WHAT ARE LESSONS OF EDGAR'S STORY?

Four Community Voices - Two From the U.S., Two From Mexico - Share
Their Insights

Part 4

When President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006, he went
after drug cartels in an effort to end their lawless grip on much of
Mexico.

"I had to act because I knew that people were being kidnapped, being
extorted, being killed," Calderon said during a nationally televised
forum in June with civic activists and victims' relatives. "And that
is what I did. ... In good conscience, I couldn't do what others have --
wait for the day when things change."

In all, the government has deployed about 45,000 troops and federal
police to fight organized crime. The gangs have fought back with
unforeseen vengeance against authorities and rivals. More than 35,000
people have died in the violence.

Many Mexicans are now questioning whether federal forces made the
situation worse by rushing to take down drug lords and destabilize the
cartels. They believe Calderon should have done more to protect the
public by first trying to root out corrupt local officials and
strengthen municipal and state law enforcement.

"You, too, are responsible, independent of the criminals, for the
pain, for the killing and the suffering of thousands of families in
our country," poet and activist Javier Sicilia told the president at
the forum.

The death of Sicilia's 24-year-old son in March -- killed along with
childhood friends following an encounter with gang members -- has
struck a national nerve.

Sicilia and a coalition of activists have urged Calderon to take a
more comprehensive approach to the drug war. They want him to reduce
the military's role, target corruption and money laundering more
effectively, and create greater social and educational opportunities
for youths.

The current violence was unthinkable 20 years ago, when drug kingpins
and Mexico's one-party political rule upheld a crude but effective
code that largely controlled the killings.

Today, bodies are strewn on the sides of roads and strung from
bridges. Children are entangled in organized crime as lookouts or
informants. In one extreme case, Edgar Jimenez Lugo, 15, goes on trial
Monday in the beheadings of four young men on behalf of a drug gang.

"Children who only eat once a day, when traffickers come and offer
them three meals a day and better clothes, it's more than sufficient
to attract them," said juvenile court psychologist Lizzette Jasso
Velazquez, whose office provides counseling for Edgar in detention.

Under intense pressure to show results, Calderon has conceded only
that the Mexican public has paid an unfair price.

"I agree that we should ask forgiveness for not protecting the lives
of victims, but not for having taken action against the criminals," he
said at the forum. "Or perhaps you seriously think that the violence
will end by recalling federal forces that in many areas are the only
authority ... that (drug lords) will stop recruiting youths to satisfy
their voracious appetite to control territory and communities."

Amid this debate, the public's concerns about security now rival
economic worries in Mexico for the first time since the global
recession hit in 2007, according to a national poll in late May. The
difference was 1 percentage point.

That survey put Calderon's approval rating at 49 percent, and another
national poll in March pegged it at 54 percent. Those figures are
slightly lower than earlier in his presidency.

"The drug war is a debacle, but the question is what can be done about
it. The U.S. has to be involved," said Howard Campbell, an
anthropology professor and drug war expert at the University of Texas
at El Paso, just across the border from Mexico's most violent city,
Ciudad Juarez.

U.S. officials have lauded Mexico's efforts to confront organized
crime under Calderon, providing $500 million in aid this year through
the Merida Initiative. President Barack Obama has also publicly
acknowledged that U.S. demand for drugs contributes greatly to
Mexico's ordeal.

More than ever before, Mexicans feel caught in the crossfire between a
hard-line U.S. policy against traffickers and a seemingly endless
demand for drugs.

At a gathering in El Paso last month, Sicilia told his supporters:
"Americans have to realize that behind every puff of pot, every line
of coke, there is death, there are shattered families."

Four experts share their views

The San Diego Union-Tribune asked four community leaders to read the
stories and answer the question: Amid the drug violence, what do you
hope people on both sides of the border can learn from the story of
Edgar Jimenez Lugo and his family?

Javier Valdez Cardenas

Age: 44

Career: Co-founder of Riodoce, a Mexican news website and weekly newspaper in Culiacan, Sinaloa. Regional correspondent for the national daily newspaper La Jornada.

Background: Valdez covers the news from the capital of Sinaloa, Mexico's second-deadliest state and a major marijuana- and poppy-growing area. His recently published book Los Morros del Narco describes the lives of children in Mexico affected by drug trafficking and organized crime.

I think there is a lesson worth remembering here. It might appear
obvious were it not for this tempest of war, violence and destruction
that Mexico is living through.

The lesson is about a need for love, for support in terms of affection
and belonging -- that mesh seamlessly with the market for drugs, the
corruption of government and politicians, and poverty. It is, as one
of Edgar's relatives said, like putting together TNT and a match: an
explosive cocktail, a combination that leads to death.

This case shows sadly how Mexico, in its society and government, has
forgotten about children and youth. And it speaks to how little it
matters that the young, who for many are just statistics and cheap
labor and fingers behind a trigger, die as "collateral damage" in
raids initiated by the army and the police or by the gunfire of the
drug cartels.

For this to happen in this country, where there is so little
opportunity for an education or work or a decent salary, means we are
issuing a life sentence to a generation of children and youth.

The path forged by our "strategy" -- a big word for the breakdown
produced by President Felipe Calderon under the pretext of fighting
drug trafficking -- has turned into a form of suicide for Mexico's
youth. There is no time or space to dream when one's survival is at
stake. And I'm not just talking about individual deaths but also about
the loss of kinship in daily life, about the daily routine of hiding,
terror and killing as a kind of living death.

The sad thing, just like the lack of caring and support, is to watch
Mexico killing, through so much violence and fear, its own future.

Alan Bersin

Age: 64

Career: Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Background: Appointed by President Barack Obama, Bersin oversees 57,000 employees assigned to protect U.S. borders and facilitate travel and trade. He was U.S. attorney in San Diego from 1993 to 1998 and superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District from 1998 to 2005.

At U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the tragedies caused by illegal
drugs on both sides of the border strengthen our resolve to confront
and remove this common problem from our communities. Edgar committed
heinous crimes, and he should pay the full measure for them; but let's
not have any illusion about the fact that drug trade drives the
creation of the industry that spawns that kind of violence.

Very few people profit from the drug war: certainly not the victims
and families of the victims of violence. Nor are those that commit the
violence, like Edgar, necessarily better off for the crimes that they
have committed.

To continue to support the courageous and honorable efforts of our
Mexican partners, the U.S. government is providing funding, training,
information and other resources to combat transnational criminal
organizations operating in Mexican and American communities.

Here at home, CBP is educating high school students in border towns
about the dangers of participating in smuggling activities.

CBP has deployed historic levels of personnel, technology and
resources along the Southwest border. The Border Patrol is better
staffed today than at any time in its 87-year history. For the first
time, CBP unmanned aircraft now cover the border, providing critical
surveillance.

We know that our work is not done. We are deeply concerned about the
drug cartel violence in Mexico. We know that these drug organizations
are seeking to undermine the rule of law in northern Mexico and that
we must guard against spillover effects into the United States.

After nearly two decades of work on border issues, I have come to
appreciate that citizens on both sides of our single border share
similar hopes and dreams.

There is a very big interest in destroying the drug Mafia in Mexico,
just as this nation had a national focus on breaking the Mafia in this
country, not so many years ago. It was not until we understood, as a
nation, the risk to the fabric of our way of life that we built the
national will to take the problem head on. That is where Mexico, and,
frankly, this nation are now. I remain confident that our collective
resolve will lead to the results we seek in a better life for our
children and their children.

Javier Sicilia

Age: 55

Profession: Novelist, screenwriter and winner in 2009 of Mexico's top poetry honor, the Aguascalientes Prize. Columnist for the Mexican weekly newsmagazine Proceso.

Background: Sicilia has thrown himself into a campaign to make Mexico's government more accountable for drug violence since the death of his grown son at the hands of a drug cartel in March. A staunch critic of current Mexican and U.S. strategies against drug traffickers, he has been embraced by relatives of people killed in drug violence who feel twice victimized by crime and the justice system.

We are leaving a country without a future and a bleak current reality
for our youth. For them, the future is being erased.

Children such as Edgar Jimenez Lugo, I believe we have to do
everything for them. They too are victims of society. And that's why
there's a tendency to deny their existence and say, "They are
criminals, they belong in common graves, they are just
statistics."

We have to shed light on children like Edgar and ask what produced
them, what happened, what went wrong in these families, what
neighborhoods are they from? You have to rescue them.

To do the opposite only leads us down the path to violence -- a
violence that is just as criminal as that of the cartels.

The problem Mexico is living through is very serious because it's a
crisis of government institutions. It's a state that has allowed crime
to survive, a state that in its corruption, under its logic, has been
destroying the fabric of society where humanity and community life
flourish.

Families that have sought justice have been overlooked as of late in
cases where crimes aren't prosecuted, or in which organized crime has
ties to corrupt police. That's all been left alone, in anonymity. And
people are afraid speak up about it.

The government is obsessed with violence and is not attacking its
fundamental causes. And the terrible part of this obsession with brute
force as the only way to combat drug trafficking, the only thing it
leads to is a police state, a military state or to setting the country
on fire.

Beyond Mexico, the United States protects its own interests. They are
the largest consumers of drugs in the world and they force a war upon
us. The way I see it, the Mexican government was stupid to succumb to
U.S. pressure.

I would call on American society to put an end to its current policy
against drug trafficking and the arms race it has created.

Andrea Skorepa

Age: 63

Career: CEO and president of Casa Familiar Inc., a nonprofit social services agency.

Background: Skorepa has been a civic activist in south San Diego for more than 20 years. She is a native of San Ysidro, home to the world's busiest border crossing. Before joining Casa Familiar, she was a teacher in the San Ysidro Elementary School District.

For all of us, Edgar Jimenez Lugo's story is very sad and at the same
time almost too common to make it surprising. Turning innocent youths
into sociopathic criminals at the beck and call of adults with their
own projects has become increasingly prevalent. Other countries also
have this particular form of slavery.

In this country, our main culprits are dysfunctional families that
eventually fragment into domestic abusers and their victims, drug
users and the unemployed. There are neglected girls and boys, children
with unattended special needs and school dropouts. Under economic
pressure, some families become homeless. Criminality creeps in.

Addictive behavior and habits are within the ken of all humans. How
many times have we encountered Type A people who ignore their families
to achieve supposed success? How many stories have we heard of
attempts to overcome the ravages of drug addiction to no avail? How
many times must we read of formerly abused children continuing the
cycle with their own families?

As black and white values fade, the decisions we make wash out to
gray. So it went with the Jimenez Lugo family. It is a tragedy.

I wish I could report, after more than 40 years working in a border
community, a better outlook for the future. I am afraid that hope will
continue to come in dribs and drabs, and true opportunities by the
teaspoonful. We face a daunting task: educating those who have no
foundation in a stable and secure social order.

It's important at the same time to pursue social change or social
justice. We need to eliminate racism, class stratification and
economic segregation.

These are daunting tasks. But try we must.