Collateral Damage: A Different Point of View from Texas on A Different Kind of War

Truth speaks from Texas about the U.S.'s responsibility for the drug war and the destruction its policies are wreaking not only in Mexico, but now in Central America.  The Texas Observer describes itself as, "a nonprofit news organization that specializes in investigative, political and social-justice reporting from the strangest state in the Union. "

A Different Kind of War - The Texas Observer: "We should jettison the term “drug war,” although admittedly, I haven’t come up with a better shorthand way of describing this catastrophic wave of violence. We’re talking about global markets for drugs, and greed with no political objective other than to “get rich or die trying."

It’s not a war. It’s a cancer that destroys countries, like Mexico, with weak political institutions and a high level of impunity. The U.S.’ gluttony for drugs is metastasizing all over Latin America. Sure, drug smuggling has been going on for decades. But the levels of violence and barbarity – the killing for the sake of killing -- are altogether something unprecedented and deeply disturbing.

Carlos Dada, the editor of El Faro, an online news organization based in San Salvador, speaks about the impact this violence is having on his own country.  Dada likens it to “la casa fumigada” the fumigated house. As the Mexican and U.S. governments battle the drug cartels, the cartels move south, corrupting and killing as they go. “Guatemala is already gone,” says Dada. “If you want to report on how organized crime is swallowing a country in real time come to El Salvador.”

In his country, the economy is in U.S. dollars – a haven for drug lords looking for a place to launder their billions. The drugs, guns and violence move in and the people pour out of El Salvador looking for safety somewhere else, often in the United States." Dec. 1, 2010