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Less than two weeks ago, Mexican President Vicente Fox told
reporters in Mexico City that legalization of drug consumption
and the drug trade may be the best solution to the problems of
violence and corruption engulfing his country. Now, Gov.
Patricio Martinez Garcia of the Mexican border state of Chihuahua
has joined the chorus.
Flaring violence and social decay on the border -- much but by no
means all of it generated by Mexican trafficking organizations
grown rich off the illegal trade -- hit home for the governor
when he recently survived a mysterious assassination attempt.
Recently, an ex-policewoman shot Martinez Garcia in the head in
Ciudad Juarez, where hundreds have been killed as warring cartels
carry on their perpetual "adjuste de cuentas" (settling of
accounts) with each other and law enforcement.
In a reflective interview in the Mexico City daily El Universal,
Martinez Garcia told the newspaper the national government had
failed in its fight against drugs and that drug trafficking and
consumption should be addressed by the application of harm
reduction measures.
And he pointed directly across the border for an example.
"There have been voices like that of the governor of New Mexico
in the United States, Gary Johnson, who establish that the war on
drugs is lost and that ask for it to be legalized," Martinez
Garcia told El Universal. "And this voice has not been listened
to, nor has his proposal been seriously considered. I believe
this proposal must be studied seriously, because if the war is
going to continue to be lost... with the deterioration of the
quality of life for the citizens of the country, well, then,
where are we heading?"
The governor, a member of the Revolutionary Institutional Party
(PRI), which ruled Mexico uninterrupted for seven decades, and
under which drug corruption became institutionalized, did not
mention President Fox's recent remarks, although he did use some
rhetoric that sounds as if it could have come from Fox's pro-
business, socially conservative National Action Party (PAN).
Bemoaning the pernicious effects of modern society, Martinez
Garcia called for the promotion of social, religious, and family
values to escape "this political and social degradation."
"The reality is that the disintegration of society and of the
family is moving rapidly," he said. "It cannot be that the 21st
Century will bring us to the bottom of the sewer and bring the
garbage with it."
Rhetorical concerns aside, the drug war consensus crumbles
further in Mexico.
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