Beyond the Drug War: Building a Stronger Bilateral Relationship for Peaceful Co-Existence http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4159

The drug war violence today is a direct outgrowth of the US-Mexico drug war strategy. When we look at the sudden rise in deaths, it correlates with the launch of the enforcement/interdiction model against drug trafficking.The Mexico City US Embassy has expanded into a massive web of Washington-led security programs and infrastructure. The controversial Merida Initiative, up for another round of funding in Congress, has allocated more than $1.5 billion to help fight Mexico’s drug war with devastatingly negative effects.

The shared drug war imposes a national security framework on what by all logic should be seen as a far more nuanced and complex bilateral relationship. In addition to the rise in violence, the binational relationship has been hijacked by proponents of a war model aimed ostensibly at reducing illicit drug flows to the U.S. market and confronting organized crime where it’s most powerful—in brutal battle. The Pentagon is thrilled to finally achieve access to the Mexican security apparatus and security decision-making, and the Calderon government—entering election mode—needs the political and economic support from the U.S. to shore up its flagship crusade against organized crime.

The new relationship forged in war rooms is bad news for the Mexican people. Executions, femicides, torture, political violence and corruption cases have skyrocketed. The No Mas Sangre (No More Blood) movement has taken hold throughout the country and regions like Ciudad Juarez, where militarization has been heaviest and not coincidentally violence has taken the highest toll, have seen the rise of grassroots movements to defend human rights, call for an end to militarization and put forward alternative strategies. Among their demands is to rechannel scarce resources away from the attack on cartels to address social needs, restore the armed forces to their constitutional mandate of national defense, and end impunity for crime by fixing the judicial and public security systems and attacking government corruption.