O! Mexico!

In the city of Juarez, Mexico, thousands are killed each year as a result of drug-related violence highlighting the inadequacies of American-Mexican drug policies. “Nearly 19,000 people in Mexico have been slaughtered in drug violence since 2006, the year the conservative Felipe Calderon was elected president and began deploying some 50,000 troops and federal police in support of the US-convened struggle against street drugs. The line between the two countries – marked on the US side with the remains of what was to have been an electronic version of the Berlin Wall – is once again the world’s most lawless and blood-soaked frontier. Four decades ago President Richard Nixon proclaimed that the US was launching a ‘war on drugs’ and started a strategy to fight on foreign – and particularly Latin American – territory the battles against his compatriots’ use of narcotics at home. Today, despite the efforts of the White House to pretend the war is a thing of the past, hostilities with all their incalculable profits, extreme violence, double-dyed treachery and political confusion are blowing back on to US territory.”