Everyone can be enlightened by the fact that next year there will be two women vying for the presidency of Mexico, forgetting the tragic reality of a country mired in drug politics that has repercussions across the continent and beyond out. According to the complaint from Morena’s own candidate, who allegedly finished second, AMLO chose his party’s candidate in its own way, using polls to disguise a big finger. This way he will study Lula’s formula with Dilma to try to keep ruling in the shadows.
But it is no longer about cases like that of Odebrecht, already amortized by its protagonists still in power in Brazil, but about drug trafficking operations of appalling proportions that not only keep recipient countries like the United States and several nations in check Europe, but also the entire Latin American region, which is already mired in a dynamic of failed states or drug states. Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia have much more in common than just the ideological affinity between their rulers. They are an axis of organized crime that tyrannizes entire populations that face the worst of all inequalities: personal insecurity.
AMLO recently attacked the DEA and the UN itself for dismissing evidence of the increase in cartels and illegal drug trafficking in his country since his arrival. He is a drug trafficking denier who, like Petro, advocates an end to the “war on drugs” and promises criminals “hugs instead of bullets”. With that comes an Indigenous and Hispanophobic narrative that aims to criminalize the West and its culture (including democracy) while justifying its alliances with powers like China, which along with Mexico is part of the deadly fentanyl route.
Drug policies are destroying democracies across Latin America, leading to violence and even more migration. In addition to inequality, that word the left repeats so often but never remembers when judging itself or its ideological allies. In this sense, change in Mexico is essential if we want to stop this phenomenon with global consequences. In this sense, it is worth recalling Weber’s concept of the state: “A human community successfully claiming a monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a given territory.”
