El Paso ‘dialogue’ on drugs leaves some speechless

EL PASO, Texas | “Are you on drugs?”

That was the question raised at a meeting of the El Paso City Council by resident Armando Cordoza after the council voted 8-0 earlier this month on a resolution asking the federal government to begin an “open, honest national dialogue on ending the prohibition of narcotics.”

The contentious measure - drafted by the city’s Committee on Border Relations, comprising local businessmen, academics and lawyers - was meant to respond to escalating drug violence in El Paso’s Mexican border city, Ciudad Juarez.

Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, is the murder capital of Mexico. There were more than 5,600 drug-related homicides in Mexico in 2008, by the count of the Mexico City newspaper El Universal - more than 1,500 in Juarez alone, according to Chihuahua state police.

Those killed included journalists and city, state and federal officials caught up in a battle between rival Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels and Mexican troops.

The violence is grisly and intended to shock and intimidate.

Journalist Armando Rodriguez, who was covering crime for the El Diario newspaper in Juarez, was assassinated while seated in a car with his 8-year-old daughter on Nov. 13, 2008.

The severed head of a police officer from the border town of Guadalupe Distrito Bravos turned up on the steps of a police station just east of Juarez on Jan. 18.

Public display of bodies in high-traffic areas has become common. But when drug lords want bodies to disappear, they are never found. A hit man jailed in Tijuana has reportedly admitted he disposed of 300 bodies in vats of acid.

Mexico has seen a dramatic rise in homicides since President Felipe Calderon declared a war on drugs in early 2007. About 45,000 troops and $7 billion have been committed to fight cartel-linked corruption and drug trafficking that reaches into the Mexican government.

Last year, Congress approved the $1.5 billion Merida Initiative, a three-year program to help Mexico and other Central American countries that are actively fighting the drug trade.

The impact of Mexican drug violence has become palpable on the U.S. side of the border.

A recent report by The Washington Times highlighted the growing potential of cross-border spillover, with Mexican drug cartels representing a growing threat to both citizens and law enforcement agencies in the United States.

Story Continues →