U.S. and Mexican Governments Continue to Brush Aside Perspectives of Drug War Victims
\nBy Tania Arroyo, July 22, 2011<\/p>\n
Guatemalans marching for Cabral(Pictured: Guatamelans marching after murder of Facundo Cabral.)<\/p>\n
On July 8, the \u201cwar on drugs\u201d claimed another victim, the songwriter Argentine Facundo Cabral, the victim of an ambush in Guatemala. Cabral, a tireless pacifist, was killed when three carloads of gunmen ambushed the vehicle in which he was riding. This is an irreparable loss to the Argentine and Latin American people.<\/p>\n
The victims of this drug war have mostly been anonymous, from the perspective of the global media. But the war has begun to claim some famous people, like Cabral. In Mexico the murder of the son of renowned intellectual Javier Sicilia has led to the emergence of a strong and important social movement calling for an end to the war on drugs. This movement forced President Felipe Calderon to initiate a dialogue with society: an imperfect dialogue but dialogue at least.<\/p>\n
Despite this social message, on June 22, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in Guatemala that the U.S. government would spend nearly $300 million this year helping governments in Central America confront the mafias that smuggle cocaine to American consumers. At the same event, President Felipe Calderon called for more resources from the international community to fund this ill-advised strategy to combat crime. He dismissed the notion of a symbolic contribution, “because this is not about charity,\u201d and asked for an amount equal to the billions of dollars received by criminals to run their operations.<\/p>\n
Ironically, the next day, Calder\u00f3n met with Javier Sicilia in M\u00e9xico for a dialogue that seemed to have deaf ears. Sicilia said to the Mexican president, “Watch carefully our faces. Search carefully our names. Hear our words. We represent innocent victims. Do we look like collateral damage or statistics?” He asked Calder\u00f3n to apologize for the 40,000 deaths caused by the struggle against organized crime. The president responded that he wouldn\u2019t apologize for having pursued the offenders. “Javier, you\u2019re wrong,” he said. “I regret not having sent federal forces in earlier.” …more<\/a><\/p>\n