Operativo México Seguro

I just finished the editorial message for our website Vive Con Drogas. This is an English version for the Narcosphere.

The war on drugs has escalated in Mexico since January this year and especially in the past two weeks (see Al's account in the narcosphere.) On Saturday the President announced the activation of Operativo México Seguro in three states. On Monday Presidencia delivered an Informe detailing its purposes and strategy.

In the cities where the operativo will take place, the involved forces have scattered in streets, city squares, avenues and neighborhoods in order to reinforce security and dissuade and avoid the commitment of all kinds of illicit acts. The Operativo México Seguro also plans to take preventive actions as well as searching outside of restaurants, bars, discos and night clubs in these cities...

This operativo is costing taxpayers' money, and of course the violence is also a high cost for the Mexican people. The Government will need to deliver concrete results in exchange for these costs. An arm-forced measure to combat drugs can only deliver two sorts of results: 1.- quantity of drugs seized, and 2.- quantity of persons detained.

Let's keep an eye on the results the Mexican government delivers. Prohibition does not allow us to know even an approximation of the total amount of illegal drug circulating in our country, but (unless the drug war develops into a state of siege) clearly any amount seized will only be a small fraction of the total.

A more important question from a human rights perspective is this: How many of the detained persons will be and are the real (or imagined) professional narcos? How many persons walking out of nightclubs or just strolling on the streets will be stopped by the police, searched and molested and affected in their dignity, before a criminal which truly threatens national security (?!) gets put behind bars? How many simple consumers of drugs and how many poor people abused by police will be jailed with Operativo México Seguro?