López narrates how her 19-year-old daughter, Jahaira Guadalupe Vaena López, was abducted in Tlacolula, Oaxaca. She describes her efforts to get the authorities to investigate the crime, how she was warned not to press the matter, how informants told her that her daughter was murdered in a turf battle between fractured drug gangs. Just days before leaving for the United States with the Caravan for Peace, she faced one of the assassins who had been apprehended and listened as he described in detail how her daughter was raped and beheaded.

Margarita has joined some 50 grieving family members to accompany caravan leader Javier Sicilia on a trip across the United States. Sicilia, a poet who lost his son to drug war violence in March of 2011, catalyzed a movement of victims and Mexican citizens fed up with the bloodshed that has claimed more than 60,000 lives and left tens of thousands more disappeared since former President Felipe Calderon launched the drug war five years ago.

Mexico’s Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity decided to organize the U.S. caravan after taking two caravans from Mexico City–one north to Ciudad Juarez on the U.S. border, and one south to the border with Guatemala. Both drew out victims of the drug war and registered their cases to provide support for family members seeking justice and solace.

The decision to take their pain across the border came after discussion with the San Francisco-based group Global Exchange. Soon a coalition came together that included Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, the Latin American Working Group, the RFK Center, the Washington Office on Latin America, our CIP Americas Program, the Drug Policy Alliance, and the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, among the key players. The coalition later expanded to include the NAACP, and local organizations in each of the cities along the route.

A binational meeting in June defined five demands of the U.S. caravan: to open public debate on humane alternatives to drug prohibition, to ban the import of assault weapons and crack down on illegal gun smuggling over the border, to combat money-laundering with full investigation and strict enforcement, to suspend all aid to the Mexican armed forces and end the war on drugs abroad, and to halt the militarization of the border and criminalization of migrants.

I joined the caravan on the final east coast leg of its 6,000-mile trip. I had heard most of the stories before in Mexico, having accompanied the northern caravan and numerous marches and meetings.

I was curious to see the impact on people in the United States. As the women in the room told their stories, each one struck like a cold blade in the heart. Although women are a minority of the war’s deaths, attacks on women usually include brutal sexual violence, and women make up the majority of those actively seeking justice and an end to the war.

Along the route, caravan members like these women have become confident and eloquent spokespersons to end the drug war. They speak from the heart and appeal to the heart. Their empowerment as leaders is one of the most important achievements of the caravan. Another is the sympathy and outrage their testimonies evoke.

And it’s not a one-way street. Caravan members also listened to the stories of U.S. citizens. Like Kimberly Armstrong in Baltimore, whose 16-year-old son was shot and killed by a 14-year-old in endemic drug violence. Or Carole Eady, who struggled her way out of the stigma and life disruption of imprisonment for a drug offense in New York City.

The threads begin to come together. In her brilliant book The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander notes that in Washington, D.C., the caravan’s last stop, it’s estimated that three out of four black men can expect to serve time in prison. She calls this mass incarceration of black people a new racial caste, the latest Jim Crow system of social control, where young black men and women are jailed, stigmatized, and in many cases disenfranchised for life by discriminatory drug laws.

Based on the shared sorrow of losing loved ones to jail, violence, death, or disappearance, Mexicans and Americas found they fight the same unjust system of social control of the poor and people of color. The drug war generates profits for the defense industry and siphons public funds into perpetuating itself. It rips apart families and communities, north and south of the border. The bogus attempt to eliminate rather than regulate something in great demand creates a multibillion-dollar black market run by groups that become more violent as they are selectively attacked. It pits security forces against the public, providing them with the tools to violate human rights and life with impunity. It erodes democracy and the rule of law it purports to uphold.

Whether it’s through imposing a military/police state in Mexico or shunting youth into the margins of society, the drug war machine runs on the human lives it destroys.

A binational peace movement?

The caravan’s call to end the drug war resonated in city after city. But has the caravan forged a binational movement for peace?

Not yet. As the Mexican caravaners go back home, their U.S. hosts return to daily life. Many will simply guard the memory of Mexico’s pain and begin to read the news a little differently.

But others will act. The Peace Caravan has already achieved something remarkable. It brought together groups in U.S. cities that scarcely knew each other before. Some community organizers in the scores of cities from San Diego to the nation’s capital plan to continue the dialogue with the Mexican movement and among themselves.

In New York City, the Latino and African-American communities plan a meeting to discuss the impact of mass arrests and detention. In Baltimore, the movement to block construction of yet another multimillion-dollar prison in one of the nation’s most economically devastated cities is making common cause with movements for drug policy reform, racial justice, and youth rights.

In Texas, faith-based organizations advocating stricter enforcement of gun laws are intensifying their campaign against gun show sales and arms smuggling after seeing close up the human cost of the flow of guns to Mexico. In Arizona, human rights organizations working against the militarization of the border and the death and detention of migrants came face-to-face with activists protesting Mexico’s militarized drug war in a cross-border reflection. In Washington, members of Congress received caravan lobbyists whose power to convince came not from money or influence, but from human empathy and reason.

The way many U.S. citizens understand the drug war has changed through meeting the Mexicans who bear the brunt of it. While U.S. politicians and media portray it as a necessary fight against the threat that organized crime supposedly poses to national security in both countries, the victims spoke of the violence that resulted from the war on drugs itself. Audiences and congressional representatives were surprised to learn that many of the victims on the caravan accused not gangs but the U.S.-funded Mexican police and military for the murder or disappearance of their loved ones.

Organizers now face the question of how the moral victory can lead to a political one. On the drug policy front, U.S. society seems to be moving toward a tipping point despite push-back from law enforcement and private prison interests that make big money off incarceration, as well as from politicians who convert insecurity into “law and order” votes. A recent poll shows Colorado could legalize marijuana in the November elections after a similar measure narrowly lost in California. The award-winning film The House I Live In presents a stunning indictment of the domestic drug war through the words of its enforcers, its participants, and its victims.

But the federal government continues to be on the wrong side of the trend. Some hope that President Obama, if he is reelected, could make bolder moves toward reorienting a policy that imprisons so many mostly African-American youths and costs the nation $51 billion a year, according to the DPA. I’m inclined to agree with a LEAP editorial that warns the reform movement to watch the actions, not the rhetoric, of the Obama administration. It will take a stronger push from constituents to get the administration to take on the interests that benefit from sustaining America’s longest war.

Moral victories plant seeds that are often slow to bear fruit. Evaluating the experience on the last morning in a church hall, exhausted caravan members saw a mix of catharsis and consciousness-raising that gave them strength. Lopez noted that the “the tragedy I’m living through can be useful to a lot of people.” Melchor Flores, whose son was arrested in January of 2009 in Monterrey and never seen again, stated that the caravan had “touched consciences”.

He added, “Wherever my son is, he should be satisfied because he knew I wouldn’t let him down.”

Teresa Carmona, a tiny, white-haired woman whose son Joaquin was murdered in Mexico City, has become a powerful voice before the public and the media. She believes the caravan met its goal.

“We brought the faces of our beloved children, parents, and relatives all the way here, and so we legitimated this pain and this reality.”

In the nation that first invented the drug war and exported it to their country with deadly results, the Mexican bereaved have left a mark in the hearts of thousands of men and women. Sometimes it takes tragedy to make change. The cumulative histories recounted in the peace caravan represent a tragedy of mammoth proportions.

That should be more than enough to act on.

AUTHOR: Laura Carlsen
URL: www.cipamericas.org and http://americasmexico.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: lecarlsen [at] gmail.com

IS NEO-NAZISM ‘GANG ACTIVITY’ OR A POLITICAL MOVEMENT?

In a recent article, THE GUARDIAN noted that the Greek political party represented in parliament is more like a criminal organization than a party. This is the sort of hollow analysis that some writers engaged in about Italy’s Fascist Party and of Germany’s Nazi party before they took power, given that Nazis and Fascists had paramilitary operations that were the core of their political movement. The mere presence of paramilitary organization does not necessarily mean that the sponsoring political party is any less political.

Such analysis underestimates the mass appeal of neo-Fascism and neo-Nazism not just in Greece in 2012, but throughout the West. I have written as much in an article where I suggested that the return of Fascism/Nazism are possible against a global political economy that engenders capital concentration and downward social mobility, and against the background of a Western clash with Islam at a time that the world’s economic center will be shifting from West (EU and US) to East (China, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia). In short, the downward social mobility of the middle class make it feel suffocated and without any prospects for its own and their children’s future.

It entirely possible that pluralistic society generally tolerant of disparate groups of people may remain vibrant, but more likely is the dilution of such a societal model. Greece is not exactly a good example of what may follow in the West, but it is a manifestation of how the combination of political, economic and cultural developments in the West as well as domestic developments and historical traditions account for the rise of neo-Naziism.

HISTORICAL PRECEDENT FOR NEO-NAZISM IN GREECE
When I published a short book entitled Authoritarianism in Greece (New York, 1983), about the pro-Nazi John Metaxas dictatorship of 1936-40, more than a decade had passed since the military junta (1967-1974) that modeled itself after the 1930s dictatorship. In fact, when I published that book, both the dictatorships in Portugal and Spain were gone, replaced by Socialist parties were as strong as in Greece, so I never imagined a resurgence of neo-Nazi or neo-Fascist parties in the early 21st century.

Just as in the case of the Great Depression that weakened democracy in many countries and eliminated it in others, similarly, the current deep economic contraction is causing similar sociopolitical conditions of polarization, sweeping the middle class and segments of the working class to its camp. And this is not about isolated incidents of anti-Islam neo-Nazi groups in every country from Norway to Greece, but about a genuine grassroots political movement with momentum to carry it into the mainstream.

‘GOLDEN DAWN’ AND MAINSTREAM SOCIETY
In June 2012, a new political party (Chrysi Augi) Golden Dawn was elected to office representing roughly half a million voters, a party that openly proclaims to follow a neo-Nazi/neo-fascist ideology. Founded in 1980 as a movement, it registered as a political party in 1993 when Greece experienced a wave of Balkan, Eastern European, as well as some African and Asian emigrants coming in as cheap day laborers in construction and farms, household workers caring for the elderly, or street vendors.

Although the neo-Nazi movement was and remains essentially a street-gang organization whose target is street fights and property destruction against any progressive organization, either it is extraordinarily superficial analysis or deliberate distortion to dismiss it as ‘just another criminal organization’. While the neo-Nazi gangs have been well known to the police for many years, while their members have been in prison for criminal activity, police almost always turn a blind eye and often collaborate with the neo-Nazis because ideologically the police are in agreement and also because neo-Nazi targets are either aliens or progressives that the police oppose and their superiors want crushed.

Moreover, the two mainstream political parties, PASOK, once center-left-now neo-liberal, and New Democracy, the conservative party now in power, have turned a blind eye to neo-Nazis along with the judicial system because Golden Dawn gangs’ violent activity instills fear in many people wanting to support the progressive and leftists from staging demonstrations and protests. Neo-Nazis are just another tool for sociopolitical conformity, but also a counterweight to the rising leftist popularity.Clearly, the leftists are using the neo-Nazi rising popularity to mobilize voter support. However, this raises the question of a growing gap in centrist parties and growing political polarization that actually helps the right even more than it does the left, for the latter has always been part of the institutional mainstream.

Interestingly, the ruling parties, PASOK and New Democracy, along with the mainstream media, insist that there is no difference between neo-Nazi gangs beating up foreigners, destroying their property and terrorizing them so they can create a ‘pure Hellenic society’ (a vague and meaningless concept), on the one hand, and leftist workers demonstrating because their wages have been cut sharply or they have lost their jobs. In short, the neo-Nazis are the ideal cover for the ruling parties representing the EU that wants continuance with the austerity measures intended to hasten downward social mobility.

The Golden Dawn party received 5% of the vote in local Athens elections, mostly from urban neighborhoods with large population of immigrants. In June 2012, the neo-Nazis managed to have 18 members of parliament, of the total 300 elected from seven different parties. The most recent public opinion polls indicate that 22% of the voters trust the neo-Nazi leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos who has been in prison for extreme political activity resulting in beatings and explosives possession.

IDEOLOGY
What is the ideological orientation of the neo-Nazis? There is no coherent ideology, but a string of incoherent ideas based on history and tradition, and underlying prejudices. Strong support of nationalism and Orthodox faith, which means adamant opposition to Islam and Judaism is at the core of Golden Dawn’s ideas. Of course, it is difficult for any of the Golden Dawn officials to articulate their own beliefs, because they lack not just the educational level, but the capacity for rational thought. In fact, just as NAZI and Fascist ideologies were rooted in the irrational, thought and action, so is neo-Nazism.

Another neo-Nazi belief rests in conspiracy theories, namely, that the world operates as a result of conspiracies caused mostly by Zionists, backed by Americans who want to control the world. Xenophobia to the extreme degree means that Greek neo-Nazis have no qualms about using force to eliminate foreigners they see as ‘polluting’ the purity that is Greece, a nebulous concept they link to classical, Byzantine, as well as modern from the era of Independence in the 1820s.

Adamant opposition to gypsies, Communists, varieties of leftists, Liberals, traditional conservatives, feminists, social progressives advocating human rights, and intellectuals who advocate peace, social justice and human equality. While the neo-Nazis use symbols such as Hitler’s photograph and the swastika, and writings from the German Nazi era, they are against modern Germany, for they want to return to the 1930s, instead of moving forward with corporate-directed globalization. Finally, like classical Fascism and Nazism, neo-Nazism dismisses dialogue of differing ideas and believes in action rooted on violence.

NEO-NAZI POPULAR BASE
Who are the supporters of the neo-Nazis? Financing comes from wealthy individuals, as does media support, given that at least one media organization is led by a tycoon who became wealthy transporting contraband items. That financing comes from wealthy individuals is not a surprise, nor is it a surprise that many lower middle class people pushed down to working class living standards are turning to neo-Naziism. It is true that there are also some workers who believe that the reason for the economic hardships, crime, neighborhood deterioration, and all societal evils must be attributed to foreigners. If foreigners, the same foreigners who work the fields, construct buildings, work as domestic servants, and do other menial jobs for wages far less than Greeks earn, if these foreigners were to return to their countries, Greece would become Switzerland.

NEO-NAZIS and MUSLIMS
Given that roughly ten percent of the population in Greece is from another country, most of them as ‘economic emigrants’, primarily using Greece to cross over to Italy and beyond, the neo-Nazis have used this issue to scapegoat these people no differently than European Catholics scapegoated the Jews during the Black Death, or the Germans blamed the Jews and Communists for all the calamities of their country in the interwar era. Of course, we must keep in mind, the the cultural foundations as much for Nazism in the 1930s and for neo-Nazism in the 21st century already existed in society, just below the surface of ‘democratic civility’. The Western World’s distorted political economy and the anti-Islam political-cultural campaign of the last two decades has actually provided the pretext for the rise of neo-Nazis.

Entry point for many Muslims, most recently Syrian refugees, is Turkey. Those wishing to cross over into Greece pay anywhere from a few hundred euros to several thousands. Once they reach Greece, their goal is to make it into the West, but many are unable to do so, forced to work for 10-30 per day in the worst possible jobs that very few Greeks would take. Greek slumlords rent filthy cramped apartments to legal and illegal foreign nationals, mostly from Pakistan. As many as 30 may live in an apartment intended for two people, while the landlord charges between 100 and 180 per month per person. Not that the situation is dissimilar in many Western countries, but it is important to remember that the legal and illegal aliens are exploited not only by the employers who may or may not pay them the low wages, but from the landlord as well, without any legal recourse. Yet, it is precisely these people, mostly Muslims, that neo-Nazi Gold Dawn, including its elected officials target for beatings, some resulting in the occasional murder.

Amnesty International as well as other organizations have repeatedly warned about abuses of human rights, police brutality, xenophobia and racism in Greece. However, the result is a rise in racist tendencies, as the economy deteriorates and people that would never even consider supporting a disreputable neo-Nazi party are now strong advocates; a situation not much different that Germany in the early 1930s under the Weimar Republic. Otherwise respectable middle class people want blood, preferably foreign blood, though it is these same people who use cheap foreign labor in their homes, farms and workplace. Hence the prevalence of the irrational in human nature when the institutions precipitate major shifts in peoples’ lives. Which brings me to the role of the IMF, EU and the banks in the rise of neo-Nazism.

NEO-NAZISM AND GERMANY
Germany, which has been behind austerity more than any other nation or entity in the West and which has benefited to the tune of an estimated 30 to 60 billion euros, has been strongly condemnatory of Golden Dawn. Considering that many analysts regard austerity as a form of dictatorship and a catalyst to diluting democracy, the fear on the part of many Germans is that their policies may be contributing to the rise of neo-Nazism in Greece and perhaps elsewhere. Germany may try to control neo-Nazi activity in its own soil to contain anti-Western responses throughout the Muslim World, but the monetary, fiscal, trade, labor and social policies it is imposing on the rest of EU are strengthening neo-Nazism.

CONCLUSIONS
In some respects, it is useful to view historical epochs as a mirror, and not to assume that the future is a line of upward progress, leaving the past behind without a trace. It is useful to reflect on what accounts for the dominant irrational tendencies in human and institutional behavior, even when such behavior leads to destruction of others, and by extension to ourselves. When I ask people why they support neo-Nazi movements, they almost always reply that they have no choice, as though it is their religion. Given that the mainstream political parties, moderate right, center and left have worn each other out to such a degree that a third force emerges to fill a gap that people believe will be their salvation, the messiah solution is to be expected not in the main, but in the extremes. Civil society has never had messiah solutions, for it is difficult enough trying to keep it civil, respectful of all people’s basic human rights, and of social justice. The final lesson here to the faithful of neo-Nazism is that today’s abuser may become tomorrow’s victim; for neo-Nazi violence knows no boundaries.

AUTHOR: Jon Kofas
URL: http://jonkofas.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jonkofas [at] yahoo.com

In his speech, called “A Time to Break Silence”, King cited his reasons to oppose the Viet Nam war. His words apply almost uncannily to the drug war today. Despite the difference in historical contexts and the differences between the two wars, their similarities and the truth of the words stand not only the test of time but the test of conscience as well.

Both wars were, and are, deadly; both unconventional for their time; both fought for motivations distinct from those professed to the people.

The first reason King listed to oppose the war was “the war as an enemy of the poor”. He had watched as advances in fighting poverty and inequality were dismantled to feed the war machine. The trade-off was starkly obvious:

I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.

We also know that today. With a budget in crisis, social programs have been stripped in historic rollbacks of rights and living standards as the defense budget not only maintains its girth but grows. With the Middle East conflicts waning in attention, it’s the drug war that has moved in to justify militarism’s insatiable appetite.

In Mexico, where the financial crisis, free trade and governmental indifference have created some 12 million more poor people in just a few years, the drug war has absorbed an enormous part of the budget. The war economy in both countries has powerful backers, and the added advantage for them of not only keeping the poor poor, but eliminating a large number of them, behind bars or in mass graves.

That’s, of course, his second reason.

[The war] was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.

Today’s drug war doesn’t even have to send young men and women thousands of miles away. It puts them away right here at home. By the millions and with the same discriminatory criteria that sent the poor and African American to fight and die in Viet Nam.

The peace caravan from Mexico marched in a candlelight vigil through the heart of Harlem, Manhattan’s poorest areas. A place where everyday youth are plucked to fill the cells and coffers of a private prison system. Where drug laws do the dirty work of justifying criminalization based on race and poverty and treating victims as villains.

Carol Eady of Woman on the Rise Telling Her Story (WORTH), a former prisoner on drug charges who has kicked drugs and become an educator and community activist, explained at the church,

Many women in New York, and probably all over the world, are usually incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses. Most of the time, they started using drugs due to past abuse, abandonment by parents, victimization and sexual assaults. Instead of treating these occurrences as health hazards or diseases, when we turn to drugs to medicate our pain, they lock us up.  

More than 400 people chanted ‘No More Drug War’ and called for justice in the streets of Harlem. The “cruel manipulation of the poor” that King spoke of is the modus operandi of the drug war and the prisons are the new battlefields where young lives are lost.

King’s third reason stemmed from his deep commitment to non-violence.

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. 

Likewise, if we do not oppose the drug war, we cannot claim to be non-violent and credibly stand up against more conventional wars or invasions or call ourselves non-violent. The U.S. government’s Merida Initiative promotes violence and militarization as a solution to drug trafficking. We either condone that and abandon all pretenses of non-violence or we oppose it despite its political popularity and remain consistent in our beliefs.

By keeping silent since Bush launched the Merida Initiative in 2007, we have allowed the militarized drug war model to spread. Now both political parties have elevated counter-narcotics efforts to national security, as if a white powder used to get high could blow up the world or a corner dealer were tantamount to a terrorist. This is a blatant lie. We are supporting a prohibition model where Mexican communities suffer the presence of violent and corrupt security forces and drug gangs, both funded and armed in part by our country. Violence becomes the norm and moral outrage dulls through endless repetition.

Another reason is the “vocation of sonship and brotherhood”, a religious calling that–when women are added into the language–demands making common cause and understanding the suffering of others. The caravan, above all, has sought over this past month to forge those bonds and bring out that common cause. The victims, with their photos of murdered or missing loved ones and stories of pain, have challenged the U.S. public to consider the devastation wrought by support of a drug war without end. 

The stories at Riverside, 45 years later, again broke the silence about the war. Not a war on a foreign continent, but a crossborder war that rages within our communities from Harlem to Jalisco. As the U.S. government extends the failed drug war from Colombia and Mexico, to Central America, the Caribbean and Africa king’s closing words fit now as then:

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam [in the drug war] and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors.

Annihilation drags us all into more violence. We have alternatives. As hundreds of marchers moved through New York city with the pictures of the victims, calling for an end to the war–again–they carried us closer to what King called “a creative psalm of peace”.

AUTHOR: Laura Carlsen
URL: www.cipamericas.org and http://americasmexico.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: lecarlsen [at] gmail.com

The security source told the Law Enforcement Examiner that the border reinforcements are part of Operation Agatha 5, which the Brazilian government initiated on July 6 on their country’s borders with Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The deployment of troops is aimed at actively assisting Brazil’s border security officers who are outgunned and out-manned by the crime groups that include drug cartels, the source said. Also involved in what’s expected to be a month-long operation are the Brazilian Air Force and Navy, who will use attack helicopters, jet fighters, patrol boats and high-tech equipment, he added.

Agatha 5′s ultimate goal is to significantly reduce criminal activity such as drug trafficking, human trafficking and illegal mining, according to Defense Minister Celso Amorim, who is scheduled to visit southern Brazil Wednesday to inspect the operation in person, according to the Brazilian news media.

Amorim said Brazil’s neighbors were informed of the operation in advance and invited to send observers, the news report said.

Brazilian authorities claim they’ve seized close to 3 tons of illicit drugs, along with 300 boats used by traffickers. They also claim to have confiscated 60 firearms and other weapons.

“Unlike the United States government, who send troops to its troubled borders to answer phones and shuffle paper, the Brazilian troops are taking an active role in protecting their nation’s borders and combating those who violate their laws,” said Police Lieutenant Thomas Spandell, a narcotic enforcement expert.

AUTHOR: Jim Kouri
URL: http://www.renewamerica.com/
E-MAIL: COPmagazine [at] aol.com

(Movie: Canana Films, 2011, Mexico; Screenplay by: Gerardo Naranjo & Mauricio Katz. Showing: IFFR, International Film Festival Rotterdam)

Laura Guerrrero and her best Friend Su Su are preparing to participate in the Miss Baja California pageant: Laura a 23 year old young woman from the Barrios of Baja has high hopes, and big dreams and winning the Miss Baja Contest is in her opinion the beginning of all things “beautiful”. Su Su her companion and friend is the reason why they arrive just in the nick of time for their first audience, and the reason behind the small altercations, hostilities and arguments with the other contestants whilst cuing. Su Su is also the reason why Laura decides to skip buying her gown, to accompany Su Su to see some friends in a shady part of town, because according to Su Su they can help her secure a spot as semi-finalist in the pageant. Things turn ugly for Laura as they both approach the men in the big American Clunker Cars, the men dislike her, finding her unattractive and not their style. Su Su begs Laura to wait for her, to come and look for her later in the “Millennium Club”.

Despite misgivings Laura acquiesces, to meet her friend later that evening in at the Millennium. But Su-Su has bigger fish to fry and can barely spare her friend a few seconds of attention. Only in the bathroom does she become loquacious again, only to ask for another favor: she needs company and Laura has to stay, will she stay?

But then doom strikes, the club gets raided by a drug gang run by Lino Valdez, and Laura runs for her life, leaving her friend behind in the commotion. The next day Laura approaches a police-officer for help, and it is at that point in the movie where everything changes, no longer, gay and expecting, the audience is no longer drawn into Laura’s playful preparations and expectations about the pageant.

The movie then turns ugly, a raging storm of violence, its tentacles grabbing the audience by the hair, swiftly engulfing them in a series of criminal events, one after another, after another, after another……no stopping, no respite…..ugliness after ugliness, killing sprees of innocent and not so innocent people. In a hidden corner of the movie, the audience becomes subtly acquainted with the corrupt organizers of the Miss Baja Pageant, but above all with the ruthlessness of criminals, who seem to stop at nothing, whose power seem to surpass that of the local law enforcement, the government, in fact, the criminals seem to have even more power than GOD.

The main character of the movie, Laura demonstrates remarkable tenacity and bravery, trying to do the right thing in an environment determined by corruption and criminality. But Laura’s virtuousness sharply contrasts that of her surroundings; the imbibing of criminality and corruption in the city, the almighty gangs, who seem to operate above and beneath the law, with enough cash to buy everything and everybody, even the jury at the Miss Baja Pageant, who at the surprise and dismay of the audience go on to declare Laura the winner of the pageant. But as the movie enfolds, corruption becomes much more wide-spread, because high ranking officials are also corrupt and immoral; Laura is invited to a party at the General’s mansion, only to find herself to be invited into his bed. As the movie unfolds things get uglier and Laura in the end gets arrested, at which point a barrage of hypocrisy breaks lose, the pageant exonerates itself from all allegations of corruption and wrongdoing, by placing the blame on Laura and her presumed audacity. The police who started this whole ordeal stay silent, covering up their negative track record, their involvement in corruption with a PR offensive. Nobody talks about the fact that Laura was framed, a poor girl looking for her lost, disloyal friend.

The brutality of Miss Bala, the fact that it pushes that kind of criminality into the lap of the audience, forcing them to become part of the ugliness, the gluttony and the vanity, all seen through the eyes of the protagonist, Laura. But Miss Bala is more than a movie: the ugliness, the greed and the vanity are real, all right, part of the Mexican border town everyday reality, where gangs rule and drive by shootings are common as muck. Miss Bala shows the everyday reality of Mexico where policemen are corrupt, supplying their meager income with bribes from cartels, where women who dream to get ahead in live have no other recourse than to befriend criminals.

Miss Bala portrays the missed opportunities, the poverty of a border town in the throes of the war on drugs, the American Drugs Enforcement Agency that continues to believe that strong and forceful action will keep cocaine out of the United States. The United States is working vehemently to make cocaine go away, to apprehend drugs dealers, bringing them to justice in the United States, without much avail. In fact actions by the USA, Immigration Services, to deport a large number of gangsters back to El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, contributed to the growth of the criminality south of the American border.

The Americans who started the war on cocaine in the 1950s have always maintained the standpoint that eradication and prohibition of drugs will keep the drugs out of their society. But cocaine is fixed feature in certain US subcultures: in the upper classes of Hollywood and New York, but also the inner cities of South Chicago were poor Black Youth are hooked on crack-cocaine.

But the real victims are people like Laura Guerrero, citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala and Rio, where drive-by shootings are an everyday occurrence, cities where a human life means nothing! For the people in Colombia, the obliteration of the Cali- and the Medellin Cartel, meant that the gangsters moved under- ground, dispersing their activities to Suriname, Venezuela, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Today drug-trafficking involves not only the under – world, drug criminality today is an internationally ramified, economic activity, divided into upper world activities such as the financial support of politicians for office, trade have also become part of the activities of the cartels and under-world activities. The movie indeed provides an accurate impression of the intertwining of the under- world and the upper world, but more than anything the movie shows that in the event of a crime, citizens cannot rely on the police for help. The police is not only part of the corrupt and criminal system, it also uses the law and its monopoly to use violence to infringe upon the rights of the citizens, terrorizing them, putting them at harm’s way.

Miss Bala is above all a movie about thwarted hopes and dreams of a young woman, who in the end walks away, a dead woman walking, or perhaps not! Perhaps, only perhaps if she musters enough strength will she make it out of the hell hole she’s in. Her future is uncertain, but not the future of the gangsters, because they will continue to be an intricate part of the scenery of a border town in the throes of crime and violence.

In Mexico more than 32,000 people lost their lives, in the rest of the continent the numbers of people murdered are equally worrisome. But a clandestine industry that generates more than 25 Billion US dollars annually will not come to a screeching halt anytime soon!

AUTHOR: Natascha Adama
URL: http://natascha23.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: nataliapestova23 [@] yahoo.com

“The problem with corruption within Mexican coupled with the political corruption within Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department — including harebrained schemes like the Fast & Furious debacle — makes it less likely that the ‘war on drugs’ will end successfully,” said former narcotics detective Glenn Knudsen.

A major police department in Mexico has been completely dismantled by federal police and military forces as part of an anti-corruption plan to help in winning Mexico’s de facto war on drugs.

More than 900 officers in the State of Veracruz are losing their jobs, while members of the Mexican Navy are taking over the city’s law enforcement function, according to a report from a DEA source.

Police lay-offs come three months after 35 bodies were found dumped on a main road in the municipality, which includes part of Veracruz.

Navy troops backed by federal police officers took control of local police buildings and are patrolling the streets.

Veracruz State Governor Javier Duarte said the decision to disband the force was part of a national program to reform the police, according to the DEA source.

“The problem with corruption within Mexican coupled with the political corruption within Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department — including harebrained schemes like the Fast & Furious debacle — make it less likely that the ‘war on drugs’ will end successfully,” said former narcotics detective Glenn Knudsen.

It has not yet been determined how long the navy will be in charge of policing the municipality, which is home to more than a half-million people and includes wealthy neighborhoods and popular tourist attractions.

Hundreds of Mexican Marines had already been deployed in Veracruz-Boca del Rio after the 35 bodies were dumped on busy road in the middle of the day in September. Two weeks later the navy patrolmen found another 32 bodies.

The killings are believed to be part of the gang-war for control of drug-trafficking routes between two of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels – the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel.

This latest action in Veracruz isn’t the first time local cops were replaced with military personnel or federal police (Federales). The armed forces and federal police have taken over law enforcement and security in a significant number of municipalities across Mexico because local police have been unable — or unwilling –to cope with the power of the drugs gangs.

“Life expectancy for a local cop who attempts to enforce the law is relatively short. So many of them either ignore the crime and corruption or they collaborate. Mexican cops are paid law wages so the temptation to supplement their incomes is overwhelming at times,” said the DEA source.

Besides using military troops to confront the deadly Mexican gangs, President Felipe Calderon in a press statement promised to reform the police and judiciary as part of his strategy to restore public security.

AUTHOR: Jim Kouri
URL: http://www.renewamerica.com/
E-MAIL: COPmagazine [at] aol.com

But there is another problem with “spillover.” The concept, itself, is a politically motivated metaphor that prevents accurate perception of reality. Using the metaphor “spillover” implies that some force that ought to be contained on one side of a barrier, like water behind a dam, is overwhelming the barrier, endangering whatever is on the other side. This metaphor is being used in the context of another politically motivated metaphor — the “war on drugs.”

The metaphor of “war” attempts to create the perception that the drug issue is a “threat” coming from outside the boundaries of the United States. Therefore, it must — and can be — contained on “the other side,” if not eradicated at the “source” (see A Disastrous Metaphor: Waging Domesitc War). Thus, if any aspect of the “threat” of drugs, crosses the border, it is “spilling over.”

However, if we look at the reality, the drug trade is an integrated commercial process. It is the meeting of demand within the U.S. with supply from Mexico, through the exchange of goods for money. The trade transcends the official border. (The book, Line in the Sand by Rachel St. John talks not only about how arbitrary the U.S-Mexico border is in terms of geographic, economic and social realities, but also how borders actually create smugglers by attempting to interrupt commercial exchanges, aka “free trade.”)

From the point of view of trade dynamics, the border is an obstacle to trade. NAFTA and subsequent trade-centered actions of both the U.S. and Mexican governments — including the recent agreement to allow Mexican trucks into the U.S. interior — are aimed at reducing border obstacles. In talking about the economic benefits of Mexican-U.S. trade for Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer described the border as “bountiful.” Hence the money-laundering described so well in the New York Times article is not “spillover.” It is an integral part of a transnational trade process.

Goods sold by the Mexican cartels are excluded from legitimate international trade relations; hence, they are denied direct access to standard banking channels for currency exchange and transfer of large sums across national borders. So the cartels become inventive — using U.S. perfume merchants and Mexican currency exchange businesses. The money is not “spilling over.” It is flowing between markets.

We would also venture that drug trade-related violence is not “spillover violence.” Whether it occurs in Texas, other border states or even further north, whether it involves Mexican cartels or U.S. gangs, it is integrally related to the trans-border drug trade. This drug trade does not have access to civil means of conflict resolution and functions in a hyper-competitive environment — due to the inflated value of its prohibited products. Therefore, it resorts to violence to resolve disputes and issues of competition, whether those issues occur in Mexico or the U.S..

The general conclusion of a number of writers is that the cartels use U.S.-based gangs for distribution precisely because they don’t want to get entangled with U.S. police and courts. For the same reason, they don’t want to increase acts of violence north of the border. In this sense, the existence of a jurisdictional border actually prevents “spillover.”

AUTHOR: Reed Brundage
URL: http://americasmexico.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: Americas [at] ciponline.org

YEOVILLE: 427,200 new asylum seekers arrive in SA each year: with only 123 officials to process them. More new asylum seekers arrive in South Africa each year than do in all 27 countries of the European Union. Amazing facts, revealed by deputy-Home Affairs Minister Fatima Chohan.

Only 123 officials available to process the daily 1,200 new asylum seekers in South Africa
Chohan said at a World Refugee Day conference on 20 June at Yeoville recreation centre that her department receives 1,200 applications a day which are processed by 123 officials, “provided nobody is on leave or sick leave,.’

It is being estimated by the International Red Cross and by UN refugee- and food-aid agencies that there are at least 10 million black African refugees in South Africa already. By Oct 2008, the Dept of Home affairs admitted that the situation was becoming chaotic andthat at that point, it would take 30 years to clear up the backlog – provided no further new asylum seeker applications were received, that is.

And all these unproductive, underskilled young people, mostly ‘economic migrants’ and primarily male, all have to somehow find food, housing and potable water: placing an increasingly heavy burden on the ratepayers and facilities of the country’s municipalities. Many municipal sewerage systems are so overburdened that they have collapsed: dumping thousands of tons of raw sewerage into the country’s precious fresh-water supplies.

Municipalities’ total debt soared to R64,4billion; Welfare budget for 14million recipients to R62,7 billion
The Treasury recently announced that the municipalities’ total debt grew from R62.3billion to R64.4billion. The six major metros – where the vast majority of ‘economic migrants’ also stream to, swelling the squatter camps to gigantic proportions — are responsible for R35.9 billion of this debt – about 56% of the total. The secondary cities (including Bloemfontein and East London) are responsible for another R12.3 billion, or 19% of the total. Johannesburg’s debt is R11.4bn or 18% of total debt.

After a few quarters where the debt situation showed tentative signs of improving, it is starting to look worse again. The overall age of the debt is increasing: in Q1 2010/11 about 73% of all debt was older than 90 days. This increased to 75% of all debt by Q2 and has now risen to 78% of all debt. Total debt under 30 days old has fallen from 18% to 15%.

That’s why outsiders will find it extremely bewildering that the ruling ANC/Communist party/trade union triad continues to crack down ever-harder to purge its white taxpayers from the entire job-market — even though by January 2011, the country only had 5,9-million taxpayers left — and more than 10-million unproductive refugees.

14-milllion welfare recipients cost R62,7 billion a year
Meanwhile the country’s welfare-budget is also becoming unbearably bloated with some 14-million black South African welfare-recipients, costing an annual R62,7-billion in revenue this year aone. And, warns the SA Institute of Race Relations, by next year their numbers will swell to at least 16-milion black South Africans to survive only on Wefare benefits: and more than 60% of them will be young working-age, child-producing adults. The number of social grant beneficiaries soared by some 300% over the past nine years. Please note that the increasingly destitute ‘white’ population for the most part do not ‘qualify’ for welfare payouts because they are white.

Why bother to even have them fill out forms? They are going to stay anyway, without or with asylum-status
It seems totally pointless for those 127 Home Affairs officials to even go through the motions of examining each new application: South Africa now only approves an annual 10% of its asylum-seekers – but the other 90% also stilll remain in the country anyway: awaiting their appeal process. It’s all just a ridiculous joke..

The UN defines a refugee as ‘a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and unable to or, owing to such fear, unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, unable to or, owing to such fear, unwilling to return to it.’

A very fuzzy mouthful. Meanwhile, Chohan said ‘many people had abused the system by seeking refugee status when they were actually economic migrants. We are currently reviewing the whole application process to streamline it and will be much stricter in future.” No kidding! She actually noticed!

Mayor Parks Tau also said they are ‘concerned about the random acts of violence and intimidation against asylum-seekers.”I wouldn’t worry about that much longer either, if I were Tau. At this rate, the number of ‘asylum-seekers’ already are double the number of taxpayers who have to pay for the municipal services they all demand as a ‘basic human right’. And if this refugee-tsunami doesn’t get stopped in its tracks at the border, and very soon, the asylum-seekers soon will become the majority in many townships and squatter camps. Then it will be the asylum-seekers who start hunting down South African citizens with organised, heavily-armed jackrolling gangs.

AUTHOR: Adriana Stuijt
URL: http://censorbugbear.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: a.j.stuijt [at] knid.nl