Written by Epigmenio Ibarra.
I am aware of how dificult it may be that this letter ever reaches your hands. I can’t however remain silent. I am one of the many Mexican citizens, President Obama, who consider it is time you put an end to the bloody war you have imposed upon us.
For many years I documented as a journalist the disastrous effects of the United States’ national security doctrine. I followed the trail of blood left by American strategists, diplomats and military consultants in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Columbia, and Iraq.
I witnessed how many creole oligarchies, military forces and local governments assumed, with no sense of decency, the dirty work that Washington forced upon them. How they stained their hands with the blood of tens of thousands of people who were deemed “threats to democracy” by intelligence agencies.
I followed the tracks of bloodthirsty death squads made up of military officials and policemen, professional assassins that murdered archbishops, priests, nuns, civil rights activists, democratic leaders and journalists.
It is only fair to admit that I was also witness to the intervention of American legislators in defense of Human Rights and the unprecedented negotiation process between the Salvadoran Guerilla armed forces and the State Department. A negotiation that led to peace.
I never wanted what I lived through in these other countries for my own. Documenting the hells of war has and will always have the purpose, at least for me, of exorcizing the demons of war so that they may never install themselves amongst us. However, as I write this letter, the war in México has a death toll that rises above a hundred thousand lives lost.
It was a vile and degenerate man, Felipe Calderón, who by the way impunely enjoys his exile in Boston, who in Mexico assumed the duty of performing your countries’ dirty work, fighting a war commissioned by the US and with no perspective of victory.
After usurping the presidency of the republic, Calderon put himself at the service of the US Government, falling prey to the lies so frequently told by American security agencies, he assumed the labor of single-handedly, as messianic as it may be, exterminating – this is why he declared it a war- the Mexican drug cartels.
Believing that the US drug industry is in the hands of Mexican capos requires a certain degree of either naïveté or perversion. Believing that organized crime can be dismantled in Mexico without putting an end to drug use in the US requires ineptitude and malaise, both very prevalent in Calderon and his administration
This is especially true if US agencies, so zealous and demanding of results from the Mexican military and police forces, keep turning a blind eye, much to their convenience, to self-evident facts, and refuse to fight organized crime within their own borders with energy and efficiency.
This war that has cost so many Mexican lives is yours to fight Mr. Obama. It is within your borders where these American, white skinned delinquents with Anglo-Saxon surnames must be brought down. Those criminals who supply the demand of millions of addicts and fuel your national economy with billions of dollars product of the drug trade.
Where are those capos? Where are the corrupt police officers, judges and government officials that protect them? What do you have to say, Mr. Obama, about the fact that no important confiscations are ever made within the United States? Or that the inmense majority of drug related arrests consist of minor dealers, most of them members of ethnic minorities?
Who sells the drugs used by Wall Street brokers? Who comes to the doors of Hollywood stars with their dose of cocaine? Who supplies politicians in Washington? Or the wealthy of Chicago, Houston or San Francisco? Is it Mexican immigrants?
Hollywood and the Entertainment industry can buy and sell that lie. It is comprehensible, although unjust, that they continue to perpetuate the stereotype of the Mexican villan that fits so well into the paranoia and racism that the average American is so sensitive to. But that an administration, such as your own, is willing to be part of this simplistic view and turn a blind eye to local cartels is, I must say, an act of war. Much like operation “Fast and furious” played against our country by yours, our supposed “friends”.
President Obama, you have said that you will double your efforts to control the traffic of weapons and dollars flowing from north to south. I’m sorry but your word is not enough nor will it bring peace to this wounded country.
Shut down the border and end the flow of drugs Mr. Obama. Do it within your own territory. Capture those criminals that are the real “capos”. Cut off their finances. Do without that money, in spite of the blow it will surely deliver to the American economy.
Radically address and attack the drug use problem within the US, rather than using drugs as a social palliative, with the intention of keeping millions of armed gangbangers who live for and by drugs in “peace”.
Before you speak of competitiveness, modernization, reform, and alliances between our countries, give us back our peace. Our country is falling apart in your hands, and that Mr. Obama, is a true threat to your national security.
Fight your war with courage and nerves of steel and fight it now. Fight it so that Mexican capos, those bloodthirsty executioners, who are not much more than that, can stop executing the death sentences dictated with impunity by American capos.
