U.S. Should Cut Mexico Security Aid Over Atrocious Human Rights Record, Activists Say

[Judi Lynn]

U.S. Should Cut Mexico Security Aid Over Atrocious Human Rights Record, Activists Say
Posted: 04/02/2015 5:20 pm EDT Updated: 4 hours ago

Felipe de la Cruz received a call from his son, Angel Neri, the night of Sept. 26, saying he and fellow college students were being attacked by police after stealing buses. De la Cruz urged his son to stay calm, thinking the cops would simply detain him. Instead, police in the city of Iguala killed three of Angel Neri de la Cruz’s classmates from a teachers' college in the nearby town of Ayotzinapa, and abducted 43. Angel Neri survived the attack. The remains of only one of his missing classmates have been identified.

The Mexico attorney general’s office says police handed the abducted students over to a drug gang, which killed them and incinerated the corpses. But families of the victims say the government has mishandled the investigation and doubt all of those responsible for the attack have been arrested. The mass abduction prompted nationwide protests, sinking Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s popularity to the lowest level for the presidency since the aftermath of the 1994 peso crash.

But Felipe de la Cruz isn’t just looking to Mexico for accountability. On the six-month anniversary of the attack last week, he was in Washington at a State Department demonstration, where he and other activists demanded the U.S. rethink a $2.3 billion aid program called the Mérida Initiative, implemented in 2007 to help Mexico fight drug cartels.

“The Mérida Initiative is being used the wrong way,” de la Cruz told The Huffington Post. Instead of stopping organized crime, he argued, the security assistance has helped Mexican officials perpetuate human rights violations. “It’s being used to kill ordinary people."

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/02/merida-initiative-human-rights_n_6988228.html

[truebluegreen]

1. Absolutely.

The U.S. is hurting, not helping, the situation in Mexico--in their time-honored War-on-Drugs fashion. They need to stop exporting their failed policies.