Violence in Mexico's US-Fueled War on Drugs Escalates

By teleSUR

09 May 17

 

Violence in the deadly drug war continues unabated as the U.S. opiate epidemic descends deeper into crisis.

exico’s deadly, militarized war on drugs — which has been exacerbated alongside the U.S. opiate epidemic — is seeing the rise of smaller gangs looking to control more lands for growing strong-strain poppies, leading to an intensified crackdown by the Mexican Army.

In the mountains of the violence-plagued state of Guerrero's Ciudad Altamirano, where the mayor was killed last year and a journalist gunned down in March, bodies are discovered on a near-daily basis.

Colonel Isaac Aaron Jesus Garcia, who runs a military base in the city, told Reuters that violence escalated two years ago when a third gang, Los Viagra, began a grab for territory.

For him, on the frontlines of the fight against heroin, the U.S. heroin epidemic coincides directly with the surge in opium production.

"The increase of consumers for this type of drug in the United States has been exponential and the collateral effect is seen here," he said.

Heroin use in the United States has risen five-fold in the past decade and addiction has more than tripled, with white people and working-class men the biggest users of the drug.

Army officials told Reuters that gangs use poppy varieties that produce higher yields and more potent opium from smaller plots, and that its higher value is driving violent competition between gangs.

But the campesinos caught in the drug war, who grow opium poppies to survive given that there are often few viable alternatives for growing profitable legal crops, are criminalized and subjected to the rules of both the state and organized crime groups.

"There aren’t many alternatives here," said a woman in Ciudad Altamirano to Reuters. Her husband grows poppies, and she explained that running a business of any kind means facing extortion by gangs.

The state’s crackdown against this epidemic is itself mired in macabre violence, and now, more than 10 years after then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon kicked off what is known as the drug war, little progress had been made in stamping out the production and trafficking of illicit drugs, while the military has a running list of accusations of human rights abuses against it.

After being elected president in December 2006, Calderon replaced traditional police with the military to fight against the powerful drug cartels in the country — with bloody consequences.

The military was thought to better deal with the established violent criminal groups and be less susceptible to corruption, which has long plagued the police force. But the military has since been accused of a number of human rights abuses, intensifying violent confrontations with criminal groups and creating tensions with locals in the regions where they are stationed.

President Peña Nieto has only picked off where Calderon left off, continuing a drug war that the Trans-Border Institute estimates has left a staggering 125,000 victims. The war has also seen ongoing disappearances, torture, rape and systematic impunity.

The militarized drug war also coincides with the crisis against journalists in the country, who often report on its resulting violence — only to be attacked, or as is often the case, murdered.

As one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, a lack of press freedom continues to give rise to a high murder rate of journalists, with five having already been killed in 2017 alone.

Like elsewhere, the drug war in Mexico has left a brutal trail of violence and repression.

And with few economic alternatives in the highlands of Guerrero, local people continue to suffer the consequences as authorities increasingly attempt to crack down on the drug crisis at the source of production in poor communities rather than the point of consumption in the United States.