Where is the front?

north america / mexico | crime prison and punishment | non-anarchist press Wednesday September 10, 2008 10:14 by Gustavo Esteva

The "war on drugs" makes clear the nature of the dominant regime and the function of security as a justification for the illegitimate use of domination and control.

Security? To protect us from what or from whom? The general concern over security is continually increasing while at the same time the reach and meaning of it are diluted.

The Zapatistas' situation is a good allegory for this condition. They don't have problems with "internal security." There is a convivial relationship between neighbors and the communities know how to resolve conflicts and violations of societal norms, fairly and calmly. But the people live under a continuous "external" threat: military and police harassment and the belligerence of paramilitaries. The government authorities themselves are the security problem for Zapatista villages.

In the rest of the country, "organized crime" is also concentrated in the government. The disorder and incompetence that characterizes it masks the concerted dedication, of the criminal variety, present in the three levels of government. It combines an unhinged zeal to take for oneself someone else's property, the root of all forms of corruption, with the systematic use of violence as a means to impose one's will and subjugate the people. Mafias thrive in this culture of escalating impunity, in which it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the criminals from the police, judges or government employees.

Drug traffickers and kidnappers are used as a pretext and smokescreen to hide this criminal association. But the "war on drugs" does just the opposite: it makes clear the nature of the dominant regime and the function of security as a justification for the illegitimate use of domination and control.

This "war" is lost daily: it increases the uncontainable production and consumption of drugs and the violence, impunity and corruption that comes with it, bringing about a further intensification of this failed effort. In this way the "war" feeds the fire instead of putting it out. No one has arrived at the point of throwing in the towel, since the horror of it penetrates society through each of its pores, tainting all that it touches. But a growing number of people and groups have discovered the true character of this predicament and are proposing ways to get out of it.

For decades, rigorous studies have show that for each dollar paid by a U.S. consumer of drugs, three to five cents go its producer in Guerrero or Colombia; the traffickers get 12 to 15 cents; the rest goes to stop those who combat the use and trafficking of drugs. The police forces and the armies, the government employees, the banks, the powers that be (governors included), divide up the lion's share. The proportions don't change, though the amounts involved multiply geometrically. Intensifying the "war" increases the cost of the product for the consumer and the earnings of all who participate in the operation, but it doesn't change the nature of the business nor alter the composition of its distribution.

The reason used to maintain the criminalization of drugs is very simple: the state should protect its citizens...from themselves. According to this argument, we are not capable of using our freedom responsibly. Without the protection of the government, we would inevitably fall into drug addiction and would surrender ourselves to vice, as we've done with alcohol or tobacco.

It's true that in a consumer society propaganda pushes us to buy harmful or useless products, and in it, who is not a prisoner of the addiction to buy what is most desired (for lack of being able to pay for it)? But this argument is fragile. Many products circulate freely that are more harmful than drugs; there's no reason to treat drugs as the exception. The protection that the state supposedly offers with criminalization is more and more counterproductive: it stimulates the consumption of drugs instead of reducing it; it forsakes instead of protecting; it causes more ills than it resolves, corroding the very roots of our coexistence.

The campaigns for the decriminalization of drugs are not pleas for the pseudo-anarchistic freedom of the market, but for the creation of an authentically democratic social order that doesn't delegate to the powers that be, in the name of protection, the authority to subjugate us to their judgment and control. It is the social order the Zapatistas keep fighting for.

In matters of security, as with everything else, the time has arrived to calmly tell the warriors installed in the halls of power: no thank you, we don't want your protection. We prefer the risk and difficulties of a reasonable decriminalization of drugs than to continue suffering from your war in which we've lost everything so that you can enrich yourselves. To assume the responsibility of this sphere will allow us to do so in many others, to smash the prison of this consumer society, operated by an authoritarian republic.

Gustavo Esteva is a Mexican activist, writer and founder of Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca.

Translated by Scott Campbell: http://angrywhitekid.blogs.com/weblog

Spanish original: http://oaxacalibre.org/oaxlibre/index.php?option=com_co...id=29