May 17, 2011
Peasant Massacres and Peace Marches: Mexico’s Dilemma and Our Responsibility
This week two dramatic events highlighted the dilemma that Mexico faces: a massive march for peace and the beheading of 29 farm workers by the notorious Zetas gang.
On Sunday, March 8, an estimated 100,000 Mexicans converged on the Zocalo, the central plaza of Mexico City calling for “Peace with Justice and Dignity” – it has been called the first mass demonstration in the world against the “War on Drugs.” People also marched in 38 other cities in Mexico, and in other cities in the Americas and Europe.
Since 2007, the Mexican government has collaborated with the United States in this war on drugs. The Merida Initiative is a security cooperation agreement between Mexico, the USA, and Central America to combat drug-trafficking and transnational crime. The strategy has involved the use of the Mexican military for internal security.
Similar to the previous anti-drug strategy in Colombia, the Merida Initiative provides funds to train and equip police and military forces. Through the Merida Initiative, US security funding to Mexico has reached a total of US$1.5 Billion since June 2008, the most of any country in the region.
This unofficial internal war has claimed an estimated 40,000 lives in Mexico in the last 3 years. Casualties of this “war” include 31 journalists killed, 128 threats and attacks on human rights defenders, and thousands of civilians caught in the cross fire.
One of these civilians was Juan Francisco Sicilia, the son of Javier Sicilia, a prominent Mexican poet and journalist. Javier Sicilia, who has roots in the Christian-based Communities of the 1970s, has now become a mobilizing and uniting figure for the various civil society organizations and citizens opposed to the militarized approach to organized crime and violence in their country.
In contrast to the peace marches last weekend , this weekend (May 15) the most recent massacre of 29 farm workers in Guatemala apparently by the Mexican crime organization, Los Zetas, could be the rationale for further militarization. The massacre of peasants by 200 armed Zeta members on Saturday night appears to be part of the struggle to control drug-trafficking routes in the Peten region of Guatemala.
In the last 10 years, Los Zetas have risen to become the dominant drug cartel on the Gulf Coast in Mexico, but they are also blamed for the massacre of undocumented migrants in northern Mexico as they attempt to extort money from the migrants. Last August, 2010, a mass grave of 72 Central American migrants was found in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. In the past few weeks, over 183 bodies have been found in other graves sites throughout the state.
Given the weakness, and corruption of the police and judicial systems in Mexico, and the cross-border nature of the criminal activity, it is expected that the governments of Mexico, the United States, and the other effected Central American countries may use these massacres as a rationale for the further militarization of the region.
Militarization has not increased public safety nor decreased crime in Mexico. On the contrary, it has increased the violence, pitting drug cartels against each other and the State in open warfare. The continuing failure of the rule of law has increased common delinquency and local gang activities. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission has received 5000 allegations of human rights violations by members of the military in the last three years.
Many voices in Mexican civil society are calling for a third alternative – neither a militarized approach nor passive acceptance of corruption and violence.
Yet, the problem is not only an internal public security problem. The problem is intimately and intricately connected with dynamics in the countries that surround Mexico: the insatiable and lucrative consumer drug market in the USA; the profitable US small arms trade that supplies the majority of the weapons in Mexico; free trade economic policies that destroy local economies and leave only migration or gang membership as alternative survival strategies; and the security and anti-drug policies enacted in other Latin American countries that push drug cartels into new territories.
The violence and conflict that Mexico is experiencing is not simply a domestic security problem that Mexicans can solve with a stronger military.
This is a challenge that has links throughout the Americas, and thus requires the participation people and governments throughout the region to support Mexicans in their struggle for a “peace with justice and dignity.”
Adrienne Wiebe