Since the beginning of his presidency, Gustavo Petro has insisted on one idea: the fight against drugs has failed. He did this in his inaugural speech, arguing that this war had strengthened the mafia, weakened states and murdered more than a million people in Latin America. At the 77th UN General Assembly last year, his speech became famous because he once again criticized this struggle that has prevented us from living in peace and that has caused great damage to the Latin American continent.
And this year, at the Summit of the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), he went one step further: he proposed assessing and proposing, together with Mexico, new and effective strategies to combat the drug phenomenon. A proposal that was put into action when the Colombian Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva and the Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcenas confirmed that in September of this year in the city of Cali the Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean would be held to propose a paradigm shift in the to discuss the fight against drug trafficking.
The announcement of this meeting caused enormous expectations. And how! The story was that Colombia, one of the United States’ best students and allies in the fight against drug trafficking, sought to promote a new regional approach through innovative proposals. It even sounded defiant. However, the conference ended, and like the final document, it leaves the feeling that the paradigm shift is not like that: old ideas in new guises. Setting aside the State Department’s efforts to organize a meeting of this kind in such a short space of time, a calm analysis of the results shows, in my opinion, frustration on four key points.
First, the final document was full of platitudes and contained few suggestions for new approaches. President Petro spoke of an evaluation in Belgium and this could have been the perfect opportunity to encourage and demand regional assessments of the approaches used so far and to show the reason for their failure. If they made innovative proposals, it is regrettable that they did not mention the need for new indicators other than eradications and confiscations to measure the success of the measures. Without them, politics will continue to focus on the old goals. In fact, there was one example of a change that needed to be welcomed and replicated in other areas: the intention to discuss more alternative measures to incarceration for non-violent drug offenses.
Secondly, in the fight against drug trafficking, we must at least talk about cocaine and its legalization so that there is a real change in approach, being pragmatic that this is a path that is just beginning but that we must start it. Of course, it is important to destigmatize and enhance the traditional, medicinal and scientific uses of plants such as coca and, even better, to support efforts to remove the coca leaf from Schedule I, where the substances considered most dangerous are found. But it cannot be that, 50 years after the declaration of the war on drugs, cocaine is not mentioned in these areas that are not only looking for alternative solutions but are also being led by Colombia.
Third, even though Colombia’s current government is making a significant narrative shift regarding the people who grow coca – and Justice Minister Néstor Osuna’s speech during the conference is worth highlighting – some points in the final document appear to have been written by his opposition. Although the summit’s official hashtag was #CambiemosElEnfoque, it said things like “international coordination and cooperation in the formulation and implementation of initiatives to strengthen the fight against illicit drug trafficking (…)”. Wasn’t the war a failure? And it’s not just the language of the document: the speeches at the highest political levels (López Obrador, Petro and Chancellor Leyva) are particularly stigmatizing and continue to promote the idea that those who consume are sick, lonely and suffering from lack of love . . In doing so, they also shift the blame: apparently the paradigm shift for these leaders is to point the finger at the countries that consume. Yes, it is true that the same countries have always pointed to us as the cause of the problem, but I don’t think this back and forth will lead to a solution.
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Finally, and given all this, it is even more difficult than at the beginning to understand why Petro chose López Obrador as his partner to lead this supposed paradigm shift. Have you never heard about the broken election promises to legalize cannabis and poppies? Have you not seen that to “solve” the fentanyl crisis, he has proposed a ban on its medical use to reduce its spread? Didn’t you know that he has broken his promise to take the military off the streets and not use violence to stop social problems because the armed forces are now responsible for public security tasks? We must also not overlook the fact that López Obrador and his chancellor were accompanied at this conference by General Luis Crescencio Sandoval (Minister of Defense) and Admiral Rafael Ojeda (Minister of Navy).
If Petro’s intention was to score international points by allying himself with a heavyweight of the new Latin American politics, taking his picture and forgetting about politics, the result was achieved at the price of the intended change in the traditional approach to the war no progress was made against the medication. If, to put it more charitably, the goal was to make López Obrador an ally so that Mexico could push for this change, hopefully this will be achieved, but that is not clear from the outcome of the summit.
I am not asking for the impossible, such as making legalization the focus of the final document. It is also understood that changing an approach that has been entrenched in the world for more than 50 years is difficult and slow. But I hope they will make better use of the future meetings they have announced, as well as the new Colombian drug policy that is fresh out of the oven. They should not give us the feeling that discursive contradiction and speech trump actions.
Catalina Gil Pinzon She is an independent consultant on drug, security and gender policy.
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