Human rights abuses have been making headlines almost daily in the burning hot battles of Mexico’s drug wars. From the horrific massacre of 72 migrants last week, to the gruesome display of four decapitated corpses strung from a bridge along with a warning sign, to human rights investigators gone MIA, the news is dark and confusing. And the media focus on Mexico is centered on gangsters and drugs.
The official tally of victims of the drug war is 28,000 and climbing. Earlier this month President Felipe Calderon started questioning the very concept of the war on drugs, opening the debate around legalization, a perhaps reasonable policy response given the violence that has surrounded the prohibition and criminalization crackdown since 2006. The Economist called the attempts to violently subdue drug cartels as “kicking the hornet’s nest” with small progress, such as the capture of Édgar Valdez Villarreal, “La Barbie”—a notorious trafficker who has been involved with several of the most violent cartels including Sinaloa and who is said to have been revving up to take over the powerful Beltrán Leyva cartel—hardly making up for the mounting death reports.
But the violence and instability in Mexico extends beyond the loud drug violence. A journalist friend of mine in Mexico city pointed to the economic depression as one of the contributing factors. Youths who cannot find gainful employment are sometimes motivated to join the drug trade, “There aren’t educational opportunities, cultural and working to create incentives for a large number of young people to seek other means of survival other than through organized crime.”
Violence against migrants, as evidenced in the massacre of 72 this week, is a huge issue, only sometimes linked to the drug trade. Migrants leave their home countries to find a better life, but the journey can be treacherous, as this excellent photo essay demonstrates. Women migrants are particularly vulnerable and can be coerced into sexual transactions and sexual assault along the way. And poverty itself, even for those who stay, is a form of structural violence.
The drug violence is primarily centered in Chihuahua, Durango, Sinaloa and Guerrero, so the idea that the entire country is a dangerous hotbed to be avoided is incorrect–and such a negative international image without proper context, could potentially weaken industries that depend on foreign visitors, worsening unemployment for Mexicans.
But beyond the drugs and immigration issues that spark American interest, is systemic violence perpetrated by the state against civilians. My journalist friend described, “All those that are displayed as an act of protest or opposition to the government line is suppressed with the use of force. Thus all kinds of social organization or organization of workers suffer the persecution by government forces, not openly, but they are.” Activists who protested police violence against street vendors in Atenco in 2006 are currently serving 112 year long sentences. Independent radio commentators have also been assassinated, and those trying to bring them aid were attacked earlier this year. And this August members of a women’s group in San Juan Copala were killed as they planned a march to denounce the constant harassment of paramilitary groups.
Violence continues to touch the lives of many Mexicans in both loud and quiet ways, and the human rights situation is deeper than the headlines suggest.
