Open Letter from Colombia's FARC to the Summit of the Americas

The mountains of Colombia are a notorious strong-hold of FARC forces.  

by douglas reeser on 4.27.12
Following is a translation (from Spanish) of an open letter from FARC to the Heads of States that are attending the Summit of the Americas in Caracas, Venezueala this month. If you're unfamiliar with the organization, FARC is a revolutionary force in open conflict with the Colombian government. The US National Counterterrorism classifies them as a terrorist organization, and notes their founding in 1964, their Marxist ideals, and their use of violence as a tactic for resistance. Despite the political slant on the situation, this is a voice that is rarely heard on the international stage. After Israel, Colombia is the largest recipient of military aid from the US, which is funding a war on drugs and "terrorism" to the tune of billions of dollars. The war has gone on for decades, and is decidedly messy, with civilians, indigenous groups, and a host of other bystanders caught in the cross-fire. Amnesty International, which has been calling for an end to the US-Colombia collaboration for over a decade because of wide-spread human rights abuses, has more details on the conflict. 

Thanks to the St. Louis Interfaith Committee on Latin America which had an intern translate the open letter from the FARC to the Summit on the Americas. 

Open Letter from FARC Distinguished Presidents and Heads of States of America:  

As those present will undoubtedly recall, in the first CELAC summit held in Caracas, a group of respectable voices expressed to the president their willingness to assist Colombia in finding a political solution to the confrontation our country suffers. The direct response of President Santos was that it was better to do nothing; the resolution of the conflict should be exclusively in the hands of Colombia.  

Nevertheless, the government of Colombia acknowledges receiving from the United States more than ten billion dollars for war in the last 12 years, calling for direct intervention, turning over the entire territory for air operations, increasing the number of advisers, North American military and paramilitary personnel, receiving the latest technology and subjecting their counterinsurgency plans to the commands of the Pentagon. Pressure is on its neighbors to jointly combat the guerrillas in Colombia, which is described in the most offensive adjectives.  

For the war, yes, it is willing to receive all participation possible. As often reiterated by President Santos, his purpose is to achieve peace, by good or bad (one way or another). Understanding the course of good means only capitulation and surrender. After the last decade of large operations of military extermination, the truth about the impossibility of a military solution to the conflict is seen. In a similar way, the United States concluded that it was best to leave Afghanistan and Iraq. After half a century of bloody fratricidal conflict, the Colombian regime still insists on an uncertain military victory.  

The FARC-EP are far from being the monster described by the Colombian oligarchy. We are thousands of women and men who want to realize the dream that was cut short by the death of our liberator Simon Bolivar. We join with the people of our country in the most legitimate political and social aspirations. We will never be separated from these dreams by the vast but regular army patrols, the fleets of bombers and helicopter gunships, the police forces and security forces, paramilitary groups and all kinds of gunmen that lower the hopes of a better life in Colombia.  

Our armed uprising answers the domestic situation of state violence. There are more political assassinations of leaders of the unions, indigenous (Afro-Colombians) and peasants, than were committed by any of the disastrous Latin American dictatorships in the past. Despite regular elections and the institutional façade, state crimes and inequality guides the social set up in our country to an explosive situation. Each of the powerful economic groups control a vast media monopoly, and almost 200,000 of the victims of paramilitaries in the last twenty years, certified by the Attorney General’s own nation, are just an anecdote for the old press that continues to slander us. One tenth of the population is in a forced position of displacement. The prisons are full of social activists. Only unconditional support for the U.S. interests in the continent and the world explains the generosity of Washington to the Colombian leadership. In our country, they apply the heavy handed enforcement of multilateral lending agencies, privatize as much as possible, fill themselves with transnational investment privileges, worsen labor conditions and cut social guarantees, destroy the peasant economy, surrender to plunder their rich vast territories, and persecute with a vengeance artisan and craft production. GDP growth favors a small group of investors who are not Colombian.  

And they (cook) the conditions for future aggression against people who are unwilling to admit a similar model for things. Peace in Colombia, always involving popular participation in the democratic decisions of the state, is a basic prerequisite for the peaceful future of the other nations on the continent. We have always opposed a peace that amounts to a mere return to the corrupt institutions generated by this uprising. We stress the need for dialogue to be responsible, facing the Colombian people and their active interference, to recreate the conditions to enable democratic coexistence. Half a century of Colombian blood demands it.  

In the midst of a global capital crisis, a successful summit of the Americas should deal with much more than economic growth related to market rules. Addressing the respect for sovereignty and independence of their nations, a model of alternative development, and outlawing war as a way of dealing with conflicts. The end of the irrational embargo, as well as the valiant demand of President Correa to integrate free and fully Cuba, we legitimate Argentinian claims over the Falklands and the political solution to the long Colombian conflict are priorities on a continental agenda.  

Perhaps it is time to address the infeasibility of the war on drugs. As we stated in open letter to Congress and to the people of the United States in April 2000: “…if what you are looking for is a solution following the scourge of drugs, the world must prepare for the larger discussion about the desirability of the legalization of its use, as happened in the past with other scourges such as alcohol and snuff.” It is in any case a serious social problem that cannot be fixed by military means, that agreements require a national and international commitment and participation to the great powers as main sources of global demand for drugs.  

Fraternally,  

Central Secretariat StaffRevolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia- People’s Army FARC-EP  

Mountains of Colombia, April 2012.

"Hunger and Drug Dealing go Together"

I woke this morning to an interesting article in the Philadelphia Inquirer that details the latest work of University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Philippe Bourgois, who is continuing his trend of conducting fieldwork in dangerous environs. The article, part of a series titled "A Portrait of Hunger", includes lengthy discussion with Bourgois, and interviews with police and community members in the impoverished Kensington section of Philadelphia.

Other works by Bourgois include the research conducted in the 1980s in Harlem among crack dealers and users that led to the book, "In Search of Respect". His latest book, "Righteous Dopefiend", is a result of long term ethnographic work with homeless heroin and crack users in San Francisco, and included a partnership with photographer Jeff Schonberg. The result, according to the publisher, University of California Press:

"Righteous Dopefiend interweaves stunning black-and-white photographs with vivid dialogue, detailed field notes, and critical theoretical analysis. Its gripping narrative develops a cast of characters around the themes of violence, race relations, sexuality, family trauma, embodied suffering, social inequality, and power relations. The result is a dispassionate chronicle of survival, loss, caring, and hope rooted in the addicts’ determination to hang on for one more day and one more “fix” through a “moral economy of sharing” that precariously balances mutual solidarity and interpersonal betrayal."

Borgois' latest work in Kensington, a section of Philadelphia described in the article as "one of the poorest places in America", similarly situates him and some fellow ethnographers among drug dealers and users in a once prosperous working-class neighborhood in one of the oldest cities in the U.S. Notes Borgois: "They are selling drugs in the shadows of closed-down factories that used to employ their parents and grandparents. You'd almost have to be abnormal not to go into the drug trade." The potential dangers of such work became real for him this time in Philadelphia:

"The police thought I was a wiseguy, so they handcuffed me and kicked me like a football. I'm a frail guy, and I got hairline fractures of my ribs." Bourgois spent 18 hours in a cell in the 24th and 25th Police Districts' shared station house. His chest aching, he huddled in a tiny space - "Dante's ninth circle of hell," he calls it - with vomiting heroin addicts and a man bashing his head against the wall, yelling, "I can't take it!"

Still, he and his colleagues continue living in Kensington, documenting the lives of the poor with few options, and attempting to maintain some semblance of hope in the bleak conditions that are all too common in cities across the country.

Read the rest of the article here>>>

Photo of Phillipe Borgois couresy of phillipebourgois.net

NAFTA and Drug War Violence in Mexico

An excellent video from the RealNews Network on the background of the Drug War violence that has recently been spinning out of control in Mexico as framed through an interview with journalist Bruce Livesey. Livesey reveals the role of the NAFTA trade agreements in the rise of the drug trade in Mexico, then leading to the violence that has been making international news over the last few years. According to Livesey, NAFTA policies had the effect of stoping the flow of drugs through Florida from Colombia. This forced cartels to shift to Mexico, which resulted in a large increase in truck flow through the US border - and included shipments of a much more diverse product line in cocaine, marijuana, heroin and crystal meth. This resulted in making the drug cartels wealthier than ever before, allowing them to confront Mexican law enforcement and military.

Another interesting result of NAFTA is that it allowed US produce into Mexican market, which effectively wiped out much of Mexican agricultural sector, and pushed workers off of their land and to factories near the US border. With rise of China and India in production, poor displaced workers were in Mexico were suddenly out of work, turning to the cartels and the drug trade as their only option. Livesey provides an interesting argument, and brings to light why neoliberal policies like NAFTA have not been kind to the workers and the poor. Check out the video here:

Click here for part 2 of the interview>>>

A New Earthquake: Monsanto Threatens Food Sovereignty in Haiti

In efforts to maintain food sovereignty, Haitian farmers decided earlier this week to burn 60,000 toxic seed sacks which will be donated by those omnipresent swindlers, Monsanto, reported Beverly Bell on Truthout. In what can only be a transparently backhanded "gift" (a Trojan Horse, as one commenter put it), the food giant offered the struggling country corn and vegetable seeds -- all non-GMO, they assure -- but nevertheless treated with the toxic pesticides at which Monsanto excels.

Executive director of the Peasant Movement of Papay and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, called the donation a "new earthquake," expressing concerns that Monsanto's entrance into Haitian agriculture would be "a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds ... and on what is left [of] our environment in Haiti."

Bell's look at the toxicity of the donated seeds supports the Haitian farmers' concerns:

The hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram. Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats caused concern to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them. Pesticides containing thiram must contain a special warning label, the EPA ruled. The EPA also barred marketing of the chemicals for many home garden products, because it assumes that most gardeners do not have adequately protective clothing. Monsanto's passing mention of thiram to Ministry of Agriculture officials in an email contained no explanation of the dangers, nor any offer of special clothing or training for those who will be farming with the toxic seeds.

Of course, some pesticides aren't the only reason Haitian farmers are revolting (though when you take into consideration that Monsanto was paid $25 million by the U.S. government to supply a concentrated version of Roundup to kill Colombian drug crops, and that the communities affected now suffer increased rates of birth defects and cancers, as well as a decimated food and water supply, the pesticides certainly are enough reason). To date, Monsanto owns 650 seed patents, over half of the world's seeds. The company has won $21.5 million from lawsuits against U.S. farmers, and investigates some 500 farms a year to make sure its seed patents are being respected. All hail...

Read the full article on Truthout.
Image credit: Beverly Bell

Drugs are Here to Stay

Our relationship with drugs is confounding and confusing to say the least. An AP article picked up by Yahoo News made the rounds yesterday and explained the failure of our Drug War - on which we have spent over $1 trillion over the years. That's a whole lot of money that could certainly be put to better use, especially considering the utter failure of the uses on which it has been spent. Even the U.S. drug czar admits as much:

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."

Despite this recognition from those in the position to perhaps change or affect policy, the Obama administration has decided to travel the same old long and tired road:

"His administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels both in dollars and in percentage terms; this year, they account for $10 billion of his $15.5 billion drug-control budget"

This all says nothing about the legal drugs that the U.S. consumes in greater and greater numbers. According to a visual produced by Good.is Transparency, the pharmaceutical industry spent $4.5 billion on advertising in 2009 alone. This figure does not include the many millions spent by the industry on lobbying in Washington. In contrast, this spending seems to be working - in 2009, there were more pill prescriptions written than there are people in the U.S. So we have the government spending billions in efforts to control "illegal" drug use, and corporate America spending billions trying to get us to take "legal" drugs (many of which are taken illegally). This is a confusing message for the general population to try and decipher. Are drugs good or bad? The message seems to say both, and it looks like billions of dollars are being spent to confuse the people, keep them in an unknowing limbo, and allowing at least a certain cut of the profits to stay in the "proper" coffers - those of the corporate elite.
Here's the image on pharmaceutical drug use referenced above, and be sure to visit the Good.is website for an interactive (and larger version) here>>>

Plantations to Penitentiaries: Race and the U.S. Prison System

by Lana Lynne on March 12, 2010
Over a year ago, headlines across the country blared news of two Pennsylvania judges who were accused of accepting millions of dollars in kickbacks to incarcerate juveniles (read our post about it here). The outcry turned much-needed attention to the relationship between incarceration, class, and race -- an issue that occasionally gets spotlighted in the national media with cases such as the Jena 6, Mumia Abu Jamal, and the Angola 3, to name a few.

But the cases, the concerns, the activism, and the scholarship about the racialization of the prison industrial complex continue, whether they ripple through the mainstream consciousness or not. Recently, Angola 3 News interviewed Nancy A. Heitzeg, Ph.D, professor of Sociology and co-director of the Critical Studies of Race and Ethnicity program at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota. The issues raised in the interviews -- for instance, how a former slave plantation now functions as the State Penitentiary of Louisiana at Angola (once known as the "bloodiest prison in America"), or how the South transformed slave labor into prison labor following the enactment of the 13th and 15th Amendments -- give horrifying historical insight into how race and ethnicity play out in the modern U.S. prison system. Following are just a few excerpts from the two-part interview.

From the first interview, which deals with the history of the modern prison system, specifically through the lens of the prison at Angola:

Slave Codes became Black Codes and criminalized a range of activities if the perpetrator was black. The newly acquired 15th Amendment right to vote was curtailed by tailoring of felony disenfranchisement laws to include crimes that were supposedly more frequently committed by blacks. And, the liberatory promise of the 13th Amendment – “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States”- contained a dangerous loophole- “except as a punishment for crime”. This allowed for the conversion of the old plantations to penitentiaries, and this, with the introduction of the convict lease system, permitted the South to continue to economically benefit from the unpaid labor of blacks.

The patterns established in the old south have proliferated and expanded throughout the US, as African Americans are disproportionately policed, prosecuted, convicted, disenfranchised and imprisoned in the prison industrial complex. There has been a corresponding shift from de jure racism codified explicitly into the law and to a de facto racism where people of color, especially African Americans, are subject to unequal protection of the laws, excessive surveillance, extreme segregation and neo-slave labor via incarceration—all in the name of “crime control”. It is the current manifestation of the legal legacy of the racialized transformations of plantations into prisons, of Slave Codes into Black Codes, of lynching into state-sponsored executions. The “imputation of crime to color” that Frederick Douglass warned of 125 years ago continues to the present.

And from the second interview, which broadens the scope of Heitzeg's (and others') analysis of the prison system:

Prison has become a source of profit. The prison industrial complex is a self-perpetuating machine where the vast profits (e.g. cheap labor, construction contracts, job creation, and continued media profits from exaggerated crime reporting and crime/punishment as entertainment) and perceived political benefits (e.g. reduced unemployment rates, “get tough on crime” and public safety rhetoric, and funding increases for police and criminal justice system agencies and professionals) lead to policies that are additionally designed to insure an endless supply of “clients” for the criminal justice system. These self-serving policies include enhanced police presence in poor neighborhoods and communities of color; racial profiling; decreased funding for public education combined with zero-tolerance policies and increased rates of expulsion for students of color; increased rates of adult certification for juvenile offenders; mandatory minimum and “three-strikes” sentencing; draconian conditions of incarceration and a reduction of prison services that contribute to the likelihood of “recidivism.”

Read the entire interviews and more at www.angola3news.blogspot.com.

The photo is featured with the interviews and is from www.slaverybyanothername.com, the website of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, by Douglas A. Blackmon.

10 Things (+1) to Reduce Incarceration

Always watchful for alternatives to the "out-of-sight, out-of-mind," "eye-for-an-eye" indifference toward the prison system and those trapped in it, I recently came across law professor Paul Butler's list of ten things the everyday person can do to reduce incarceration, published for The Nation. Here is an abbreviated version of his recommendations:

1. When serving jury duty, acquit on principle (jury nullification) when it comes to non-violent drug offenses.
2. Work with a community group that pays at-risk students to graduate. Turns out money talks louder than the toughest sentencing.
3. Speak openly about your own drug use to counter the reefer-madness stereotype.
4. Employ someone who served time. Chances are much greater that they won't return to jail.
5. Vote for politicians who realize that longer, tougher jail sentences do not equate to lower crime rates. Compare the U.S. to Canada, France, and England.
6. Don't be scared. Enact your right to say no to police when they ask to search your vehicle.
7. Urge a stop to professional snitching. More than half of wrongful convictions have been attributed to people paid to testify.
8. Realize that most dealers live at home, and could find a much more lucrative career in a trade.
9. Support "Open Discovery" laws, which allow criminal defendants to "discover" the evidence against them.
10. Learn about the communities most affected by the prison system by listening to political hip-hop.

I would add to this list: Support community garden programs that work with prison inmates. For instance, Grid Magazine recently ran a feature about the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's City Harvest program, which works with the Philadelphia Prison System, food distribution network SHARE, and the Health Promotion Council of Southeastern Pennsylvania. The program offers people convicted of non-violent crimes the opportunity to lparticipate in the city gardens. The food they harvest is then distributed to neighborhoods in the city that often do not have access to fresh fruit and vegetables. The program promotes the idea that through cooperation and responsibility, people will learn invaluable life skills.

Read Paul Butler's article here.
Access Grid Magazine's article here.

Image Credit: PA Horticultural Society's Philadelphia Green

An Unsuccessful Marriage: Monsanto and the Drug War

A little over a month ago, we talked about the recent failure of Monsanto corn to go to seed on South African farms. Another Monsanto crisis is unfolding on another continent, as laid out by Meg White on Buzzflash. This time the trouble is in South America, where Monsanto's chemical herbicide glyphosate (better known as "Round-Up") is being blamed for increased levels of cancer and birth defects, as well as for thoroughly complicating the "war on drugs."

It turns out that the U.S. military sprays glyphosate from airplanes onto coca crops in South America, which has the adverse effect of wiping out food crops as well, unless the seeds are of the Monsanto's specially-genetically modified-Round-Up-Ready variety. The strange and unexpected twist to the situation, however, is that coca plants seemed to have evolved (either on their own or not) -- to be glyphosate resistant.

All around, it seems the plan is backfiring. Read the full article by clicking here. It's a very interesting and well-laid-out analysis of Monsanto's practices and their effect on the "war on drugs."

Also be sure to check out the petition calling for an anti-trust investigation into Monsanto. "Monsanto -- through acquisitions and cut-throat business practices -- has cornered 90% of the soy, 65% of the corn, and 70% of the cotton market, and has a rapidly growing presence in the fruit and vegetable market, all without government anti-trust officials raising an eyebrow." It appears that we have a case of another corporation increasingly out of control.

Visit and sign the petition here>>>

Image Courtesy of educate-yourself.org

US Drug War Money Behind Peruvian Violence

The Narcosphere's Kristen Bricker reports that U.S. aid to Peru to fight the Drug War can be directly linked to the violence in the Amazon that has resulted in the deaths of police and indigenous people, as well as the disappearance of at least 60 more indigenous people. As we reported earlier this month, indigenous groups mobilized throughout the north of Peru in protest of legislation that opened the region to oil and timber exploration without the approval of those living there (who are majority indigenous). The protests turned violent, with numerous activist videos showing what turned into a war zone. After weeks of protests, violence and stand-offs, the president, Alan Garcia, rescinded the legislation - a seeming victory for the indigenous.

Bricker reports "that US drug war money is all over the massacre. The US government has not only spent the past two decades funding the helicopters used in the massacre, it also trained the Peruvian National Police in 'riot control.'" She further details:

Of particular interest is the participation of the anti-drugs police force, known as DINANDRO in its Spanish abbreviation. Between 2002 and 2007, the United States spent over $79 million on the PNP. 2002-2004 funds were for "training and field exercises to enhance the capabilities of DIRANDRO to conduct basic road and riverine exercises, as well as to provide security for eradication teams in outlying areas. These enhanced law enforcement efforts will require additional vehicles, communications, field gear, emergency/safety reaction gear, and drug detector canines." In 2007, the US government's funding for the DIRANDRO was expanded to "enhance the capabilities of DIRANDRO to conduct advanced road interdiction, riot control, greater security for eradication teams, and interdiction in hard-core areas." [emphasis added]. In 2007 the US government also debuted the first of at least four "Pre-Police Schools" for students that have completed secondary school education (that is, these schools are an alternative to high school). The "Pre-Police Schools" are free and designed to recruit and train young people to be members of the PNP.

Billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money has been spent on the Drug War, and many would argue that this is with good reason. However, with the skyrocketing number of people in U.S. prisons for non-violent drug charges, continuing and even escalating drug-related violence throughout the Americas, and the extreme militarization of a number of Latin American countries, Drug War money continues to be put to other uses. Should the U.S. government be held responsible for these events? Maybe the U.S. taxpayer?

Continue reading the rest of the Narcosphere story here >>>

Photo Courtesy of AIDESEP

Mexico: Zapatistas are Drug Terrorists

From an article by Kristin Bricker in the NarcoSphere: 

"In an operation that bears all the marks of drug war-style repression, state and federal police detained six adherents to the Other Campaign, one Zapatista, and one unaffiliated man in Agua Azul, Chiapas.  The military was also involved; it shot six warning shots into the air with live ammunition at a protest blockade, and it provided military intelligence that Chiapas state officials say was used to detain the men."

The Mexican state has used violent military tactics on indigenous groups associated with the Other Campaign a number of times since its inception a few years ago, so this new report comes as no surprise. What is troubling is that these 6 men are being charged as participating in "organized crime" which has been the key word for arresting drug traffickers that have reportedly been at the root of the intense violence around the U.S. border. Mexico has received millions to fight what is essentially the U.S. war on drugs, and now we have another case why this can be so problematic. Once the funds are allocated to and in the hands of the government (whether Mexico's as in this case - or the similarly funded Colombia's) there is little to no oversight as to how those funds are allocated. If the Mexican government sees fit to repress indigenous organizers as threats to the nation, they can do so simply by using the appropriate vocabulary of the oppressive state. 

Wondering how this is part of Mexico's drug war?

"Felipe Calderon's war on drugs is largely fought through statewide "joint operations." In joint operations, the federal government deploys soldiers and federal police from various federal police forces to a particular state.  The federal troops often work together with state and sometimes local police in anti-drug trafficking operations (although in other instances the federal troops relieve local police from their duties due to suspected corruption).  Mexico's National Defense Ministry announced last October that it would expand its anti-drug operations to Chiapas. The government has confirmed that seven government agencies participated in the Bachajon operation that resulted in the eight detentions, including the military, federal police, and state police." 

Read the entire article here>>>

photo of Agua Azul Zapatistas from Noticias Palenque

The Latinization of Terrorism

I received an email the other day on a Public Health listserve that was essentially a forward of a US Department of State issued travel warning to Colombia. **(Follow this link to the USDS page, or this link to the document in our scribd library)** I imagine that it was forwarded as 'heads-up' to students and colleagues who might be working in the country. My curiosity in the region prompted to take a quick read, and I was quite surprised. The third sentence:

"The potential for violence by terrorists and other criminal elements exists in all parts of the country."

A number of different groups are lumped together under the 'terrorist rubric": 

"Small towns and rural areas of Colombia can still be extremely dangerous due to the presence of narco-terrorists."

and: 

"terrorist groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN), and other criminal organizations continue to kidnap and hold civilians for ransom or as political bargaining chips."

The date of issue by the Department of State is March 25, 2009; that coincides nicely with a visit to Mexico accompanied by a rousing speech by Hillary Clinton. Concurrent with the visit are a number of news items revealing the increased levels of what may be drug-cartel-related violence in a number of cities in the U.S. - one from the NYTimes, a Yahoo/McClatchy story, even Amy Goodman from Democracy Now covered the topic today. 

It appears that an increased effort to re-invest war money back into the U.S. (and possibly out of the Middle East) may be under way. There have been whispers of hope that the Obama administration may lean towards a change in approach on this front, and even the labeling of the War on Drugs as a failure in the popular press. This CNN article discusses the need to address an imbalance in arms that drug cartels currently enjoy, and of the $700 million that Mexico will receive in the effort. Colombia already enjoys an immense amount US aid to combat drug violence there. It appears that the War on Terror is making a shift to the soils of the Americas. 

photo credit: greenchange