Pubdate: Thu, 02 May 2013
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2013 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Javier Sicilia
Note: Mexican poet Javier Sicilia has led the Movement for Peace with 
Justice and Dignity since the murder of his son, including working 
for the recently enacted "Victim's Law" that provides reparations for 
victims of Mexico's drug-related violence.

A FATHER'S PLEA TO TWO PRESIDENTS

Obama and Mexico's Pena Nieto need to focus on curbing drug-war violence.

President Obama has much to discuss with Mexico's new president, 
Enrique Pena Nieto, when they meet in Mexico City this week. No 
issue, however, is more urgent than the search for peace, justice and 
dignity for and between our peoples.

For seven years, Mexico has been living a nightmare. More than 70,000 
people, by some estimates, have been killed and thousands more have 
been disappeared in the wave of criminal and institutional violence 
of Mexico's war on drug cartels. The collateral damage is a 
humanitarian tragedy that requires our leaders to have deep and frank 
discussions about how to transform the failed policies exacerbating 
the violence.

Our countries need to work together in prioritizing public health and 
regulation over a strategy that makes suspected drug offenders into 
military objectives. The effect of four decades of Mexico's drug war 
has been, ironically, to strengthen and enrich the very criminals we 
oppose. We also need urgent common action to shut down the torrent of 
guns being smuggled from the United States into Mexico, and into the 
hands of criminals, at a rate of more than 200,000 a year.

For me these issues are personal and transcend ideology, politics and 
even nationality. One of the victims of the violence was my 
24-year-old son, Juan Francisco. He was an athletic, studious young 
man with no connections to the criminal world. In March 2011, he was 
murdered with six friends by cartel hit men.

Why were they killed? Because two of the boys tried to get back some 
tools stolen from the parking lot of a local gang-run nightclub. My 
son was enlisted by his friends to help. They were kidnapped, beaten, 
stripped, spit on, tortured and slowly asphyxiated.

We are certain Obama understands how insidious and dangerous this 
indiscriminate violence is, and the way American drug laws and gun 
laws empower it.

When it comes to guns, the consensus in Mexico is broad: Students, 
workers, elected officials and especially police and soldiers all 
know they would be safer if the United States effectively cracked 
down on gun traffickers, instituted background checks for all gun 
buyers and ended sales of military-style assault weapons.

The hard truth is that weak U.S. gun laws allow for conversion of 
drug trade profits into contraband weaponry in the hands of the very 
criminal organizations terrorizing Mexico. Most of these weapons can 
be legally purchased at any of 8,834 U.S. federally licensed firearms 
dealers in your border states, as counted by Mayors Against Illegal 
Guns, and then resold at a profit to a smuggler.

Obama's initiatives would have made this massive and continuous 
arming of Mexico's criminal organizations significantly more 
difficult. In Mexico, we were deeply disappointed when the U.S. 
Senate rejected popular, modest and eminently sensible measures to 
make it slightly harder for criminals, smugglers, the mentally ill 
and the cartels to get their hands on powerful weapons.

We urge Obama and Pena Nieto to use all their available executive 
powers to stem the tide of smuggled weapons and to support 
legislative and electoral efforts to overcome political inertia and 
roll back the power of the light arms industry and their political 
front groups like the National Rifle Assn.

But let's be clear. Presidents are not all-seeing and omnipotent. 
They need to be supported, nudged, cajoled, convinced, assisted and 
otherwise pressured to work on the right causes and make good 
decisions. It is the role of an engaged citizenry to make that happen.

After my son's death, our Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity 
arose. We pushed Mexico's former president, Felipe Calderon, into a 
series of public dialogues and directly challenged his militarized 
approach to fighting the gangs. We mobilized enormous caravans of 
consolation and hope led by victims of violence. Dozens of buses 
rolled through Mexico's worst conflict zones. Yet we knew that to end 
the killing, drug policy had to evolve. That meant crossing the border.

In August, I embarked on a 35day, 125-person caravan across the 
United States. More than 200 U.S. organizations helped us with events 
in 27 cities focused on guns, money laundering and immigration 
justice. We underlined the need for the Obama administration to walk 
its talk of an evidence-based, public health model for drug policy. 
Yes, work to cut U.S. demand for drugs by devoting more resources to 
help addicts to recover and young people to make healthy choices. But 
to effectively shrink the profits of the illegal market, we must also 
consider regulating widely used recreational drugs.

In November, the citizens of Washington state and Colorado voted to 
start draining the coffers of criminal drug traffickers by 
establishing sensible state regulation of marijuana. We hope our 
leaders are listening.

As our presidents meet, let us wish them clarity and strong heart. 
We, the people on both sides of the border, will be very attentive.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom