Dissident Dancer Against Drug Prohibition: Latin America Fights Back

Latin America Fights Back

Latin America Sick of US-sponsored War in All Forms – governments, health organisations and peasant groups unite to fight drug prohibition

(with thanks to stopthedrugwar.org and their Drug War Chronicle for reports)

On September 7th 8th and 9th Buenos Aires played host to 1st Latin American Conference on Drug Policy Reform, an important step forward in an area of the world where US drug policy has held absolute sway for nigh on forty years.
Of greater importance, though, were the parallel sessions organized by the region-wide Latin American anti-prohibitionist network, REFORMA, focusing on the development of grassroots campaigning..
The conference’s structure, scope, and diversity of attendance helped to create an incredibly successful gathering, and should be analysed closely by conferences - like the annual International Harm Reduction Conference, - that have been running for much longer, with bigger budgets, and would be hard-pressed to show parity with the depth of strategic direction, the clarity of resolutions and demands, and the creation of forms that can truly involve people and build a successful, activist movement opposing the Us-lead drug war.

Eduardo Garcia, A Deputy of the Argentine Senate, who has sponsored a bill calling for the depenalization of drug possession in his country, set the tone at the conference opening, held in the chambers of the Argentine Senate. Garcia told attendees that their presence in the chamber was more than symbolic. "It is important that we are meeting here…" he said.” For some years now we have been trying to modify the drug possession law here, trying to reverse it." While his bill is pending, Garcia worried that it may not pass. "I am concerned that we may be going backwards, which will only aggravate the problem," he said.

In stark contrast to the yawns and nodding heads that frequently feature at conference openings scheduled for the evening (or the morning, for that matter) Nancy Obregon, a key leader of Peruvian coca growers, helped alleviate any feelings of lethargy created by travel and jet-lag, and raised attentiveness and enthusiasm throughout the crowd, by distributing coca leaves.
A reinvigorated group listened attentively as conference key organizer Silvia Inchaurraga of the Argentine Harm Reduction Association detailed her hopes for the conference. "This is a meeting not only of individuals but also of organizations demanding the reform of the drugs laws," she said. "The question is how we can effectively involve the countries and organizations of Latin America in this process. We will be hearing diverse perspectives. We will hear from producing countries, we will hear from consuming countries, we will hear from senators, judges, and drug uses and coca growers alike. We will also discuss the relationship between harm reduction and anti-prohibitionism."
In stark contrast to most of the advanced capitalist world - where spinelessness characterizes the approach of elected parliamentarians, their high-salaried policy advisers and program bureaucrats; and where researchers have substituted sin and ecclesiastical ‘morality’ for science and the empirical method – a number of prominent parliamentarians, members of the judiciary, and even police officers raised their voice at the REFORMA- organized conference.

Along with Eduard Garcia, the conference heard from former Colombian Attorney-General Gustavo de Greiff, now acting as honorary head of REFORMA
“The drug laws exist without justification," said de Greiff "In 40 years of drug war, they have not fixed the problem. To the contrary, they have created more evils. They are responsible for the corruption, the crimes of the drug traffickers, the deaths of innocents. And drug use has not diminished. In fact, it is easier to get prohibited drugs now than in the time of Richard Nixon, who began this war and imposed it on the world."
De Grieff described himself as “moderately pessimistic” about the possibility of global reform due to the massive infrastructure and funding weighted on the prohibitionists side of the battle lines, and described the tool of international repression that is the Unites States Drug Enforcement Agency. He noted however that "The drug fighters [prohibitionist agencies] in Mexico tell me it is a fruitless war, but they won't say so publicly.”
"I am pessimistic, but of course, I will not stop struggling."
It is possible for de Grieff to be pessimistic. Drug user activists, facing the daily pressures of poverty, prison, and pain rely on our certainty that the ever-increasing barbarities perpetrated in the name of the drug war cannot go on forever. While vitally important to the anti-prohibition struggle at a lobbying level, professionals from law, medicine, and government have to start to recognize the growing strength of the user movement - combined with the anti-prisons movement in the US and the coca-growers movement in Latin America -and support us in taking our rightful place at the vanguard of the movement.
A Quechua-speaking woman, addressing the conference from the floor - first in Quechua, then in Spanish - held up coca leaves, as she told it "Coca has to do with life, with the future, with the past. [Coca is] a great message from our ancestors," The traditional coca-grower performed a rite which sought blessing from the sacred leaves. "It is useful as a food, useful to fend off tiredness, useful to calm the people. Its use must be permitted."
One of the central hopes of REFORMA – utilizing the conference to draw together a broad-based, but determined, movement to end drug prohibition – is the first step in mounting a real voice of opposition for the next UN General Assembly Special Session on Drug Policy, scheduled for Vienna in 2008, as Inchaurraga explained. “"We are looking at Vienna in 2008 and we need to strengthen our movement. There is ample evidence that the war on drugs has failed, with tremendous cost to Latin America. We must have drug policies that are… just and effective”

Towards that end, the conference issued the

Buenos Aires Declaration

Whereas:

Prohibitionist policies have failed worldwide, with this failure signifying grave problems for citizens, organizations, producers, peasants, and drug users;

Prohibitionist policies have also failed in their effort to control and reduce the supply and demand for drugs

Latin America shows significant signs of political, institutional, police, and judicial corruption, the criminalization of users, the demonization of plants, etc.;

Alternative approaches have had to and must confront significant obstacles and are in many cases neutralized, as is reflected in the reality that countries that have made progress with harm reduction strategies in the region have usually been associated with the prevention of HIV/AIDS and anti-prohibitionist organizations have not received official support;

It is urgent that the agendas of harm reduction not be reduced to the prevention of the transmission of HIV/AIDS but that they include the social, political, and institutional harms associated with phenomenon like police and judicial corruption, urban and institutional violence, and the weakening of individual rights as well as environmental and cultural harms;

It is necessary to involve health and legal experts, governments, the means of communications, economists, and leaders in general to demand the reform of drug policies in Latin America;

The war on drugs has diverted 80% of the billions of dollars appropriated for the issue toward warlike, repressive, and overwhelmingly police-military ends when this immense amount of resources should have been made available for prevention, aid, and health promotion for the affected populations and the preservation of ecosystems;

It is absolutely necessary that actions are coordinated so that human rights includes access to health and information and guarantees of social justice and preservation of the environment.

We resolve:

To denounce the harms created by Latin American governments aligning themselves with the policy of a war against drugs, which has been transformed into a war against the ecosystem, plants, indigenous people, peasants, drug users and even anti-prohibitionist thinkers, maximizing social exclusion and the harms derived from the criminalization of poverty;

To demand from our governments a rigorous study of the effects and impact of the drug policies that have implemented to this time and a study of the costs of executing these policies to reject the international treaties on drugs;

To convoke a group of specialists from the region to form a committee of advisors to REFORMA that will accompany us in creating a document for the United Nations Commission on Drugs in 2008;

To call on local and national authorities, professionals, the mass media, and drug user and peasant producer networks to join in the 2nd Latin American Conference on Drug Policy Reform to be held in 2006 in Brazil;

To contribute to preserving the human rights of peasants, indigenous people, and drug users beginning with the need to reduce the harms of mistaken policies that have overwhelmingly failed in Latin America, and to support the development and strengthtening of harm reduction in Latin America and campaigns and initiatives for the necessary legislative reforms in the region;

To reject public policies that are not in accord with Latin American cultures and traditions, en particular those of indigenous peoples;

To reaffirm the ritual, traditional, and medicinal uses of substances like coca leaf and marijuana, and to contribute to the diffusion of scientific evidence in the matter;

To conceive drug users as citizens and defend their role as protagonists as health agents in harm reduction programs;

To defend the rights of individuals over their own lives and bodies as well as the right of free expression and the right to information about drugs;

To push for the decriminalization of drug possession for personal use, home growing for personal use, and the legalization of marijuana for therapeutic use as perfectly viable proposals for the medium term in Latin America;

To open the debate over the alternatives of open and controlled legalization through forums with international specialists and the establishment of working links with other anti-prohibitionist organizations around the world;

To reject the current UN conventions on drugs and the proposals for alternative development as violations of the sovereignty of signatory states, and to appeal for the defense of the sovereignty of peoples over their legal systems;

The demilitarization of the anti-drug agencies and the redistribution of those resources in the field of drug control from the police-court ambit to the areas of health and education.

One extremely disappointing aspect of the conference and the moves towards a united hemispheric campaign is the ongoing unwillingness of Cuba to engage with the movement, and the absence of any representatives from Venezuela at the conference, despite the Bush administration adding Venezuela to the State Department’s annual list of nations not implementing their full orders for the prosecution of the drug war, and thus utilizing prohibition as another tool with which to bash the Venezuelan revolutionaries.
The annual Washington decertification ritual has long been accused of being a way to spank unfriendly governments while ignoring similar behavior in friendly ones. This year's rite follows that convention, with Washington foes Venezuela and Myanmar being decertified, while China, with whom the US seeks closer relations, was rewarded from being removed from the list of drug-producing or transit countries despite major flows of heroin in and out of the country.
Given the leading role of Cuba and the Chavez administration in Venezuela in opposing corporate tyranny across Latin America, a decision on their parts towards greater recognition of the growing movement against prohibition would be most welcome and assist in the recognition of the validity of the movement by organized progressives both in Latin America and globally.