Honduran victims of US drug war still await justice
Honduran victims of US drug war still await justice
Some Hondurans pay the ultimate price for a DEA that operates with impunity in the region.
Last Modified: 20 May 2013 18:16
[font size=1]On May 11, 2012, the DEA and Honduran police killed four indigenous villagers in the rural Moskitia region (AP)[/font]
Three weeks ago, President Obama travelled to Costa Rica to attend a summit of Central American leaders, focused in part on regional security. Obama made headlines by proclaiming a shift in US strategy towards the region, which has been fighting a losing battle against drug trafficking.
The US, he said, would focus more on supporting education, economic development and poverty reduction - tackling the factors that push people to use and sell drugs - and less on a militarised approach that has in recent years sought to adapt US lessons from the war in Afghanistan to the "drug war" in the Americas.
The increasingly militarised approach to combating narcotics has, many observers and political leaders say, led to skyrocketing rates of violence in the region. More than 50,000 people have been killed in Mexico alone since the past administration of Felipe Calderon initiated a tougher approach towards cartels in 2006. The drug networks have increasingly moved into Central America, as has cocaine from South America, and violence has followed.
In response, presidents - from Guatemala's Otto Perez Molina to former Mexican leader Vicente Fox - have proposed decriminalisation as an alternative strategy that would hit the cartels in the pocketbook. But the US government has continued to push back against such proposals, even as US states Colorado and Washington have legalised marijuana for recreational use.
More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/2013515122739553818.html
