Two months into his term, Mexican President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador declared an end to his country\u2019s \u201cwar on drugs,\u201d announcing that the army would no longer prioritize capturing cartel bosses.<\/p>\n
The new populist president made his\u00a0declaration<\/a>\u00a0on Jan. 30, when he gathered reporters at a press conference to tell them the\u00a0\u201cguerra contra el narcotr\u00e1fico,\u201d<\/i>\u00a0launched in 2006 by then-president Felipe Calder\u00f3n, has come to an end.<\/p>\n \u201cOfficially now, there is no war; we are going to pursue peace,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is what matters to me, to lower the number of homicides, the number of robberies, that there are no more kidnappings, this is what\u2019s fundamental.\u201d He contrasted to this to the \u201cspectacular\u201d kingpin busts hyped by his predecessors.<\/p>\n \u201cThe strategy is no longer operations to detain\u00a0capos<\/i>,\u201d or drug barons, he said, but to \u201cbring down the number of homicides\u2026 The principal function of government is to guarantee security.\u201d<\/p>\n While statistics are not yet in to determine if homicides are down since L\u00f3pez Obrador took office on Dec. 1, killings have only soared since the troops were first sent in against the narco gangs. Nearly 34,000 people were murdered in Mexico last year, according to new government statistics, which makes 2018 the deadliest year since record-keeping began, as\u00a0Mexico News Daily<\/a>\u00a0notes.\u00a0 Last year\u2019s body count is notably higher than that of 2017, when some\u00a023,100 homicides were registered<\/a>.<\/p>\n The\u00a0data<\/a>\u00a0was released last month by the Executive Secretary of the National Public Security System, or\u00a0SESNSP. Alarmingly, SESNSP\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that among the murders last year were 834 cases of \u201cfemicide\u201d \u2014 targeted attacks on women. Some 100 of these were under the age of 18. An estimated 2000,000\u00a0have been killed in Mexico since Calder\u00f3n first mobilized the army to fight the cartels 13 years ago.<\/p>\n So-called\u00a0\u201cnarco-graves,\u201d where victims\u2019 bodies have been dumped over the past years, continue to be unearthed. The most recent was found Feb. 6 by Colima state police. Nineteen bodies were\u00a0discovered<\/a>\u00a0in 11 hidden graves in the high-crime municipality of Tecom\u00e1n.<\/p>\n Amid all this, the world is\u00a0awaiting on a verdict<\/a>\u00a0in the trial in a Brooklyn U.S. federal courthouse of Joaqu\u00edn \u201cEl Chapo\u201d\u00a0Guzm\u00e1n, accused kingpin of the Sinaloa Cartel. Among the\u00a0revelations<\/a>\u00a0to emerge from the trial is witness testimony that Mexico\u2019s last president, Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto, accepted a $100 million bribe from Chapo. This testimony seems to vindicate the widespread conspiracy theory in Mexico that the government was in league with the Sinaloa Cartel, with enforcement efforts largely aimed at its rival narco-machines.<\/p>\n But is all of this really changing under L\u00f3pez Obrador? Troops may no longer be sent to hunt down\u00a0capos<\/i>\u00a0like Chapo, but this is clear: They are still being sent to eradicate cannabis crops, bringing federal forces with a long legacy of human rights abuses\u00a0into impoverished\u00a0campesino<\/i>\u00a0communities growing the only crop that can sustain them.<\/p>\n On Feb. 4 in the Mexican state of Sonora, federal police\u00a0destroyed 195,000 plants<\/a>, burning a yield estimated at 78 tons in the fields at the community of Augua Caliente,\u00a0\u00c1lamos municipality.<\/p>\n Two days later, federal police \u201cdecommissioned\u201d more than\u00a0129 kilograms<\/a>\u00a0of compressed cannabis found stashed along the banks of the R\u00edo Grande near the border post of La Playita, in the violence-torn northern state of Tamaulipas.<\/p>\n In early January, army troops were actually dispatched to the southern state of Chiapas to join with federal police in a cannabis eradication campaign. A plot of\u00a040,000 plants<\/a>\u00a0was reported destroyed at the village of Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacan in the state\u2019s Maya Highlands.<\/p>\n Over the course of January, army troops reported burning\u00a03,600 square meters<\/a>\u00a0of cannabis in plots across the state of Zacatecas.<\/p>\n And even as L\u00f3pez Obrador made his \u201cwar is over\u201d announcement, he\u00a0ordered 10,200 troops<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a mixed force of army soldiers and federal police \u2014 to designated high-violence areas of the country. Named were the border towns of\u00a0Tijuana, Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa, as well as areas of Guerrero, Veracruz, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Colima and Sinaloa states.<\/p>\n Army troops have also been mobilized to\u00a0secure the country\u2019s oil pipelines<\/a>, as the sale of\u00a0pirated oil\u00a0has emerged as an important sideline for the drug cartels. On Jan. 17, Mexican Navy troops\u00a0intercepted<\/a>\u00a0a large quantity of pirated petroleum along with a ton of marijuana at the Baja California port of Ensenada.<\/p>\n And back in November, on the countdown to L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s inauguration, Mexico\u2019s Supreme Court struck down a controversial Internal Security Law\u00a0that established a legal framework for employing the national army and navy in place of civilian police forces in order to combat crime. In response to the ruling, L\u00f3pez Obrador\u00a0vowed to seek constitutional changes<\/a>\u00a0allowing the use of the military in domestic policing.<\/p>\n With police forces\u00a0long co-opted<\/a>\u00a0by the narco gangs, rampant vigilantism has emerged in Mexico over the years of drug war militarization. But, all too predictably, some anti-narco vigilante groups have also come to be co-opted by the cartels, which has resulted in in-fighting.<\/p>\n Last month,\u00a010 people were killed<\/a>\u00a0and two more wounded in a clash between two apparent groups of \u201ccommunity police\u201d in the southern state of Guerrero. The shootings took place on Jan. 27 on a highway through the village of Paraiso de Tepila, in Chilapa municipality. State police responded with military back-up and found two trucks riddled with bullets and 10 bodies. Rifles and shotguns were recovered from the scene.<\/p>\n Amid the signs of continued dystopia, there is also an unprecedented potential for real progress. Many are coming to see providing a legal and regulated market for cannabis as a means of undercutting the cartels. And there is concrete movement in that direction.<\/p>\n Mexico has had a limited (CBD<\/a>-only) medical marijuana program since 2017, following the\u00a0landmark legal case<\/a>\u00a0of child epilepsy sufferer Graciela Elizalde. Last year, the country\u2019s first \u201cmedical marijuana clinic,\u201d Sativa Care,\u00a0opened<\/a>\u00a0in Mexico City, although it doesn\u2019t actually sell herbaceous cannabis \u2014 just CBD products.<\/p>\n And following a\u00a0Supreme Court ruling<\/a>\u00a0last October recognizing a right to consume cannabis on individual liberties grounds, Mexico\u2019s congress is obliged to pass some kind of general legalization measure. Even before that, candidate L\u00f3pez Obrador had\u00a0broached the idea<\/a>\u00a0of legal cannabis as a way out of the narco crisis.<\/p>\n Upon the high court decision, then-president-elect L\u00f3pez Obrador\u00a0sent members of his transition team<\/a>\u00a0to Canada to study how cannabis legalization is unfolding there. One member of the delegation was Olga S\u00e1nchez Cordero, a respected jurist and longtime legalization advocate who is now L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s interior secretary.<\/p>\n A National Cannabis Industry Association\u00a0(ANICANN) has been formed to push for a more expansive legalization. Its founder, Guillermo Nieto, told daily\u00a0La Jornada<\/a>\u00a0after the Supreme Court ruling that he anticipated Mexico becoming a world leader in legal cannabis exports.<\/p>\n Former Mexican president Vicente Fox, who now sits on the board of Toronto-based cannabis cultivator\u00a0Khiron Life Sciences<\/a>\u00a0(and has emerged as something of a\u00a0YouTube star<\/a>\u00a0with his excoriating lampoons of Donald Trump), is today perhaps the\u00a0foremost advocate<\/a>\u00a0of legal cannabis as an opportunity for a positive transformation of his country.<\/p>\n So despite mixed messages from L\u00f3pez Obrador when it comes to enforcement, for the sake of both the global cannabis market and Mexican citizens, one can only hope that the future of cannabis is bright south of the border.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, do you think Mexico\u2019s war on drugs is really over?<\/p>\n The post Mexico\u2019s New President \u2018Ends\u2019 Drug War \u2014 Or Does He?<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Two months into his term, Mexican President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador declared an end to his country\u2019s \u201cwar on drugs,\u201d announcing that the army would no longer prioritize capturing cartel bosses. The new populist president made his\u00a0declaration\u00a0on Jan. 30, when he gathered reporters at a press conference to tell themContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7517,50,7518,4269,7519,7520,1419,7521,81,2571,97],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32706,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32705\/revisions\/32706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2018: The Deadliest Year Yet in Mexico\u2019s Drug Trade<\/h4>\n
Eradication Ops Move Forward<\/h4>\n
Narco-Violence and Militarization Continue<\/h4>\n
Signs of Progress in Mexico\u2019s Cannabis Industry<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Mexico\u2019s New President \u2018Ends\u2019 Drug War \u2014 Or Does He?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"