Pubdate: Mon, 03 Sep 2012
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2012 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/IuiAC7IZ
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Authors: Ellen Jean Hirst and Antonio Olivo

ACTIVISTS WANT END TO DEADLY DRUG WARS

Chicago: Sunday morning. One man dead after taking three bullets -
one to the head, two to the chest. Cocaine clasped in hand, and more
found near his body, police said.

Mexico City: Last year. Six found bound and choked or suffocated to
death. Bags over their heads. The murderers were likely drug
traffickers, police said.

Murders and shootings are up in Chicago. They are up in
Mexico.

Gun laws and the war on drugs are pivotal to those deaths, said a
group of Mexican activists, almost all of whom have lost family
members to drug violence, who are traveling across the U.S. to
heighten awareness of the problem. On Sunday evening, the activists'
Caravan for Peace arrived in Chicago.

Javier Sicilia, a Mexican poet and writer, said it's easy to forget
the deaths represent people. The man who died Sunday was Jeffrey
Smith, 38, who lived in the 5100 block of South Marshfield Avenue,
authorities said. One man who died in Mexico City was Javier Sicilia's
son, Juan Francisco, 24.

Sicilia organized the 20city Caravan of Peace tour across the U.S. in
response to his son's death. The tour began Aug. 12 at the Tijuana-San
Diego border and is scheduled to end in Washington Sept. 12. The
caravaners talk about relatives who have been kidnapped and later
found dead or who have never been found.

In March 2011, Sicilia got a call about his son's death.

"I felt such an immense pain, I can't even explain," Sicilia said in
Spanish. "It's the biggest pain one can feel - when one loses a child."

His son's friends had visited a bar they hadn't known was operated by
people involved with organized crime, Sicilia said. Valuable equipment
had been stolen from the car of a friend of his son. When his son
approached the bar owners, he and his friends were murdered, Sicilia
said.

An estimated 70,000 people in Mexico have been murdered or disappeared
after outgoing President Felipe Calderon ramped up law enforcement
efforts six years ago.

"The drug war. It's a war that can't be classified as anything but
stupid," Sicilia said

The United States has been the source of nearly 70 percent of guns
recovered by Mexican authorities and submitted for tracing in the past
three years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives. For this reason, Sicilia said, the U.S. has a
joint responsibility for the deaths.

"Behind each weapon sold illegally are deaths," Sicilia
said.

The tour's intent is to lay the blame for those deaths on the demand
for drugs in the U.S., with Sicilia and others arguing that the
multibillion-dollar war on drugs on both sides of the border should be
reassessed.

Daniel Robelo, a research coordinator with the Drug Policy Alliance
who travels with the caravan, said legalizing drugs such as cocaine
and marijuana would help eliminate murders, even if problems like
increased drug consumption arose.

"With Prohibition, people didn't stop drinking, and people haven't
stopped using drugs," Robelo said. "The way things are puts power in
the hands of criminals who use violence."

The group also stresses that the Mexican drug cartels directly affect
communities in the U.S. - from the thousands of people fleeing across
the border and, eventually, into cities such as Chicago to the gun
violence between gangs that is often connected to illegal drug sales.

"People tend to think: 'Oh, that's Mexico's problem. They should deal
with it,' " said Cristina Garcia, who helped coordinate the caravan's
appearance in Chicago. "It's not just their problem; it's our problem
too."
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MAP posted-by: Matt