[R-G] Canada has hand in Mexican bloodshed

Tue Dec 16 19:12:36 MST 2008

Canada has hand in Mexican bloodshed

Dan Gardner
Ottawa Citizen

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/editorial/story.html?id=8585133a-11fb-4995-a94d-d3e334265e15&p=2

On Dec. 6, at least 18 people were killed in the struggle to control  
the Mexican drug trade. They included 10 suspected traffickers and a  
soldier who died in a wild gunfight and two men whose severed heads  
were put in buckets and left near the residence of a state governor.

As horrible as it was, it was a day like any other.

Last Monday, Mexico's attorney general told reporters the record-high  
rate of drug-related murders in 2007 had doubled in 2008. As of Dec.  
2, it stood at 5,376.

Canadians will be dimly aware that drug-related violence is soaring in  
Mexico. We read the occasional story and see a picture now and then of  
a sheet drawn over a corpse that was somebody's son. But there's  
little analysis or concern here. Why would there be? To us, this is  
just more bloodshed far away. It has nothing to do with us.

Or so we think. In truth, the government of Canada is at least partly  
responsible for the tragedy unfolding in Mexico.

To understand the connection, we need a bit of historical background.

In the 1970s, North American hipsters rediscovered cocaine. Demand  
creates supply, as economists say, and production of coca -- the  
little bush whose leaves are the source of cocaine -- surged in the  
Andean regions of Bolivia and Peru, where coca has been grown since  
time immemorial.

Colombians became the chief middlemen in the burgeoning trade,  
smuggling cocaine by sea and air, through the Caribbean, into Florida.  
Miami boomed. It was the era of Pablo Escobar, the Colombian cartels  
and Miami Vice.

Ronald Reagan revived Richard Nixon's "War on Drugs." The U.S.  
government threw everything it had -- DEA, FBI, Coast Guard, Navy --  
at the smugglers. And it worked. The lines of supply were severed.

But supply always finds a way to demand. That's Economics 101. Ronald  
Reagan acknowledged as much in an unguarded moment.

Colombian traffickers shifted operations west, to Mexico. At first,  
Mexican gangsters were junior partners but increasingly they bought  
the Colombians' shipments and took them over the border themselves.

The Americans responded by attacking the source -- coca crops in Peru  
and Bolivia -- and by going after the Colombian heads of the major  
smuggling rings. Once again, they succeeded. Coca production in Peru  
and Bolivia declined. Pablo Escobar was shot dead. The Medellin and  
Cali cartels were wiped out.

And once again, it made no difference. Coca production soared in  
Colombia, more than compensating for losses in Peru and Bolivia. And  
the dismantling of the big smuggling operations caused many, smaller,  
decentralized groups to spring up.

The cocaine kept on coming. Volumes grew so steadily that the retail  
price of cocaine on North American streets plummeted.

At the end of the 1990s, the American government poured billions of  
dollars into "Plan Colombia," which called for stepped-up destruction  
of drug crops and more attacks on traffickers. The U.S. also pushed  
Mexico to go after that country's growing cartels.

Mexico did just that. All the big names -- the Mexican Pablo Escobars  
-- are now dead or in prison.

And that is why Mexico is going through hell today. Removing the  
bosses removed the control they had over the trade. Now it's a free- 
for-all as gangsters battle for market share.

Those pictures of Mexican corpses aren't images of failure. In the War  
on Drugs, that's what victory looks like.

Fine, the reader might say. The whole thing is a bloody fiasco. But  
this has nothing to do with Canada.

In fact, it has everything to do with Canada because, on the  
international level, Canada is very much a soldier in the War on Drugs.

In 1988, the American government drafted a new international  
convention on drug prohibition and took it to the United Nations.  
Canada saluted and signed.

In 1998, American officials dominated a United Nations special  
assembly that produced new commitments on drug policy. Canada saluted  
and signed.

When American officials asked other governments to contribute money to  
Plan Colombia, Canada saluted and kicked in.

The Canadian military is involved in drug interdiction. Canadian  
police and other officials stationed around the world fight the War on  
Drugs every day. Very simply, this country has never done anything but  
aid and abet the drug policies issuing from Washington D.C.

Those policies have done absolutely no good. The War on Drugs has cost  
hundreds of billions of dollars but there's more cocaine than ever  
before. And more corpses.

In 2000, I went to Mexico City and Tijuana to look at the Mexican drug  
trade. I met with Jesus Blancornelas, a brave editor who had narrowly  
escaped assassination by gangsters annoyed by his newspaper's frank  
coverage. The corruption goes to the core of Mexican society,  
Blancornelas told me. And the violence will only get worse. People  
called it "Colombianization."

Jesus Blancornelas died in 2006. The gangsters who tried to kill him  
are all dead or imprisoned. But everything has unfolded as he -- and  
many others -- said it would.

Eventually, order will be restored in Mexico. Either new bosses will  
win control and rein in the violence. Or officials will succeed in  
driving the trade into some other unfortunate country. But the trade  
will not be defeated. Of that we can be certain.

And so the misery will continue, thanks in part to the complicity of  
Canadian politicians and officials too foolish or cowardly to admit  
that drug prohibition is a catastrophic mistake.