The White House’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, recently announced that he’s abandoning the term “war on drugs,” telling reporters: “We're not at war with people in this country.” The change in rhetoric seems to signal a move toward a more moderate, public-health approach on drugs, rather than the militarized stance the country currently takes. 

Kerlikowske may have the right idea, but a focus on policies inside the United States still neglects the far more globalized problem of the U.S. drug war abroad. According to Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naím, “the United States today is both the world’s largest importer of illicit drugs and the world’s largest exporter of bad drug policy.” 

The global economic crisis has created a situation where the drug trade is one of the few economic engines in countries like Mexico, Bolivia, and Afghanistan. “In many places,” Naím writes, “narcotraffickers are the major source of jobs, economic opportunity, and money for elections.”

If policy makers want to move toward a more effective drug policy, Naím writes that a focus on the social consequences of drugs would be a good place to start. But should the United States simply replace the “war on drugs” with an “conflict against mind-altering substances” or a “battle to combat banned medications,” the drug czar’s change in tone won’t have much of an effect.

“Rhetoric matters,” writes Reason’s Radley Balko, who is encouraged by Kerlikowske’s recent decision. “War implies a threat so existential, so dire to our way of life, that we citizens should be ready to sign over some of our basic rights, be expected to make significant sacrifices, and endure collateral damage in order to defeat it. Preventing people from getting high has never represented that sort of threat.”

Though a step in the right direction, Balko admits that rhetoric alone won’t solve the drug war’s underlying problems, at home or abroad. For one thing, Kerlikowske won’t be able to create policy reforms on his own. He’ll have to work with congress and other agencies for that. Jacob Sullum, also on the Reason blog, cautions readers: “We should not be fooled by medicalized language into believing that drug prohibition is less brutal or less of an assault on our rights.”

Sources: Foreign Policy, Wall Street Journal, Reason 

Many of Mexico's poorest Catholics count themselves among the devotees of a skeletal woman saint called La Santa Muerte, or the Saint of Death. It is bad fortune for the faithful that another sub-group of Mexican Catholics have followed them to the altar: members of Mexico's notorious drug cartels who have been known to construct private shrines to "the white lady" in their mansions. Now the government of Mexico has begun destroying public Santa Muerte shrines—more than thirty of them—as an act of psychological warfare in their battle against the cartels.

There is no word on how the narcos are taking it, but the people are protesting. As a Religion Dispatches report makes clear: Santa Muerte’s followers are mostly salt-of-the-earth types—the kind of people already in up to their eyeballs in the violence of a war for which they bear no responsibility:

Shrines can be found in Mexico City and Tijuana, as well as almost every town on the Mexican border. Devotees leave offerings of flowers, fruit, tequila, rum, and tobacco. Immigrants crossing the border illegally have been found with icons of the saint. While no one is certain where the movement originated, some have speculated that Vatican II deprived Mexican Catholics of devotional practices, causing new traditions to be invented. Others believe Santa Muerte is the product of hybridity: a Catholicized incarnation of Mictecacíhuatl, the Aztec queen of the underworld. A book entitled El libro de la Santa Muerte contains novenas to the saint as well as hechizos (spells) invoking her aid. Police in Oaxaca purchase packets containing “dust” of Santa Muerta to hang in their cars.

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis recently screened a documentary about the followers of the Saint of Death, here’s a peek:  

Source: Religion Dispatches 

Image by ORNI¡, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Politicians and immigration officials have tried to keep Mexico separate from the United States, but as Stephen Henighan writes for Geist, “the border inspires the creative evolution of forms of life that could not exist either in a purely American or a purely Mexican context.” Henighan’s examination of the California-Mexico border reveals a separation of the rich and the poor, rather than of Mexico and the United States. He concludes: 

Along this selective frontier, two cultures are merging in a way that consolidates the social stratification common to both. Cultures may blend as globalization proceeds, but the poor and the rich will continue to make separate crossings.

Source: Geist 

Most Americans are going through hard times, but our shaky economy is hitting Latino immigrants with particular force, according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center. Using Census data, the center found that between late 2007 and late 2008, unemployment among foreign-born Latinos rose 2.9 points to eight percent, while unemployment in the overall workforce rose only two points to 6.6 percent. The report didn’t include data on how many of these workers were documented or undocumented.

The ripple effect is already being felt by families in Latin America who depend on money sent home from relatives working in the U.S. For the first time in 13 years, remittances sent from the U.S. to family members in Mexico declined in 2008. 

Source: Pew Hispanic Center 

J.P.S. Brown is a badass writer in the tradition of Hemingway and Henry Miller—talented, adventurous, and aggressively masculine. His novels evoke Cormac McCarthy: gripping tales of violence and vengeance in America’s wild, blood-soaked Southwest. But these comparisons reveal little of the man, nor do they do his writing true justice.

While McCarthy’s life is marked by academic pursuits and literary grants, Brown’s life mirrors those of his characters so closely they’re almost indistinguishable. He has been many things: itinerant caballero, movie stuntman, boxer, smuggler, soldier of fortune. And his writing reflects his experiences.

“Brown writes about the real West, not the myth,” writes Leo Banks in the Tucson Weekly. “His calling card is authenticity. When readers put down one of his books, they have dust between their teeth.”

Until recently, Brown’s books have been difficult to find; many are out of print. But this October, the University of New Mexico Press published The World in Pancho’s Eye, his memoir told through the guise of a fictional narrator. (As Brown told Banks: “I didn’t want to spend five years writing ‘I’ and ‘me.’ ”) And with another novel on the way, his first new fiction in years, there are plans to reissue some of his older works, and Brown is getting some long overdue attention.

—Morgan Winters

The Mexican government’s response to the deadly flooding that has displaced tens of thousands from their homes in the state of Tabasco would have been more effective if not for the U.S.-sponsored war on drugs in that country, argues Gregory Berger in the Narco News Bulletin.

Some major media outlets have praised President Felipe Calderon’s response, but Berger counters that more federal troops could have been deployed to help if they weren’t dispersed throughout the country fighting the war on drugs. Berger writes: 

Local authorities’ resources are stretched far beyond their capacity, and they are in desperate need of help. 15,000 extra pairs of hands would save many, many lives. Instead, the soldiers that could be there are busy ripping apart the contents of the pickup trucks of poor Indians at checkpoints in Chihuahua, as their superior officers cavort with the real drug traffickers.

In a follow-up post, Berger notes that the Partido Revolucionario Institucional’s “incompetent” response to the massive 1985 earthquake in Mexico City ultimately led to the party losing its decades-long grip on federal power. A similar voter backlash, Berger suggests, could be ignited by the fallout from the Tabasco floods.

For those interested in offering support to humanitarian relief efforts in Tabasco, the American Red Cross is collecting donations, and Realidad Novelada, a Mexican blog that has been monitoring developments in Tabasco, links to a number of other nongovernmental organizations working there. —Jason Ericson