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

The caravan description reads:

“Led by the poet, Javier Sicilia, the caravan will meet with members of US society through dialogue and peaceful action, carrying proposals to shut off the flow of illegal arms to Mexico, supporting humane and health-oriented alternatives to the prohibition of drugs and demanding effective, non-violent security policies. It will also seek a humane immigration policy.“

The CIP Americas Program–along with some 100 partner organizations of migrants, churches, unions, students, NGOs and community members in the cities along the route–is helping to organize caravan events and give voice to the victims of the drug war. We will be accompanying the caravan on part of its long journey through the country and providing daily blogs, articles and interviews as events unfold.

A handful of U.S. companies that produce weapons and defense and intelligence equipment are raking in taxpayer dollars in government contracts for the drug war, while in Mexico more than 70,000 people have died since the war was launched in December 2006.

Today the face of the U.S. government in Mexico is the face of war. This face is reflected in the vast expansion of joint security operations and direct intervention in Mexico´s counter-narcotics planning and operations. Instead of schools and hospitals, our tax dollars support military helicopters and espionage systems.

The relationship between the two nations has degenerated into a seemingly endless war on drugs, The war is commanded from the north, where enforcing prohibition is considered more important than human lives, and fought in the south, where the long arm of enforcement has left 70,000 dead in the past six years.

Despite tragically negative results, the U.S. government has dismissed calls from citizens in both countries to end the war on drugs and the misguided Merida Initiative that supports it. Instead, we continue on a path that throws U.S. youth behind the bars of lucrative private prisons and feeds defense companies by perpetuating violent conflict in Mexico.

Family members of the thousands murdered, disappeared, attacked and displaced in Mexico’s drug war and their supporters will present a very different, human, face of binational relations. They will meet with families in the United States that have suffered senseless incarceration and violence as a result of criminalizing drugs, rather than supporting communities and individuals to manage the health and social threats posed by consumption and addiction.

Find out what organizations are planning in your community. You are needed to help out with organization of events and logistics for the peace caravan. Please plan to attend the events. Learn first-hand the human costs of the drug war and find out how to make change from your own community on up to the national and international levels.

Here is the caravan schedule. For more information on events in your community, see the caravan website. To volunteer for upcoming caravan events, please write us at: info@cipamericas.org

SCHEDULE:

San Diego, CA – Aug 12 SUN
Los Angeles, CA – Aug 13- Aug 14 MON/TUES
Phoenix, AZ – Aug 15 WED
Tucson, AZ – Aug 16 THURS
Las Cruces, NM – Aug 17 FRI
Albuquerque/Santa Fe, NM – Aug 18 SAT
Santa Fe, NM – Aug 19 SUN
El Paso, TX – Aug 21 TUES
Laredo, TX- Aug 22, WED
Harlingen/Brownsville, TX – Aug 23 THURS
McAllen/San Antonio, TX – Aug 24 FRI
Austin, TX – Aug 25 SAT
Houston, TX – Aug 26 SUN
New Orleans, LA – Aug 27 MON
Montgomery, AL – Aug 29 WED
Atlanta, GA – Aug 30 – 31 THURS/FRI
(Travel Night to Chicago, IL & Rest Day – Sept 2 SUN)
Chicago, IL – Sep 3-4 MON/TUES
Cleveland, OH -Sept 5 WED
New York, NY – Sept 6-7 THURS/FRI
Baltimore, MD – Sept 8-9 SAT/ SUN
Washington, D.C. – Sept 10-12 MON-WED – FINAL CITY

For More Information:

• Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity web site: http://www.caravanforpeace.org/caravan
• Global Exchange,  Co-Organizer of the Peace Caravan http://www.globalexchange.org/mexico/caravan
• Invitation to join the Peace Caravan here.
• Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity’s website (Spanish)
• Sign up to volunteer with the caravan by using this registration form.

Some English-language press on the Caravan so far:

Democracy Now! “Javier Sicilia Brings Peace Caravan to the U.S.to Condemn Deadly Drug War” Aug. 16.  http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/16/mexican_poet_activist_javier_sicilia_brings.  Also see: “Mexican Poet Javier Sicilia Condemns U.S. Role in We¡idening Drug Violence” May 11. http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/11/stop_the_drug_war_mexican_poet

“Cross-country tour to point out the failure of the war on drugs”, Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 12, 2012.  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0812-lopez-moms-20120812,0,6855876.column?page=1

“Mothers share their anguish at losses to Mexico’s violence”, Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 15, 2012. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0815-lopez-mexicomoms-20120814,0,218429.column

The Nation: Can the Caravan of Peace End the War on Drugs?

Los Angeles Times: Mexican activist, poet brings Caravan for Peace to U.S.

AFP: Drug war ‘peace caravan’ woos Hollywood

KPFA 94.1-FM in Berkeley: Victims of US/Mexico Drug War Lead Caravan for Peace

Contacts for Organizing:

1) Kirsten Moller: San Diego, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Jackson, Atlanta, Charlotte
kirsten@globalexchange.org, 415 255 7295

2) Louise Levayer: Tucson, El Paso, Brownsville/Harlingen/McAllen, San Antonio, Austin, Houston
louise.levayer@gmail.com, (415) 575 5531

3) Chelsea Brown: Albuquerque, Santa Fe, New York City, Baltimore
Chelsea.avril.brown@gmail.com, (415) 575 5531

4) Liz Sanchez: Cleveland, Phoenix, Montgomery, Chicago
lizsanchez0916@gmail.com, (415) 575 553

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

Guatemalan anti-mining activist Telma Yolanda Oqueli Veliz. Photo: James Rodríguez, mimundo.org

One generally overlooked feature of the Guatemalan government and military’s 36-year (1960-96) genocidal counterinsurgency campaign against the country’s Mayan population is the strategy of targeting women with violence.

Rape, mutilation, sexual slavery, forced abortion, and sterilizations were just some of the sadistic tools used in a systematic practice of state-sponsored terror to crush the surviving population into submission through fear and shame via the suffering of their mothers, sisters, and daughters.

In 1999, UN-backed truth commission, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), declared that during the war, “the rape of women, during torture or before being murdered, was a common practice aimed at destroying one of the most intimate and vulnerable aspects of the individual’s dignity…[and] they were killed, tortured and raped, sometimes because of their ideals and political or social participation…”

Glen Kuecker, professor of Latin American History at DePauw University, said that the gender specific violence was and continues to be part of the government’s counterinsurgency program aimed to destroy the fundamental social fabric of Mayan communities.

“The goal of counterinsurgency is to undermine the cohesion of a community that is needed for resistance,” said Kuecker. “Gender violence not only terrorizes women in the community, but it also disrupts traditional patriarchal gender relations by sending the message to men that they are not capable of protecting women.”

According to Emily Willard, Research Associate for the Evidence Project of The National Security Archive writing in Peace and Conflict Monitor this April, “The military’s strategies of targeting women reached such a large portion of the male population, normalizing rape and violence against women. The residual effect of these genocidal policies and strategies can be seen in the rate and type of violence in Guatemala today.”

In 2010, 685 women were assassinated in Guatemala, compared to 213 in 2000. And while there were more than 40,000 complaints of violence against women filed with the  Guatemalan Public Ministry, only 1 percent of those registered by the Judicial Department resulted in sentencing, according to a report published June 1 by the Nobel Women’s Initiative and the Just Associates (JASS), “Caught in the Crossfire: Women on the frontlines in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala.”

The report, co-authored by Nobel Peace Laureates Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Jody Williams, was the result of a fact-finding mission led by them in January 2012 to investigate violence against women in these three countries.

In Guatemala, the report singles out the civil war’s legacy of violence and impunity, the increased militarization resulting from the War on Drugs, land and resource conflicts, and the influence of foreign governments and businesses – specifically from the United States and Canada – as major contributing factors to the ongoing violence directed at women, and the targeting of women as a tactical and deliberate tool of political repression. The report states that the phenomenon of femicide has “reached crisis dimensions.”

Guatemala’s Civil War: No Justice, No Peace

“The crises in Guatemala are not internal crises,” Grahame Russell, co-director of Rights Action, a community development and anti-mining solidarity organization, told Toward Freedom. “They are global struggles.”

Guatemala’s Civil War serves as a perfect example. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, in an uncharacteristic moment of historical honesty, apologized to the Guatemalan people back in 1998 for the U.S.’s role in overthrowing democracy in the country and contributing political, military, and financial support to genocidal counterinsurgency programs which successive dictators carried out on the Mayan population.

“It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression…was wrong,” said Clinton.

The war left over 200,000, mostly indigenous civilians, murdered, while tens of thousands were raped, tortured, disappeared and displaced. But in the wake of the war, as many an estimated 98 percent of those responsible for war crimes and genocide (both Guatemalan and American) remain free.

“In Guatemala, the surge in femicides demonstrates that peace is not just the cessation of war,” the JASS report states. “The lack of justice for crimes of the 1980s has left victims without redress, and culprits in power.” Amnesty International noted that in the last 10 years as many as 5,700 women have been murdered.

The position of recently elected president Otto Perez Molina that there was no genocide in the country is a perfect illustration of how impunity persists. However, Perez Molina, a former general and CIA asset who was trained at the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, is taking a position that is self-serving, not just racist and revisionist. He led a military battalion in the early 1980s in the country’s northwestern highlands where some of the bloodiest massacres occurred. In addition, as Annie Bird, journalist and co-director of Rights Action pointed out in a profile of the president this year, Perez Molina ran a “secret torture center” for political prisoners while serving as head of the country’s military intelligence in 1994. One of Perez Molina’s past bosses, former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, unleashed a scorched earth campaign against the country’s Mayan population between 1982-83, wiping out entire villages in the process. Thirty years later Rios Montt, who was a very close ally of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, is just now standing trial, and is accused of being responsible for “1,771 deaths, 1,400 human rights violations and the displacement of 29,000 indigenous Guatemalans.”

Sandra Moran, a Guatemalan feminist, lesbian, artist and activist working on women’s rights and human rights in Guatemala City, is a member and co-founder of Colectivo Artesana and Alianza Politica Sector de Mujeres. She lived in exile in Canada for 14 years after participating in the country’s student movement in the early 1980s. After working tirelessly abroad to build transnational solidarity, Moran returned to Guatemala to participate in the Peace Process and to help rebuild a more peaceful, just and humane country.

“During the war it was State Policy to target the bodies of women as part of the government’s ‘Counterinsurgency Plan’. Although the war ended, this violence against women has continued,” Moran told Toward Freedom. Her office has been targeted and broken into in the past, with spilt blood left, and she has received numerous death threats as a result of her work. “The way some murdered and mutilated bodies have appeared [in recent years] are the same way they appeared during the war,” added Moran.

Amnesty International submitted a briefing on Guatemala to the UN’s Human Rights Committee in March, voicing concern how “female victims often suffer exceptional brutality before being killed, including rape, mutilation and dismemberment.”

Moran added that these misogynistic forms of violence and torture are social problems that have been taught at both institutional and individual levels. Many of the teachers of this violence are working with the government, military and police, and are often those same people who committed these types of crimes during the war. Moran also singled out the heads of private security industry, which according to the JASS report, has ballooned to an estimated 28,000 legal and 50,000 unregistered private security agents in the country.

In 2007 Amnesty International issued a report noting the presence of “clandestine groups” in the country, comprised of the “the business sector, private security companies, common criminals, gang members and possibly ex and current members of the armed forces,” who were then, and continue to target human rights activists in order to maintain impunity and an unjust and patriarchal social order.

“Guatemala’s peace-making process never moved into a necessary peace-building process that could assure strong institutions and practices,” the report states. “The government typically fails to conduct investigations or prosecute the perpetrators of women’s murders.”

The Guatemalan government’s embrace of  ex-war criminals and current criminals, combined with the support of international political and business actors, sustains what Rights Action’s Russell calls, “an unjust, racist, and violent social order” and  “maintaining business as usual and politics as usual.”

Business as Usual

In 1954 the CIA, at the behest of United Fruit Company, coordinated the coup which overthrew democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Reasons behind this act include the fact that he rewrote the country’s labor code and initiated land reforms, acts deemed unacceptable by United Fruit Company and Washington. The idea of Guatemala being solely a source of cheap labor and a place to extract resources with low costs and even lower oversight has been a continuum in the country’s history. The lack of justice and weak governance appears to be seen as a comparative advantage for the country. For example, Amnesty International, in its briefing to the UN this past March, also pointed out how “[t]he failings of the state continue to be relied on by companies, in particular mining companies, who prefer the lower national standard to international human rights standards.”  

One example the JASS report points out is Perez Molina’s refusal to respect the 55 community consultations held throughout the country in indigenous communities, which overwhelmingly rejected so-called development projects involving mining, oil and hydroelectric dams. According to ILO Convention 169, the international law which Guatemala is a signatory of, indigenous communities must provide free, prior, and informed consent to any projects that would impact their land and communities. Other “failings of the state” include the refusal to investigate and prosecute those responsible for violence against activists who challenge the status quo by demanding that their human rights, such as those enshrined under ILO 169, are recognized and honored.

The JASS delegation led by Menchu and Williams listened to testimony from women who shared stories about the violence during the war and the violence associated with what might be described now as low intensity conflicts surrounding land and resources. Their report stated, “They described that today’s intent is subtler: to force communities out of areas where mineral and other types of resources are coveted. But the methods are very similar: rape, murder, imprisonment, division and harassment…Women presented testimonies and evidence of many cases where army and private security presence is associated with putting down local protests against mining operations and other development projects that displace and disrupt communities to exploit natural resources.”

Less than two weeks after the report was released, Yolanda Oqueli Veliz, a community leader from the municipalities of San Jose del Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc working against the widely unpopular Canadian gold mining project owned by Radius Gold, was shot by assassins and is now in the hospital in critical condition.

While criticism of the Guatemalan State is necessary and warranted, the Canadian government deserves the same treatment. Lawmakers in Ottawa have consistently aided and abetted such behavior by their industry due to what at best could be considered indifference, but is more likely a deliberate disregard for the human rights and environmental rights of communities affected by Canadian mining companies.

A perfect illustration of this was the failure to pass Bill C-300,  a modest, if not flawed piece of legislation, which would have empowered the Canadian government to investigate human rights complaints and strip guilty companies from taxpayer subsidies through the Canadian Pension Plan and Export Development Canada. Apparently murder and gang-rapes linked to Canadian mining projects in Guatemala (not to mention similar acts throughout the hemisphere and around the globe) are not enough to encourage lawmakers in Canada to pass legislation that would hold their country’s companies accountable for these crimes and human rights abuses.

While women are being targeted for their social justice leadership roles in these conflicts, it is modest progress in the realm of rights and empowerment that has allowed women to assume such roles.

“Since the war ended women’s leadership in their communities and with community struggles have increased. More and more women have realized that they have rights and that they must defend their rights.  And this is part of the reason why violence against women has increased,” said Moran. “An act of violence against a woman is not just an act against the individual, but against all women. It is a message that if you leave your house, if you continue to organize or raise your voice, that this can happen to you.”

The War on Drugs: Militarization and the Criminalization of Dissent

Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams suggested in the JASS report that in Guatemala, “The war on drugs and increased militarization…is becoming a war on women.”

The report suggests that there is a direct correlation between increasing U.S. military aid and regional security strategies that seek to export the “Plan Colombia” model through Mexico and Central America via policies such as the Merida Initiative and its increasing and disproportionate impact on women.

“Drug-trafficking is being carried out in Guatemala, now, by organized crime. However, many of the people involved in organized crime are also ex- and current politicians, members of the economic elite, high-ranking officers in the Army and Police, members of the judiciary, etc.,” said Russell. “These are some of the same people and sectors that planned and carried out the campaigns of State terrorism and repression against their own population, in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s, in the name of ‘fighting communism’ during the Cold War.”

But just like the Cold War wasn’t exclusively about fighting communism, the war on drugs also has alternative motives: it serves as a counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to quash any dissent that challenges Northern geopolitical and business interests.

Mario Godínez, university professor, member of the MNR (New Republic Movement) and of the environmental organization Ceiba, which works with mining resistance in Guatemala, told Uruguayan analyst Raul Zibechi last year that this increased “militarism [is] at the service of big multinational firms.”

For example, in May, Perez Molina sent the military and police into the town of Santa Cruz Barillas, Huehuetenango, declaring a “state of siege” after protests, sparked by the murder of a local community leader in the resistance against a hydro-electric dam, resulted in violence. Perez Molina accused the protestors of being narco-traffickers, and recently accused communities resisting mining and dam projects of being part of a conspiracy involving international organizations and the mob. This parrots the strategy of his former superior Rios Montt, who while president dismissed any criticism of his barbaric “counterinsurgency” as being part of an “international communist conspiracy,” with organizations such as Amnesty International being singled out.

The increase in the number of women being targeted is as much a brutal legacy of the past as it is a reaction to the subtle progress being made for women’s rights and roles in society.

Walda Barrios-Klee, a former guerrilla who currently is a professor of social sciences and a social investigator at the Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Guatemala’s told Toward Freedom that, “In Guatemala it has been proven that as more women participate politically and socially, it brings out more repression. An example is the recent attempt on the life of [the aforementioned anti-mining activist] Yolanda Oquelí.”

The JASS report provides concrete recommendations on how governments and countries can work to address and fix this crisis. “We must try to have an effect in the places where the decisions are made so we can at least have a more humanitarian and responsible way of treating the environment and the people,” said Barrios-Klee, who was also a participant in the JASS fact-finding delegation.

But if history is any indicator, expecting institutionalized changes in Guatemala, as well as in the United States and Canada, may be a fool’s errand. DePauw’s Kuecker said that this is the legacy of Guatemala’s truncated flirtation with democracy and building civil society between 1944-54.

“The 1954 coup meant that Guatemalans would never have the chance to build the institutions and political culture necessary for preventing such atrocities from happening today and assured the continued domination of foreign economic interests,” said Kuecker. “The genocide of the civil war followed by the peace without justice leaves Guatemala with little capacity for exiting this contemporary social crisis, and makes Guatemala exceedingly vulnerable to further domination, manipulation and expropriation by transnational corporations and elites.”

This leaves a colossal task for Guatemala’s social movements, which are increasingly led by women. Yet struggling for such justice and peace is necessary for building a democratic and humane social order in Guatemala.

First published in Towards Freedom.

AUTHOR: Cyril Mychalejko
URL: http://upsidedownworld.org
E-MAIL: cmychalejko [at] gmail.com

“Enforced disappearances in Mexico have happened in the past and continue to happen today,” the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances stated during a presentation of its findings in March.

The UN Group noted that during the country’s first “Dirty War”, which lasted from the late 1960′s to the early 1980′s, enforced disappearances was a systematic State practice used against students, indigenous peoples, peasants, activists and anyone suspected o
f being a critic or opponent of the government.

“While the Cold War provided the pretext to disappear social movement actors and people opposed to regimes, the War on Drugs again provides pretexts to disappear people opposed to government policies,” said Stuart Schussler, the Mexico Solidarity Network’s International Solidarity Coordinator. “When you disappear people it’s a crime against the whole community and an assault on its social fabric. As a result, people become afraid to speak up and to organize.”

Now that this practice has reappeared in the country’s latest conflict, the UN notes that the cases of disappearances share the same patterns of widespread impunity, secrecy and lack of reparations and justice for the victims as in the past.

“The refusal of the authorities to recognize the true dimensions of this phenomenon and the involvement of public officials in these crimes – whether by commission, omission, or collusion with organized crime groups – has enabled this crime to spread to many parts of the country,” Amnesty International stated in response to the UN’s findings.

Since President Felipe Calderon deployed the military to combat narco-trafficking in December 2006, over 50,000 people have been murdered—more than the death toll for the 11-year war in Afghanistan. According to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, between 2006 and April 2011, 5,937 people have been reported lost or missing, while 8,898 murdered people remain unidentified. Much of this violence, which has been carried out by the Mexican government, military, and police, has been subsidized by U.S. taxpayers though the Merida Initiative, a counter-narcotics policy modeled after Plan Colombia, which provides Mexico with $1.6 billion in aid that is supposed to have human rights requirements.

“Instead of reducing violence, Mexico’s ‘war on drugs’ has resulted in a dramatic increase in killings, torture, and other appalling abuses by security forces, which only make the climate of lawlessness and fear worse in many parts of the country,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The UN Group noted that groups targeted include women, migrant workers, human rights defenders and journalists. It also noted that although drug cartels are responsible for these acts, it received “detailed documentation” that public authorities and military personnel are believed to be responsible for numerous cases.

HRW published a report in November 2011 which supports these charges. The report documented 39 cases of disappearances where evidence “strongly suggests” government involvement. It states: “The cases follow a pattern: victims are arbitrarily detained by soldiers or police, their detentions never officially registered, and they are not handed over to prosecutors. In the immediate aftermath of such detentions, victims’ relatives routinely seek information from security forces and justice officials, who deny having the victims in their custody.”

This lawlessness and failure to investigate and prosecute crimes was of great concern to the UN. In fact, 24 states in Mexico have not even criminalized the offense, while “less than 25 per cent of offenses are reported and only 2 per cent result in conviction.”

“The victims of enforced disappearances have no faith in the justice system, prosecution services, the police or Armed Forces. The chronic pattern of impunity still exists in cases of enforced disappearance and sufficient efforts are not being made to determine the fate or whereabouts of persons who have disappeared, to punish those responsible and to guarantee the right to the truth and reparation,” the UN Group’s report stated. “It would seem that Mexico is unwilling or unable to conduct effective investigations into cases of enforced disappearance.”

HRW’s Vivanco added that this leaves victims’ families with the burden of searching for their loved ones. The UN also noted that the government has also consistently dismissed the crimes by suggesting that the victims were involved in illicit activities, much like how the victims of Cold War state terror in the region were often labeled communists.

Mothers from across Mexico marched to the nation’s capital this past Mother’s Day on behalf of their loved ones who have been disappeared to demand justice.

“For some it has been years, for others months or days, of walking alone, of clamoring in the desert of the hallways of indolent and irresponsible authorities, many of them directly responsible for (disappearances) or complicit with those who took (loved ones) away,” the mothers’ group said in a communiqué.

AUTHOR: Cyril Mychalejko
URL: http://upsidedownworld.org
E-MAIL: cmychalejko [at] gmail.com

The War on Drugs and National Security

The war on drugs began with the premise that drug trafficking cartels presented the gravest threat to Mexican security and would therefore be a top priority of the incoming Calderón administration. The chosen strategy was modeled on the drug war devised by U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1971 that prioritized enforcement of laws prohibiting the sale and consumption of certain drugs at home, harsh criminalization of consumers and vendors, and interdiction strategies in producing nations. In a series of “Joint Operations” between Federal Police and Armed Forces, the Mexican government has deployed more than 45,000 troops into various regions of the country in an unprecedented domestic low-intensity conflict.

This deployment has raised numerous constitutional questions. Although there are some specific circumstances in which the use of the Mexican Armed Forces is considered justified within national territory, Article 129 of the Mexican Constitution restricts the functions of the Armed Forces in peace times to those directly connected to military discipline, and Article 21 stipulates that public security is the task of civil authorities. The federal government continues to define a semi-permanent role for the Armed Forces in the drug war, which in the absence of a declared state of emergency is difficult to justify. Moreover, the domestic role of the Armed Forces threatens civil liberties and individual human rights and constitutes an affront to the rule of law.

This situation is compounded by the actions of the Armed Forces. Although trained in a war model that posits annihilation of an identifiable enemy, when deployed to communities where civilians are defined as suspected enemies, soldiers and officers have responded too often with arbitrary arrests, personal agendas and corruption, extrajudicial executions, the use of torture, and excessive use of force. The persistence of trying all cases related to military personnel in military tribunals, known as the fuero militar or military exemption from civil prosecution, inhibits legal and social accountability and in practice has led to a very low prosecution rate.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports that of 3,671 investigations opened in the military court system between 2007 and 2011, only 29 resulted in convictions of soldiers. In November 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) mandated proscription of the use of military jurisdiction in cases involving human rights violations of civilians. In a historic ruling, the Mexican Supreme Court held on July 6, 2011 that the armed forces must respect the decision of the IACHR. Despite the combined mandate of both the international and national ruling, in practice citizens must file for an injunction against trial in military courts on a case-by-case basis in order to demand investigation and trial in civilian courts.

The first case to challenge military immunity won a decision by the Sixth District Court of the Second Region to an injunction against the extension of military immunity in the case on December 9, 2011. The family of Bonfilio Rubio Villegas, an indigenous Nahua man shot to death at a military checkpoint in the state of Guerrero, filed the case. Judge Carlos Alfredo Soto Morales ruled on the basis of the Constitution and cited the Radilla case, noting that rulings by the IACHR are binding under Mexican jurisprudence. After the federal court ruled that the Bonfilio Rubio Villegas case must be tried in a civil court the Army appealed the ruling, sparking protests by citizen organizations and experts that cited a continued resistance on the part of the Armed Forces to submit to civilian justice.

The National Commission on Human Rights (NCHR), HRW, and local and state human rights groups report major increases in forced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions, many allegedly perpetrated by Mexican security forces. There has been a 70 percent increase in complaints of human rights violations between 2010-2011 compared to the previous level, the majority of which were filed registered against security forces, especially the Federal Police and Army. The top categories are arbitrary arrest, torture, and extortion. On an official visit to Mexico, the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights, Navi Pillay, expressed grave concern over the militarization and expanded use of pre-trial house arrest; five U.N. bodies have recommended elimination of the practice as a violation of presumed innocence. The Mexican government has refused to reform the law or practice. The Second Report on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in the Americas of the IACHR documented 61 murders of defenders in Mexico during the drug war period 2006-2010, and the National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders reports 17 female human rights defenders murdered from 2010 to date. Another report documents dozens of attacks on female human rights defenders, many including gender-based forms of violence.

The NCHR has registered 475 forced disappearances in September 2011, compared to some four to six cases in 2006. Especially in disappearances, cases are widely underreported. Human Rights Ombudsman Raúl Plascencia noted that the federal government does not register forced disappearances, nor are they investigated in most cases. The NCHR has begun a registry and investigations, but has not reached full coverage and the federal government approved a measure to begin a registry.

Moreover, some major violations of human rights cannot be successfully prosecuted due to gaps in the law. Neither femicide, which has risen notably during the drug war period, nor forced disappearances are typified as such under the law. Currently femicides and disappearances are registered as kidnappings or missing person reports. As a result, the kidnapping unit of the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) is overwhelmed and forced disappearances are not counted. Forced disappearances are not classified as a specific crime under Mexican federal law. Some Mexican states are thus moving to pass specific laws on forced disappearances and human rights groups in Mexico have called for a national law as well.

According to the Ministry of Defense, the Army receives an average of four human rights complaints a day as a result of its involvement in the drug war. The total number of complaints registered by the NCHR against the army since the start of the drug war under the Calderón administration is 5,055 by mid-2011; only 79 recommendations have been issued. The Ministry of Defense has attempted to minimize the gravity of this situation, stating that due to its offensive against organized crime, “there are complaints that are presented by members of organized crime to defame this armed institute and therefore limit its operations.” However, this claim has not been substantiated, and investigations of most complaints are considerably delayed or limited. There is every reason to view with alarm the number of government statements that associate complaints of human rights violations with links to drug trafficking, as they point to an attitude of tainting or criminalizing human rights defenders, which puts them in greater jeopardy.

Paradigms for Security: The National Security Law and Citizen Security

Because of the explosive increase in violence and human rights violations under the enforcement/interdiction drug war model, Mexican human rights groups and citizen organizations have demanded an immediate change in the security strategy. The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), led by the poet Javier Sicilia whose son was brutally murdered in March of 2011, has formally called for an end to Calderón’s drug war, a halt to the U.S.-funded Merida Initiative and rejection of the administration’s proposed reforms to the National Security Law. The 2005 National Security Law places national security as the priority, and defines national security in Article 3: “For the effects of this Law, national security is understood as the actions destined to immediately and directly maintain the integrity, stability and permanence of the Mexican State…”

The proposed reforms presented by President Calderón are aimed at institutionalizing the drug war model within this concept of national security and providing a stronger legal basis for the participation of the Armed Forces in the country. MPJD legal experts have criticized the 2005 National Security Law for the following reasons:

(1) It legalizes presidential decisions to attack insecurity with repressive measures that react to symptoms rather than address causes.\

(2) It is unconstitutional since it redistributes public security and national security functions among the Armed Forces and the police without adequately defining both.

(3) The Armed Forces would be allowed to coordinate public safety activities when the constitution clearly only allows them to participate as auxiliaries in crisis situations.

(4) The incorporation of military personnel in public safety opens the door to substitute local and state authorities for federal Armed Forces and security personnel, which affects states’ rights and sovereignty.

(5) Federal security officials can declare states of exception, which permit authoritarian government.

(6) Military personnel could be tried in civil courts only when the military decides it is appropriate.

Experts within Mexico, including those associated with the National Autonomous University (UNAM), have been working on models of a law that would protect citizen and human security based on U.N. concepts; such models would replace the Merida-Calderón concept of “national security” that seeks to protect State interests abovea priority on public safety. These models address the causes of insecurity in communities and seek long-lasting solutions to those problems, rather than proscribe repressive actions against crime. The IACHR utilizes the following definition of “citizen security”:

This group of rights includes the right to life, the right to physical integrity, the right to freedom, the right to due process and the right to the use and enjoyment of one’s property, without prejudice to other rights that will be specifically examined in the body of this report.

Citizen Actions in Defense of Human Rights and for Citizen Security

The precipitous rise in violence and human rights violations and the dysfunctional nature of the Mexican justice system have led directly to the filing and acceptance of numerous cases by international courts. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States has received numerous Mexican cases and several have been passed up to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has found against the Mexican government and issued recommendations. Many of these cases pre-date the Calderón drug war but indicate the ongoing situation of impunity that forms a backdrop for the current violence.

Mexico ratified the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute on October 28, 2005. The ICC can accept cases if the State accused of crimes against humanity is deemed inactive, unwilling or unable to prosecute. On November 25, 2011, a case against the Calderón administration claiming crimes against humanity under the current security policy was presented with more than 23,000 signatures—a record-breaking number for the ICC. The case documents 470 instances of “crimes against humanity” including assassination, forced disappearance, torture and recruitment of minors.

The response of the Calderón government was swift, angry, and legally flawed. In a communique, the Ministry of Foreign Relations stated that “[t]he Federal Government categorically rejects that security policy can constitute an international crime.” To assert that a State security policy can never constitute a crime is unprecedented and patently ridiculous. The case is awaiting a decision on acceptance from the ICC and although unlikely to be accepted formally, proponents hope to raise the issues and perhaps have the country placed under observation, as happened in a similar case involving Colombia.

A similar effort has been undertaken before the non-binding Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT), an international tribunal of conscience that formed as the successor to the Russell Tribunal. The PPT has agreed to form a Mexico chapter and receive documentation regarding the Mexican government’s human rights violations.

The False Dilemma

The idea that security and human rights are a trade-off is pernicious to a rights-based society. There can be no security without human rights. The Mexican government’s retort that criminals are the major violators of human rights minimizes government responsibility for ensuring a society that respects human rights and for preventing and punishing violations by state actors.

The drug war launched by the Calderón administration and supported by the U.S. Merida initiative has led to a sharp increase in human rights violations and a general climate of violence and militarization. To build respect for human rights, Mexico must reform the current security model that posits a trade-off between rights and security and work to build citizen security based on human rights and democratic participation.

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

More than 50,000 men, women and children have been killed in violence related to the drug war since December of 2006. That was when President Felipe Calderón made the now deeply regrettable decision to launch thousands of army troops into the streets to confront drug cartels.

Almost no one believes the drug war has been a success. In one recent poll, 53% of Mexicans surveyed said that organized crime was winning the war. Their perception is born out by statistics. The same poll, by Consulta Mitofsky and Mexicans United Against Crime, reported that in the five years since the drug war began (2006-2011) crimes have increased 15%, with homicides up 88%, kidnappings 81%, and extortion 46%. According to the US drug report, between 2004-2008, heroin production increased 340% in Mexico.

Gender-based violence has also risen dramatically. In the northern border state of Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juárez—already infamous for its femicide rate—is located, assassinations of women rose 1,000% between 2007 and 2010. Chihuahua was one of the first places that the federal government organized a major military operation in the drug war and it continues to have heavy military presence. Yet, far from being safe, its citizens live in fear. In addition to assassinations, hundreds of people have been ‘disappeared’ and tens of thousands have fled their homes.

The law-and-order strategy of focusing on supply enforcement and interdiction in the drug war, rather than a demand-side social or health approach has also had a terrible impact on eroding legal institutions in Mexico. According to government statistics, only 20% of crimes are investigated, only 9% go to trial and only 1% result in punishment. One percent. Incidents of corruption among police, judges, prosecutors and other public officials are commonplace. There has been an 83% rise in human rights complaints 2006-2011; complaints against the Army make up 45% of the total, with the increase in complaints about the army rising ninefold since the drug war. Torture, rape, murder, illegal detention and disappearances are the most serious of the many complaints filed.

Although the Obama administration worried again about “spillover” violence coming across its border at the April 2 North American Summit, it is clear that U.S. policies are largely to blame for the current mess. Plans for regional cooperation under a model of expanding U.S. security priorities, including drug prohibition, to Mexico began under the Security and Prosperity Partnership in 2005 and developed into the Mérida Initiative under George W. Bush in 2007. The security aid package for “Counter-Terrorism, Counter-Narcotics and Border Security” included millions of dollars in military equipment and training to fight the drug war. Calderón had already sent more than 45,000 soldiers into the streets of Mexico for crime fighting and the Mérida Initiative consolidated politically and economically the strategy of military/police confrontation.

It is U.S. demand for drugs, estimated at tens of billions of dollars a year, that creates and sustains the business, and its failed prohibition policies that deliver that business into the hands of organized crime. It is the U.S. arms industry that arms the hit men, through legal and illegal sales and aid. It is U.S. corruption and crime that allows for the money and drugs to flow within the U.S. and over the border. And it is the lobbying power of U.S. defense contractors and private security firms that keeps the Mérida Initiative funded year after year by Congress. In times of budget constraints, the Mérida Initiative has now inexplicably been funded well beyond the original three-year extension proposed by the Bush administration.

Experts and analysts are still trying to explain the obvious but paradoxical correlation between a strategy ostensibly aimed at cracking down on the cartels and the chaos that has resulted. Even President Obama, a staunch ally of Calderón’s in the drug war, has noted publicly that the cartels are stronger than ever. The violence has resulted from turf wars between rival drug cartels—often caused by a government strike against one, battles between the armed forces and cartels, and the splintering of cartels when their leaders are killed by the government or arrested. Many of those splinter groups are the most violent and ruthless cartels of all.

Even the head of the U.S. Northern Command, Gen. Charles Jacoby told a Senate committee in March that the strategy of killing drug lords was not working. This is something that Mexican researchers have been documenting for some time, with charts that show a clear relationship between the murder or arrest of a local drug lord and an explosion of violence in that city.

Besides the booming economy of war, the drug war strategy serves interests of social control. When the nation is militarized in the name of the drug war, the government can and does intimidate and often do worse to dissidents. Human rights defenders, indigenous people seeking to protect their land and natural resources from incursions of companies, and youth in general are particular targets of military occupation, killings and repression.

It’s clear why the drug war has become a political liability. It has tainted the prospects for Calderón’s would-be successor, candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota of the National Action Party; she has endorsed the militarized strategy but sought to change the tone as she trails in the polls. Enrique Peña Nieto, from the PRI, the party which ruled Mexico with an iron fist for seven decades until being unseated from the presidency in 2000, has also endorsed the strategy yet there is some sense that his advantage going into the campaigns is in part owing to a desire among many Mexicans to return to a time when it seemed that the ruling party had secret agreements with cartels to avoid rivalries and violence by giving everyone, not least of all government officials, a piece of the pie.

The only candidate to promise a change of strategy is the center-left coalition candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He has said he would change the strategy and put the emphasis on tackling the social roots of crime and violence.

This is one of the tragedies of the drug war. With violence capturing headlines, the more than half the population that says that economic issues are of most concern to them has been left out in the cold. Mexico felt the U.S. recession hard and has been slow to recover, and now could be facing the consequences of another global recession. The number of poor people has increased by five million during this administration. The North American Summit announcements said that the three partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement would continue to reduce trade barriers and failed to note the negative effects of the agreement on their countries’ most vulnerable populations.

More and more Mexican migrants are returning home—because of record numbers of deportations in the US and because the high rate of unemployment means they’re out of work. They come back to communities with no jobs, and in many cases suffering culture shock after decades in the United States.

Stories like theirs don’t make the news like a gory beheading does. But as elections loom, the rise in poverty and the abandonment of the poor–with the nation pouring billions into security to fight criminals who find it easy to recruit fresh ranks among hapless youth—could and should be issues of primary concern.

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

As part of the "War on Drugs", the U.S. gives hundreds of millions of dollars per year of military aid to Colombia, which is used to combat leftist guerrilla groups such as FARC, who have been involved in narco-trafficking.

The White House has been floating a new concept in its war on drugs—Colombia as an “exporter of security.” The phrase has popped up in government statements several times just over the past week.

Actually, this isn’t the first time. Then Defense Secretary Robert Gates praised Colombia as an “exporter of security” back in April of 2010. The phrase seems to have gone dormant for awhile after that, although the Pentagon and State Department have been talking about and using Colombian security forces to train regional forces, in part to avoid the domestic and international political costs of having U.S. agents on the job on foreign soil.

First, Under-Secretary for Political Affairs, Wendy Sherman, used it again on Feb. 28 to describe her Mexico-Colombia-Brazil tour.

We also discussed Colombia’s growing regional and global outreach in support of international peace and security. For example, over the last three years, Colombia has trained over 11,000 police from 21 countries in Latin America and Africa, as well as Afghanistan. Colombia has also been a leader in the SICA-led Central American donor coordination process. Colombia is succeeding in leveraging its experience in the fight against cartels and terrorists in a way that positions it as a net exporter of security far beyond its borders.

Next up was Dan Restrepo in a March 1 press briefing for VP Joe Biden’s visit to Mexico and Honduras this week:

We’ve also continued to work, for example, with our partners from Colombia, who have become a very significant exporter of security to Central America — work to ensure, for example, in the last few weeks, the head of the National Police of Colombia traveled to Guatemala as part of the new Guatemalan government’s effort to revamp the national security strategy in that country to ensure that it is facing what we all recognize to be a growing challenge in the region.

In the globalized world where everything’s a commodity, we’ve gotten used to being told the world is just a giant conglomeration of products and consumers, but I’d never seen security commodified like this before. It’s a dangerously false concept.

What does “exporter of security” mean? You can export security equipment (aka weapons or intelligence hardware), but security? This is the dictionary definition of security:

So if security is the absense of threats and danger, how do you export it? If “security” pertains to a situation in a certain State how can it be shipped off to another country and context?

Even more baffling, how did Colombia get to be an “exporter of security”? Does that mean it somehow has produced a surplus of security that it can now export?

Last time I checked, Colombia had active organizations officially listed as “terrorist” operating within its borders (on both the left and the right). In January of this year, paramilitary organization called Los Urabeños paralyzed five departments in an “armed strike” just to show they could. Paramilitary forces were found to control 30% of the National Senate. Some five million people have been displaced from their homes and communities by violent conflict and the country has the second-highest number of landmine victims in the world. While a declining homicide rate is laudable, this just doesn’t like a surplus of security.

Or, following the trade logic set up by the Obama team, maybe it’s that Colombia has a comparative advantage in security. A comparative advantage in security would have to mean that a nation had few threats and a high level of public safety (see above definition).

Again, not the case with Colombia. The country still suffers from a longstanding internal conflict, and is home to violent drug cartels and unscrupulous land-grabbers.

When we add Sherman’s qualifier of “net exporter of security”, the concept gets even more semantically unbelievable. A “net exporter” means that the amount of exports are greater than the amount of imports. So Colombia exports more security than it imports? What does this security look like as it’s being shipped around? Sherman’s additional qualifier of Colombia as a “net exporter of security far beyond its borders” is just compounded silliness—you can’t export within your borders.

Safety is a consequence of preventing and eliminating threats, not importing and exporting some abstract entity called “security.”

The safety of a state or organization against criminal activity such as terrorism, theft, or espionage: “national security.”

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

Marisela Escobedo, with a wanted sign for her daughter's murderer

A Background Paper by Andrea Medina Rosas and Laura Carlsen

I. INTRODUCTION

Mexico is facing a major human rights and humanitarian crisis. Fifty thousand people have been murdered in the war on drugs just since 2007. Thousands more have been displaced, orphaned and forcibly disappeared. Mexican society is divided by fear between those who welcome a military approach to the growing chaos and those who believe that the military approach is the cause of it. The Calderon government, with encouragement and financial support from the U.S. government, refuses to consider alternatives to its drug war, even as the situation grows worse and the ruling conservative party risks paying a high political price in the 2012 presidential elections.

This crisis has revealed a deeper and more ingrained institutional crisis. While thousands of crimes are committed in the context of the current violence, the justice system fails to prosecute even a tiny fraction of them. Rampant corruption, accepted as a way of life in normal times, now erodes any attempt to bring the situation under control.

Although a peace movement has arisen that seeks to support justice for the victims and advocates policy changes in dialogue with government officials, the number of new cases emerging far surpasses its capacity to address them. The gendered aspects of the crisis remain invisible. Women are a minority of the victims, but it is usually women who lead efforts to bring about justice in the cases of their loved ones and their communities. These bold human rights defenders have become targets, with little means of protection or support. Gender-based violence has risen precipitously under cover of a society engulfed in violence and lacking basic institutional capacity—or political will– to deal with it.

II. CONTEXT

1) Weak institutions, corruption and lack of justice. Although Mexico did not experience the armed conflicts and military dictatorships of other countries in the region, its democratic and judicial institutions are weak and do not comply fully with their obligations. This is the result of 71 years of authoritarian, one-party rule (1929-2000) and the persistence of systematic corruption and use of the State apparatus in the interests of those holding political and economic power.

The justice system successfully prosecutes only an estimated 2% of crimes committed, excluding those that are not reported due to lack of faith in the system, those that are never investigated by authorities, and those that are thrown out of court. This situation encourages the continued commission of political crimes, crimes by cartels, gender crimes and common delinquency—without punishment, social or legal consequences, or transparency.

The system also routinely discriminates on the basis of sex, class, ethnicity and age (see below). Moreover, there is a severe shortage of resources to respond to violations of human rights, exacerbated by the extreme rise in complaints since the onset of the war on drugs.

2) Femicides, human rights violations and simulation. An important precedent to the current crisis is the case of the femicides in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. First denounced in 1993, this case exemplifies gender-based violence since the murders of the young women share traits of extreme sexual violence and torture, and also reveals the lack of political will to investigate and resolve crimes against women in Mexico. In this case and others, the Mexican government has developed a response of carrying out formal and much-publicized actions to address the human rights problem without making any real changes or progress. Defenders call this tactic “simulation.” Thus, despite recent constitutional reforms on human rights and the fact that Mexico has ratified most international conventions, the enforcement of the law is totally inadequate due to the lack of real commitment by federal, state and local governments.

3) General violence and gender violence as part of the “war on drugs”. The war on drugs launched in December of 2006 by President Felipe Calderon and supported by the U.S. government led to the deployment of some 45,000 troops throughout Mexico and a dramatic increase in violence. More than 50,000 people have been killed and thousands more disappeared, displaced and orphaned. Complaints of human rights violations involving security forces have risen at least sixfold. Militarization has brought new threats and additional risks to women human rights defenders, especially in indigenous regions, along the northern border and in other zones of intense conflict. Cases of rape, abuse and murder attributed to the armed forces have risen, along with similar crimes attributed to the drug cartels.

II. The Current Crisis for Women Human Rights Defenders in Mexico

Mexican women human rights defenders confront threats and graves risks in carrying out their work while trying to assure their own personal safety. Government officials and security forces are often those responsible for the threats, along with conservative groups, hostile media, and criminal groups. The challenges for the protection of defenders are to guarantee their immediate security through their own social and civil networks, since it is not possible to trust the government to do it. At the same time, to bolster the democratic state and rule of law they continue to demands that the government fulfill its obligations to assure the safety of human rights workers.

There are three main aspects that characterize the current human rights crisis:

1. Lack of justice. Human rights violations and threats to human rights defenders are often not even investigated properly. There are seldom sanctions, reparations for damages, or programs of prevention. This makes it possible for organized crime or individuals to become more violent against women and women defenders, in collusion with the authorities. To carry out the defense of human rights safely, it is urgent to en impunity, since that is what causes the chain of violence against defenders for demanding justice, which often extends even to the families of victims or their own families.

In alarming contrast to the lack of effective legal proceedings in cases of human rights violations and attacks on human rights defenders, there has been an increase in the use of the justice system to criminalize social protest and the work of many defenders, in an effort to repress their activity.

2. Culture of discrimination against women

The Interamerican Human Rights Court has pronounced sentences against Mexico affirming that the Mexican government and its officials maintains a culture of discrimination against women that propitiates violence against women. This discrimination is more intense against indigenous, young, migrant, poor and lesbian women and women who demand justice. There are also more attacks on defenders who defend women’s reproductive and sexual rights. Conservative groups are attacking those who promote the right to choose and defend women in jail for aborting, and those who defend sexual diversity. Discrimination exists not only in the laws and rules, but especially in practices of government officials that result in unequal access to justice and the preservation of a misogynist culture.

This aspect is important since the majority of those who seek justice, are searching for loved ones, or denounce violations of human rights are women. They are the mothers, wives, daughters that are emerging as the new group of defenders.

3. Lack of real and effective public policy and defense from the Mexican state.

Military presence in many parts of the country, and the absence of the state in others, reveals that the actions being carried out in defense of human rights are isolated, and not coordinated between the three levels of government or between different offices, agencies and branches of government. Citizens do not know their rights or how the institutions set up to guarantee them work. Worse, there is a campaign to link the work of human rights defenders with criminals. The few guarantees offered by the government to defend rights, such as precautionary measures, are near useless since there is no budget to implement them and they are not coordinated among the institutions charged with applying them.

III. Cases

1. Josefina Reyes: Grassroots leader from Valle de Juárez, Chihuahua who worked for peace and denounced violations of human rights by the armed forces sent into the region as part of the drug war. Reyes was assassinated Jan. 3, 2010. Following her murder, her family has suffered threats, harassment and attacks, including the assassinations of her brother Rubén Reyes (murdered prior to Josefina’s death); and brother, sister and sister-in-law María Magdalena Reyes, Elías Reyes and Luisa Ornelas (murdered in Feb 2011).

2. Marisela Escobedo: In August 2008, Rubi Frayre, daughter of Marisela Escobedo, disappeared. Her remains were found as a result  of a search by the family that led to the culprit, Rubi’s former boyfriend, Sergio Barraza, who confessed to the crime. Incredibly, three state judges let Barraza go free. As a result of Marisela’s protests and public outcry, Barraza was later sentenced for the crime but had already fled. Marisela continued to demand justice and on Dec. 16, 2010 she was shot and killed as she protested outside the State Capitol. The crime has not been solved.

3. Blanca Velásquez: Defender and organizer for the labor rights in Puebla, Velásquez founded and directed the Center for Worker Support (CAT). Since 2008 she has been attacked repeatedly for denouncing violations of labor rights by transnational corporations. She ahs received death threats, beatings, and threats against her and other members of CAT. The organization has had its offices raided, robbing the archives, equipment and resources; it has had its phone lines tapped. Publicly its business leaders have named Blanca as a social danger and affirmed that government officials back them up. This has endangered the organization and its members.

IV. FACT SHEET

1. Since 2010, six women human rights defenders have been registered as murdered in Mexico: Chihuahua-Marisela Escobedo, Susana Chávez, Malena Reyes, Luisa Ornelas, Josefina Reyes; Oaxaca-Beatriz Cariño.

2. An estimated 98% of crimes committed in Mexico are never solved or sanctioned.

3. The war on drugs has left 50,000 dead, thousands of displaced and disappeared. Women represent the majority of those who file complaints in the search for justice for victims and their families.

4. The number of femicides in Chihuahua since sending the army in has risen to 837 for the period 2008-2011 June—nearly double total femicides in1993-2007.

5. The last report by the Special Rapporteur on Defenders recognized that threats and especially “explicit death threats, against women human rights defenders are one of the main forms of violence in the region, with more than half coming from Latin America, most of those (27) from Mexico.

IV. Petitions to the Mexican Government and International Organizations

1. Include a gender perspective in the diagnosis and risk analysis.

This implies studying the gender-specific nature of threats to men and women, and of the impact of measures designed to protect them.

2. Effective local protective measures.

Applying only individual measures has been shown to be counter-productive since instead of protection and modifying the situation of risk, they increase risks by giving the government more control over the defenders and their work. Protective measures should include: a) an assurance that full investigations will be carried out and sanctions applied to officials involved in attacks on or discrimination against women defenders, b) guarantee psycho-social support, even in case of displacement, c) include processes with the media and with communities affected by the attacks on defenders.

3. International monitoring to implement protective measures. The international community should monitor the situation to distinguish the rhetoric from the reality and measure real results. Follow up by international human rights organizations requires real indicators of evaluation, benchmarks and mechanisms for monitoring by civil society.

4. Focus support on the organizations and women human rights defenders themselves. Although guarantees of rights is the responsibility of the government, it is fundamental to strengthen the organizations and create networks of women human rights defenders to assure their immediate and effective protection.

V. Links and resources for more information:

Centro de Derechos Humanos Tlachinollan  www.tlachinollan.org (Español). For information on the case of Ines and Valentina http://www.tlachinollan.org/Ines-y-Valentina/ines-y-vale.html

Caso Campo Algodonero http://www.campoalgodonero.org.mx/   English: “Cotton Field” case

Articles and Report:

Report on the Situation of Women Human Rights Defenders (on line 2011 report )

Amnesty International on Josefina Reyes http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/mexico-urged-protect-activists-after-campaigner-shot-dead-20100106

The Murdered Women of Juarez http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/3895

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