Movement for Peace with Justice Meets with U.S. Ambassador to Mexico

From the Spanish original published by the Movement for Peace with Justice. Translated by Americas MexicoBlog.

Mexico City November 23, 2011 At the request of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, a meeting was held yesterday between Javier Sicilia and Emilio Álvarez Icaza of the Movement for Peace with Jusitce and Dignity and U.S. Ambassador Anthony Wayne, as well as close associates of his team, at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City.

This meeting was a follow-up to the two men's visit last month to Washington DC and Los Angeles, California, where several working meetings were held with both authorities and human rights organizations of the United States. These meetings have the aim of further raising the need to control the arms trade between the two countries and the importance of taking into account the drug war strategy and the public policy debate on drugs from a public health approach.

Javier Sicilia spoke about the erroneous focus of the strategy to fight organized crime, as it has generated as a result thousands of deaths and disappearances as well as widows, widowers and orphans, in addition to displacement of people. It is not possible that a country not know where its people are, he said.

Emilio Alvarez Icaza argued that the problems currently found in Mexico correspond to a global, international framework. He put on the table that the situation of national emergency that Mexico is going through relates to the criminal activity that has increased and also to the institutional weakness of the Mexican State which undertook this security strategy. An additional problem is not taking firm action about "money laundering,"  but only focusing on the use of force.

Both men insisted on creating a partnership between the two countries that addresses the need to strengthen the social fabric, taking into account civil society as well as the victims of crime, the abuse of power and the violence generated by the current security strategy.

The Ambassador expressed his interest in this exchange and its continuity, given that the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity has developed a working dialogue with different social and civil activists and with national and international NGOs. MPDJ