We Are Still Losing the Drug War

Right now, I am sitting in an internet cafe in Sullana, Peru relaxing from the desert heat and reading archived news from the New York Times. Sullana has a reputation that precedes it as a city where there are a lot of drug addicts who smoke base, the chemicals used to extract cocaine from the coca leaf. I was warned at least five times before coming here that it was a sketchy place. The streets here are overrun with mototaxis as the three-wheeled, motarized pedicabs are called.
As cab drivers are universally shady people, I made a deal with one of the drivers to take me somewhere where I could buy weed. I paid the driver a little more than the going rate for a ride to take me somewhere to buy weed and then return me to where we had left from. While buying the "grifa", which I have learned is pretty much universally used throughout Latin America as slang for weed, one of those fucking base smokers jumped in the cab to grovel and beg me for money or some of my weed. I politely said "No, I'm sorry" while I allowed the driver to play bad cop. After not listening to his repeated requests to get out of the mototaxi, the driver threatened the base smoker with a knife and he got out. I was carrying my knife but I prefer not to use it to threaten people unless I am threatened first. As I stated before, the base smoker was grovelling to me rather than try to threaten me so I didn't consider him to be very menacing, just annoying.
The Drug War is still waged internationally by the U.S. government and their international allies, but it still hasn't eliminated my ability to find marijuana in various cities throughout Latin America. I didn't get a whole lot of pot but I only spent $10 on the whole transaction including the cab ride. The fact is that I should be able to go to any store that sells cigarretes and alcohol and buy marijuana for even less than that. I shouldn't have to dodge crackheads and go to dangerous neighborhoods just to buy weed. Marijuana is unfairly compared to harder drugs such as methamphetaminse, cocaine, and heroin when placed into the same category as an illegal drug.
Corruption linked to the Drug War has been in the news recently as it always seems to be as history repeats itself ad nauseam. There is a scandal which has grown to implicate several generals in the Colombian army as well as a larger contingent of mid-ranking and lower level soldiers. It appears that these military personel have been involved in the abduction,murder, and cover-up of what could be several hundred cases in which poor, sometimes homeless men were promised jobs in the military only to be taken to areas that were officially combat zones between the government and the leftist rebels only to be killed and disguised as rebels. In the Colombian military, promotions are often largely based on successful body counts of rebels so several of the mid-level officers received promotions as a result of these war crimes. As the Colombian army is in a war with rebels who traffic cocaine, any corruption in the military is inextricably linked to the drug war.
While corruption is metastasizing throughout the Colombian military, there was news from Mexico that several people who work in the Mexican Attorney General´s office have been caught accepting bribes from drug traffickers to pass them information about raids and other drug trafficking related intelligence. This harkens back to the glory days of the Mexican government's corruption when three successive heads of the nation's chief anti-drug agency were implicated in taking bribes from drug lords. They were Javier Coello Trejo , Mario Ruiz Massieu, and General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo. It was during this time that the transit routes for the Colombian cartels began to shift through Mexico from the the more traditional Caribbean routes.
Javier Coello Trejo is infamous for other reasons other than accepting bribes to provide information to drug lords. When he was Mexico's equivalent of Drug Czar, several men who were specially vetted and picked to be in his personal security contingent were implicated in a rape scandal. It turns out that they were using government owned police cars and machine guns to abduct, rape, and even kill Mexican women in the southern part of Mexico City. Many feminist groups charged that these crimes would have gone completely unpunished if it wasn't for the fact that several rich girls with political connections were raped by this gang of thugs. There were also allegations that at least one of these policemen was a rampant cokehead. Eventually, Mr. Coello was caught accepting bribes and was forced to resign.
His successor was Mario Ruiz Massieu. He was caught trying to launder $9 million in Texas but wasn't forced from office until he was bizarrely implicated in a cover up of his brother's death. Raul Salinas de Gortiari was eventually convicted in ordering the assassination of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu. Mr. Salinas was, of course, the older brother of the president of Mexico during that time, Carlos Salinas de Gortiari. Raul Salinas had amassed an illegal fortune of at least the $120million that he had unsuccessfully tried to transfer to Swiss bank accounts. Carlos Salinas's younger brother was eventually assassinated in Mexico City during the time that I was living there for unclear motives probably related to the drug trade. Mario Ruiz Massieu eventually committed suicide with an overdose of painkillers while under house arrest in New Jersey while awaiting a U.S. money laundering trial. In his suicide note he implicated then current president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo in the corruption. The Mexican government, of course, vociferously denied these accusations.
The Ernesto Zedillo regime appointed General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo as the new head of the governent's anti-drug division. This was a break from the past as military man was given a position which had previously been a traditionally civilian post. The military was seen at the time as being less corrupt than other sectors of the government and the move was hailed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. General Barry McCaffrey, the U.S. Drug Czar of the time, praised General Gutierrez as a man of "absolute, unquestioned integrity." He had a reputation for major drug busts and arrest of major traffickers. As it turned out, he had been on the payroll of Amado Carrilo Fuentes, the nations most powerful drug lord of the time, for seven years. He shared information with Carillo and only busted his competitors. At the time, Amado Carrilo Fuentes was estimated to net $10 billion a year. The General also had a penchant for illegally disappearing those who were accused by the government of drug trafficking even if there was no case against them.
Under provisions of the Foreign Assistance Act passed by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. president has until March 1st every year to certify a government as being cooperative in the U.S. Drug War. Nations that are decertified are no longer given U.S., I.M.F., or World Bank assistance. The president also has the option of decertifying but continuing such assistance on the grounds of the wellbeing of a country being of "vital" interest to the U.S. government. Nonetheless, the U.S. continues to certify Mexico and Colombia just like it did at the height of their corruption despite endless years of repetitious subterfuge. These governments don't want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. When cocaine brings in money from both the U.S. government and the private sector there is just too much money at stake for the Mexican or Colombian government to ever want to truly do away with drug trafficking. There is too much poverty in both of those countries to ever pull the rug out from completely under their economies.
I don't think that the likes of Barry McCaffrey and John Waters are so stupid as to be so naive to government involvement in the drug trade. I think that they have known all along and are probably complicit in the respective Mexican and Colombian schemes. I consider them to be terrorists for their connections to all of these aforementioned people. It is time to end this government sponsored terrorism by ending the drug war.