http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/mexican_drug_war_victims_us_is_responsible/ Wednesday, Sep 26, 2012 1:34 PM UTC
Mexicans are determined to make America hear
the truth about its role in their country's ongoing violence
By Kristen Gwynne,
Alternet
This article originally appeared on
AlterNet.
In Mexico, where the authorities and the drug cartels are hard to
separate, finding answers is often left to the survivors of drug war
violence. Some survivors have dug through mass graves, turning over
mutilated bodies, half-hoping to see the face of a loved one. Others
have stared their children’s killers in the eye while hearing the brutal
details of how their kids were murdered. They interview incarcerated
drug traffickers, desperate for some kind of closure. Determined to
speak for the victims who have lost their voices, some relatives of
victims have joined a new movement, the Caravan for Peace with Jusice
and Dignity. The Caravan has demanded justice for the dead in Mexico,
and this summer, they delivered their message — a call for
accountability — across the United States.
That is the story of
Margarita Lopez Perez, the mother of disappeared 19-year-old Yahaira
Guadalupe Bahena Lopez. Lopez Perez’s expensive journey to find the
truth led her to incarcerated drug traffickers who admitted to killing
her child. In great detail, they told her the horror Yahaira endured.
“They told me that they kidnapped my daughter, that they had her alive
for many days,” she said, “They were torturing her, raping her, before
taking her to a faraway place, and decapitating her alive.” Then, they
played with her head, kicking it around like a soccer ball and kissing
her cold lips. “They told me she was innocent, that they made a
mistake,” said Lopez Perez.
In Mexico, many of the drug war’s dead
are innocents. In the six years of drug war that have ravaged the
country, more than 60,000 are dead and more than 10,000 are missing.
Because only 2 percent of cases are granted judicial review, families of
the lost regularly become their own investigators. They find, too
often, horrors tied to the authorities themselves.
Olga Reyes
Salazar knows this truth too well. She is from a family of human rights
defenders; her sister Josefina Reyes Salazar denounced military abuses
in Chihuahua after the drug war deployed troops to her neighborhood. In
2008, Josefina’s 25-year-old son Julio Cesar Reyes was shot and killed
near a military checkpoint, kicking off a string of demonstrations and
suspicious murders occurring near active military. The family continued
to protest against military abuses, demanding investigations into the
murders of their relatives, but their efforts were not well-received.
Death plucked off the Reyes family like the petals on a flower. When
they protested for justice, their homes were burned, and more fell.
Olga
lost six of her relatives by the end of 2011. Their bodies were left by
highways. Flowers from a defaced Reyes grave appeared in a nearby
military garden. Molotov cocktails awakened them in the night. Now, the
Reyes name is one of warning. “The family has become an example for the
people of the town,” said Olga. There, signs warn troublemakers to
leave or end up like the Reyes family.
The US backs, and even
trains, Mexico’s military, despite allegations of human rights abuses.
Eliana Garcia, a former political prisoner turned Mexican congresswoman
who is an adviser to Mexican politicians, says the most deadly Mexican
military force is the navy, and she is quick to note its training by US
Navy SEALs.
“The US military are not [committing crimes] directly
or openly,” said Garcia, adding that US influence goes beyond training
and funding. Garcia says there is a widespread understanding, but no
solid proof, that US forces dress and/or operate as Mexican military.
“For instance, [this summer], two agents of the CIA were driving to a
navy installation. Nobody knows what they were doing and then suddenly
they were ambushed by policia federales,” said Garcia. US authorities
confirmed that the two men ambushed by Mexican police were part of the
CIA. “They were injured and then immediately they disappeared from
Mexico. We don’t know their names. We know they were CIA agents, but
what they were doing, why they were going to the navy base… We don’t
know anything,” Garcia said.
Garcia says the drug war is an
example of America imposing its “security agenda” to operate navy bases
not just in Mexico, but El Salvador and Colombia.
The United
States spends almost $500 million a year funding Mexico’s war against
cartels that sell drugs to American consumers. As the US continues to
consume drugs despite attempts at prohibition, unimaginable horror
multiplies in Mexico. US and Mexican forces battle against the heavily
armed cartels, which are so powerful they have been labeled an
insurgency by US State Department officials and journalists alike. While
authorities claim to target only drug traffickers, Mexicans say the war
has only made the cartels more violent and the state authorities more
corrupt. The result is that innocent bystanders are often caught up in
the violence, with little or no access to justice.
The victims
speak now through the voices of their survivors. Family members seek
answers from locals, whether they are incarcerated cartel members or
private investigators, to understand their loved ones’ last minutes. And
as they seek justice for the people responsible for their loved ones’
deaths, their quest reaches beyond the murderers and across borders, up
to the US and Mexican governments. Their government no longer represents
their best interests, nor does its rhetoric reflect the reality of
innocence lost. Thus, they have come to the United States to create, as
one mother called it, “some citizen diplomacy,” and stand up for the
victims.
The Caravan includes women whose young daughters were
taken in the night (suspected to be victims of human trafficking),
relatives of dead police and military, a teenage couple missing their
family, a mother who lost four of her sons, famed Mexican poet Javier
Sicilia, and more. United by tragedy and pulling strength from shared
experience, the caravaners took time off from their search for their
dead and came to America with goals and demands. They desperately want
the United States to understand the truth about Mexico’s drug war
victims, that the media is wrong to suggest the violence is only among
and against the cartels. The sad truth is that the military intervention
in Mexico has provoked a strong reaction from the cartels, and as the
military keeps fighting back, the violence spirals out of control into
the streets and homes of the citizens.
The Caravan aims to wake us
up, to remind America that it is our policies and institutions that
help to fuel their tragedy. Our tax dollars fund their war; our banks
launder the cartel cash; our guns arm the insurgents; and our drug
consumption drives the market fueling all of it. Peace, the Caravan
says, will be a multinational movement of the people. But for it to
arrive, Americans must understand not only the carnage that takes in
place in Mexico, but also the role we play in it.
I caught up with
the Caravan near the end of its crosscountry journey in New York,
following them from the Big Apple to Baltimore and Washington, DC. Their
stories are horrific, but their mission, like their slogan, is one of
peace, justice and dignity for all.
Reeling in Banker Greed
At
a vigil in front of St. Cecilia Catholic church in Harlem, one of New
York City’s most violent and drug war-ravaged neighborhoods, Teresa
Carmona’s candle melted as she explained why HSBC bank would be targeted
as retribution for her son’s death. Joaquin, 21, was studying
architecture in Mexico City. “His dreams were coming true,” said
Carmona. “And he had a lot of dreams.” In August 2010, he was murdered
with a bullet to the head in his car in Mexico City. “He did not deserve
to die,” said his mother. “He deserves justice. The banks, they’re
criminals.”
This summer, a Senate investigation found that HSBC
was complicit in allowing Mexican drug cartels to launder billions of
dollars through its U.S. operations. The Senate report also says U.S.
regulators knew that the bank had a poor system to defend against
laundering, but did nothing to demand improvement. While US forces were
training and arming the Mexican military to fight cartels, US bankers
were cashing in on cartel profits.
On September 7, Carmona and the
Caravan delivered a suitcase full of “blood money” to HSBC bank. But
they know that HSBC was simply the bank that got caught, and their
message to all of Wall Street coalesced with a march to Occupy Wall
Street’s birthplace, Zuccotti Park.
Demanding the government put
people over profits, the Caravan for Peace carries very much the same
message as Occupy Wall Street. Institutions like the Drug Enforcement
Agency, privately owned prisons, law enforcement, and even the military
rely on drug war operations to stay relevant. Prohibition has not
stopped the use of drugs, but has empowered perpetrators of violence.
The caravaners demand the conversation about drug policy include
alternatives, legalization or decriminalization, that treat instead of
criminalize drug addicts. The harm elicited by the joint US-Mexican war
on drugs has been so egregious that there simply must be something
better. What’s stopping us from adapting to a more successful strategy,
claims the Caravan, is profit.
The Caravan demands that the US put
people before profit and take a series of steps to create a policy that
will better protect them from violence. To stop money laundering, they
say, the US must punish the banks cleaning the blood off cartel money.
And to disarm the cartels the military is fighting, the Caravan demands
the US change or enforce its gun policy to immediately end the illegal
traffic of US assault weapons to Mexico. Resources spent on weapons and
violence, they say, would be better spent defending life.
Javier
Sicilia, a Mexican poet who put down his pen when his son was murdered,
says, “It seems that what [the governments] understand is economic
peace, a peace that benefits big capital, and the capital of death,”
adding that US and Mexican drug policies “only benefit war.”
U.S. Weapons Used in Mexican Murders
In
Washington, DC., the Caravan presented to the Mexican embassy two
dismantled firearms stuck in a concrete block. The symbol, said Sicilia,
was of the need to protect peace. In 2009 and 2010, 70 percent of
firearms recovered by authorities in Mexico came from the United States.
At a gun show in Albuquerque, New Mexico, witnessing the ease with
which Americans buy weapons was a great shock to the movement.
“It
was easier for us to get a gun than a cell phone,” said Araceli
Rodriguez. At a gun fair in NM, she was told she could have “all the
weapons I want” as long as she had ID and “the money to buy them.” When
it came to a cell phone, however, payment plans and red tape took “five
days so we could activate it, because they kept asking us for
information that we didn’t have.”
The Albuquerque gun show was a defining moment for many of the caravaneiros, who know too many killed by American weapons.
At
the gun show, Rodriguez said, “I cried because I saw mothers with their
children in strollers, passing through like it was a park, as if they
were looking at butterflies. There were these assault weapons, these
huge guns that kill our people in Mexico, and 9- and 10-year-old
children running around.”
In November 2009, Rodriguez lost her
son, a federal police officer. Luis Angel Leon Rodriguez had recruited a
civilian to drive him to a dangerous location in Mexico because the
police force did not provide him with a car. He had only a piece of
paper and a gun, and police say he was shot with his own weapon.
Araceli
Rodriguez never forgave the bosses who did not offer her son the
necessary protection he needed to do his job, but she did forgive one of
her son’s murderers. She looked him right in the eye as he told her
that, after killing her son, he cut him into pieces and burned his
remains. Rodriguez, like many family members of victims, interviewed
incarcerated narcos in her search to find answers. Many caravaneiros have had better luck with the locked-up cartel members than they have turning over bodies in mass graves.
“I
asked him how they could have done that, because he is a human being,
and they were all brothers in that land,” she said, crying. “He said
that he worked for a cartel and that he had been paid $3,000 pesos [a
little over $250] to kill my son and his partners.”
Many of the
women are quicker to forgive the murderers of their loved ones than the
authorities who did not protect or help them find justice. The violence
is structural, they say. They believe that circumstances and poverty can
make people commit unimaginable crimes just to survive.
Rodriguez
said that her son’s murderer had been beaten up in jail. When the
authorities refused to treat him, Rodriguez took a painkiller out of her
purse. “Take this pill in the name of my son,” she told him. Crying, he
reached out to touch her, but the authorities would not allow it. “I
told him I wouldn’t keep hate in my heart, but that there was a god and
that one day there would be divine justice.”
Now, says Rodriguez,
“I’m the voice of those who are not here, that are dead, who maybe their
destiny was a common grave — and for the missing ones — I’m their
voice. I’m the voice of the children that have been orphaned by the loss
of their father or their mother, that will never be hugged again. I’m
here to put my grain of sand,” she said. “This is what keeps me in this
Caravan. Faith and illusion. That one day that I’ll wake up and I’ll
realize that the nightmare of pain has ended, and that there is justice
with dignity for all.”
Solidarity Across Borders
While
the Caravan pleads for the United States to have compassion for its
struggle, it also found solidarity with communities devastated by the
drug war on this side of the border. In Baltimore, the reality of the
drug war’s violence at home was made clear. For many in the
African-American community, their demands for peace, justice and dignity
are the same as the caravaneiros.
There were 196 murders
in Baltimore last year. Dominique Stevenson, director of the Friend of a
Friend mentoring program for incarcerated youth, said the drug war in
Baltimore looks like “conflicts that have taken place in other lands.”
“You
basically have the equivalent of child soldiers here,” she said, “It
looks like losing people almost every day. It looks like a tragedy. It
looks like grief.”
Stevenson says the tragedy black, urban
communities face on a daily basis is not a symptom of American
capitalism, but intentional oppression that actually creates capital.
She says change may not happen the way liberals envision, with
well-intentioned, yet sideways initiatives that target symptoms of
oppression, like poor education, without stopping the system itself.
“The
uplift of those communities will come from the people in those
communities,” she said, “Place the resources in the hands of the people
that are attempting to do that work. That work is not going to look like
liberal folks imagine. It might look revolutionary to them. To me, it
would look like love.”
Ending prohibition, or considering
alternatives to it, is nowhere near reaching the mainstream in the US.
But while ending the drug war may seem revolutionary, to those who live
within it every day, radical change is the only alternative to death and
suffering.
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