Cuba No, Cocaine Yes

Cuba should not be allowed to rub shoulders with democratic countries in any Summit of the Americas, as useless as these forums are, not because the United States has rejected its presence, although this empire has no moral authority by which to reject Cuba while embracing Saudi Arabia, for example, but in respect to Latin America. In this part of the world, dictatorships have been great tragedies for their people, and the only dictatorship left — although Venezuela is becoming another — should not be rewarded with egalitarian treatment.

It’s funny that social movements and the leaders that have pressured for Castro’s presence in Cartagena would organize their efforts as if Castro were a just dictator. This illustrates the double standards eternally demonstrated around the world: Many justify the human rights violations carried out by leaders simply because they are of the same political spectrum or because these political alliances are beneficial is some way.

Fidel Castro is an icon for the Latin American left. While these individuals would criticize the calls for the second re-election of a democratic president, such as in the case of Alvaro Uribe, they are content with what appears to be a lifetime term of the despotic Castro brothers. Those of the left look the other way when a dissident dies from a just hunger strike, as Lula de Silva did when this occurred the very day he visited Cuba. For them, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are respectable, while the Cuban Ladies in White are troublesome women determined to increase criticism of Castro.

The left also denounces allegations that the communist government didn’t feel like issuing a visa for the blogger Yoani Sánchez, who was prohibited from leaving Cuba to attend a Brazilian conference to which she had been invited. Sanchez called on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to aid her in securing this visa. However, this supposed progressive defender of human rights, as the left sees her, didn’t lift a finger to aid her fellow activist.

What needs to change is how the war on drugs is being fought. While the U.S. will not currently change its strategy, its monetary support will eventually end, as will legalization — or regulation — on production and consumption, because this is a lost fight. After all of the bloodshed and uncountable deaths, Columbia’s Pyrrhic victory was to pass part of this problem on to Bolivia, Mexico and Peru.

I’ve been covering drug trafficking and armed conflict for 13 years as a reporter; all that I see is the survival of cultivation, the growth of gangs, the recycling of cartels, the corruption of authorities and social sectors and an alarming rise in the number of local consumers. No effective prevention campaigns exist among the military campaigns charged with fighting against an invincible foe.

Once the head of intelligence services, the new Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina arrested powerful gangsters and is better versed in the fight against drugs than any leader of the United States. He stated the following on Friday: “After 51 years of fighting and drug criminalization, this has not been an adequate strategy; it’s time to look for new strategies.”

Many among us know that Molina is right, that the legalization of production and consumption of this garbage, along with additional measures, might be the way. Still, there will be no changes for now. Europe and the United States are the greatest consumers of cocaine, marijuana and heroin, while also receiving a great part of the dirty money generated by these trades. However, Europeans contribute crumbs to fight against the disaster that they provoke, while the gringos’ contributions to this unfruitful war continue to fall.

In the end, they will insist on continuing with an unsuccessful strategy, just as nothing will change in the Falklands, that shameful vestige of British colonialism that should be returned to its legitimate nation.