nof Cuernavaca.\n

\nIn a week, the soft spoken, increasingly beloved, intellectual has\nbecome the national vessel through which millions of voices now demand:\nEnd the war on drugs.\n<\/blockquote>\nNo mas Guerra de las Drogas!\n

\nWhat does this have to do with us?\nFormer Mexican President Vicente Fox\n\nexplained that the same day at a conference in the U.S.:<\/a>\n

\nLegalization of drugs in Mexico would not only lead to lowered violence and drug consumption but also boost its economy.\n<\/blockquote>\nWe don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County.\nWe need an end to the so-called War on Drugs that has given our\n\n5% of the world’s population 25% of its prisoners.<\/a>\nWe need\n\neducation, not incarceration.<\/a>\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The war on drugs is not a metaphor in Mexico: for four years the Mexican Army has fought drug traffickers in the streets. With no success and 40,000 dead, many of them collateral damage. The people have had it with that: No mas Guerra de las Drogas! Al Giordano wrote 7 April 2011, And This […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,1113,40,19,1381,72,20,733,178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-cca","category-community","category-history","category-immigration","category-incarceration","category-law","category-media","category-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-zj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}