Mexican Drug War

Thousands of people have vanished without a trace – some caught up in prohibition violence, others for no reason anyone can fathom. Relatives remain in agonized limbo. The disappearances are a disturbing echo of a tactic employed by dictatorships in the so-called dirty wars that plagued parts of Latin America in the last half of the 20th century.

Police have tied the October beheading of a man in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler to a Mexican drug trafficking organization. "They stabbed him, we believe to death, and then severed his head. There was a lot of blood," Chandler police Sgt. Joe Favazzo said.

Hitmen are killing human rights workers across Ciudad Juárez -- the city in Mexico most affected by drug prohibition violence -- in brazen attacks that activists say authorities are unable and unwilling to halt.

Residents have closed more than 2,000 streets in Ciudad Juarez, the city in Mexico most affected by drug prohibition violence. About 200 families have been wiped out in 10 zones heavily affected by the drug prohibition war.

President Felipe Calderón will meet in Washington tomorrow with President Barack Obama in an attempt to repair relations at a time when spiraling drug prohibition violence in Mexico has frayed ties between the two allies. Mr. Calderón's visit, announced last week, also comes after a spate of ill-timed comments by U.S. officials about Mexico's drug prohibition violence. Among them are that Mexican drug trafficking organizations could be allied with Islamic terrorists and that drug traffickers could overthrow the Mexican state, forcing the U.S. to send troops. Such statements have enraged Mexican officials, who are notoriously sensitive to any suggestion of U.S. interference in national affairs. "I don't recall this kind of bad blood in a long time," said Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister.

Benny Avni opines that Felipe Calderon's war on the drug trafficking organizations created by prohibition is costing a lot in American money and Mexican blood -- and he's losing. Avni says the ultimate solution is legalization, which would lower profits and take violence out of the drug trade -- just as the end of Prohibition reduced America's gang problem. But, instead, Washington muddles on with an expensive and extremely deadly conceit -- pretending that all we need to do is pour some money on the problem, and Mexico's federal government will somehow eventually prevail.

The Mexican political world was sent reeling after a former PRI politician admitted his party had exercised strong control over Mexico's drug trafficking routes. Former Nuevo Leon governor Socrates Rizzo said that previous PRI presidents had formalized agreements with drug trafficking organization leaders to coordinate and protect Mexico's lucrative drug trade. Rizzo argued that presidential control over smuggling prevented the widespread violence that has been commonplace since 2000.

Half of the cities in Mexico have registered at least one drug prohibition murder since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006. Of the country’s 2,456 municipalities, 1,147 registered at least one murder committed by drug trafficking organizations between December 2006 and the end of 2010. A total of 15,273 people died in prohibition violence in Mexico last year, and more than 34,000 people have died since Calderon declared war on the country’s drug trafficking organizations shortly after taking office.

Drug prohibition violence left at least 28 people dead across Mexico over the weekend, including 14 killed by gunmen in bars in the country's north.

The Wall Street Journal's Mary Anastasia O'Grady opines that it is not unreasonable to suggest that if the U.S. was facing rates of bloodshed similar to Mexico, Washington would be forced to reconsider the wisdom of its prohibitionist approach to drug policy. But the suffering is south of the border, out of sight and out of mind for Americans and, therefore, our politicians. Meanwhile, a multi-billion dollar U.S. bureaucracy dedicated to fighting this war has little incentive to see it won or change course.