Cultural Baggage
May 1, 2011

Broadcasting on the drug truth network, this is Cultural Baggage
Broadcasting on the Drug Truth Network, this is Cultural Baggage.
“It’s not only inhumane, it is really fundamentally Un-American.”
“No more! Drug War!” “No more! Drug War!”
“No more! Drug War!” “No more! Drug War!”
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My Name is Dean Becker. I don’t condone or encourage the use of any drugs, legal or illegal. I report the unvarnished truth about the pharmaceutical, banking, prison and judicial nightmare that feeds on Eternal Drug War.
Dean Becker: Welcome to this edition of Cultural Baggage. Here in just a moment, we’re gonna bring on Mr. Greg Berger. He’s a Mexico-based filmmaker/journalist.

But first I have some sad news I wanna share with you. From the Wisconsin State Journal: Ben Masel, prominent marijuana activist and professional rabble-rouser died Saturday, April 30th from complications due to lung cancer. He had made it through 25 radiation treatments for the disease, but was too weak to face chemotherapy. He died surrounded by family.

“He made a point of living at the front lines and fighting for his rights,” said Semilla Anderson, Masel’s daughter. “He will be remembered for that.”

He was born in the Bronx and grew up in New Jersey. Moved to Madison in ‘71 and quickly became a fixture of the counter-culture, known specifically for acts of civil disobedience in the cause of legalizing pot. For the past ten years, he served as the Vice President of the state chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and he was the State Director for six years in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

And in truth, when news broke last month that Masel had lung cancer, there were many who thought it made sense. After all, he spent a life time smoking cigarettes and was by his own admission a, “heavy marijuana smoker.”

But friends and family hope that people will remember that Masel stood for a lot more than just one controversial cause.

“He was not just some pothead,” said Sal Asario, a long-time friend. “He respected the constitution, he respected the system, and he fought to make sure that others did too.”
In fact, Masel made his living fighting those who tried to limit personal freedoms and rights. He was, for lack of a better term, a professional activist.

Now, reading from a missive from his good friend Donnie Wordshafter, “Ben was proud of his 137 arrests. Most of them at protest events. He fought each ticket, accepting only minor misdemeanor penalties in six of these prosecutions. He constantly sued back, winning 11 other civil judgments. He even got notorious mayor Rudolph Giuliani to pay his attorneys fees in one case.“
I believe these are this is the last recorded comments by Mr. Ben Masel.

Ben Masel: I said I’ve been smoking cigarettes for 40 years, so there’s really no clear indication as to what led to [unintelligible] and what science there has been done on cannabis and lung cancer does not find a correlation.

There’s a doctor out of UCLA, Donald Tashkin who had spent 20 years trying to show a connection between cannabis and lung cancer and finally concluded that at the end of that that he couldn’t. There’s been some pretty clear indications that the cannabanoids are, well shrink tumor growth—they don’t outright prevent, but they shrink the growth. And there’s a lot of legitimate scientific work to be done there.”

Dean Becker: Ben Masel, rest in peace old friend. Ben used to hand out these T-shirts, had the fourth amendment written on the front and instructions to the police written on the back as to what that meant. Ben, we will indeed miss you.

Alright, now we have our guest online. He’s down in Mexico. Greg Berger; he’s known also as Gringoyo. He’s, as I said, a Mexican-based filmmaker, journalist, and Professor of Film at the Art Department of the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos. His work has been screened at the Guggenheim Museum, the Getty Museum, Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, along with other venues. He has a great website, gringoyo.com. He uses satirical video to call attention to harmful U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.

And before I bring him on, because he’s so satirical, I wanna show a little bit of my macabre sense of humor to him. Play that for us.

[Guitar background]
Dean Becker: How many Mexicans will have to die, before Americans stop gettin’ high?

Your response Mr. Greg Berger. How many Mexicans will have to die?

Greg Berger: Well you’re a man after my own heart, Dean. You can tell that we have the same sense of humor. Well there’s some bad news and some good news in response to your question. Too many is the right answer. Already, too many have died.

Dean Becker: Yes, way too many.

Greg Berger: Last April, just ending yesterday, was the bloodiest month on record since the new phase of the drug war began in 2006. Since Felipe Calderón—with the support of the US Government—redoubled their efforts to fight this absurd and unwinnable war on drugs. And so far, we’re at roughly 37,000 people killed in this drug war. 1,400 people killed in April alone.

So the answer to your question is too many. But the good news is that things are finally starting to turn around. And we’ve seen over the last month and a half, very quickly the rise of a new movement against the drug war, unlike anything we’ve seen in the history of Mexico, and certainly over the last four years. And that movement is something to watch. I think that we may finally see the beginning of popular resistance to the drug war, leading to the end of this current phase of the drug war. So I’m excited about that.

Dean Becker: And—Greg, Gregorio—tell me—Gringoyo, I’m sorry.

Greg Berger: I’ve got many names you can call me any of them.

Dean Becker: Okay, but I wanna get to some of the specifics. You know, Egypt had Facebook heroes, if you will, but in Mexico you’ve had a couple of very real, forthright heroes stepping forward. Demanding a reinvestigation of this policy and its impact, right?

Greg Berger: That’s right. That’s right; Javier Sicilia is the current face of this new movement. Javier Sicilia is a poet and journalist. He lives here in Cuernavaca, where I live. I’ve known him for many years. In fact, everybody knows him here in Cuernavaca; he’s a public fixture. And his son was killed very tragically along with six other people about a month ago here in the state of Morelos. His son by all accounts had nothing to do with organized crime, and it was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back for lots of people.

Javier is so well known, and so loved—not only by people on the left, but people from all sectors of Mexican society—that he became a face that—even though by Javier’s own admission no death is worth more than anybody else’s death, each individual who is killed in this drug is a sad loss—people could relate to Javier and the death of his son, his innocent son, and rallied to his cause.

He’s been able to create a coalition of people from all sorts of sectors of society. From—of course from the pueblos, the towns, people who have been resisting Mexican militarization for a long long time; middle-class people who weren’t involved in politics before; people in civil society who were veterans to leftist causes; even people on the right who really do want to see an end to this war on drugs.

Even the Zapatistas have joined his movement and will be marching in solidarity with the national march that he has called next week. So, we’re seeing a broad coalition against the drug war that has never, never happened before in Mexico. It’s really extraordinary.

Dean Becker: Yeah, Greg I—it’s been three weeks back, I think. Former president of Mexico Vicente Fox came to Texas A&M University to speak. And in his speech, he noted that he said forty thousand dead, a bunch of kids. 14 – 25 years old, mostly male, killed by other—another forty thousand kids, mostly 14-25 years old. And it is such a tragedy on such a grand scale that it is gaining traction. Is that is a fair assumption?

Greg Berger: When you say it’s getting traction, are you talking about the movement itself?

Dean Becker: Yes.

Greg Berger: Or the ongoing violence?

Dean Becker: No, the resistance to that violence.

Greg Berger: Yeah, that’s exactly right. There’s—you would have to be living on another planet to try to go out publicly and defend Calderón’s drug war policy. By any measure—by any measuring stick, this drug war is an absolute failure. This policy is a failure.

He went into this war in 2006, really by all accounts to try to shore up his very weak presidency. Without giving too much back story, Calderón almost didn’t make it into the presidency because many people say that the election that brought him to power was fraudulent. There was massive resistance to his even taking power to begin with in 2006.

And as governments have known for thousands of years—if you want to shore up your government, declare a war and create an external enemy. That’s something that Calderón did. He very quickly without measuring the consequences, brought the military into the fight against “organized crime”.

And the result was chaos, because what they’ve been doing is trying to break up the larger cartels. And every time of course you take out one drug boss, five people come up to try to take the place of that drug boss and you create utter chaos. And of course, you’re never gonna stop the flow of drugs until drugs are legalized.

And what’s interesting is that people are actually coming around to the idea of legalization. This is extraordinary. Just three months ago, I was sitting with some drug policy activists in New York City, lamenting the fact that legalization wasn’t taking—the idea of legalization wasn’t gaining traction in Mexico.

In just three short months, because the war has gotten so much worse here in Mexico, people from all walks of life are warming up to the idea of legalization. It’s absolutely extraordinary.

I was filming on the streets of Mexico City just a week ago for my new film; recording candid on the street interviews, and asking people what alternatives were to the drug war. I tell you Dean, from the youngest people that we talked to – 13-14-years-old, to 70-year-old grandmas – out of 30 people we talked to, 29 of them said that legalization has to be considered. That’s extraordinary. That has happened so quickly. And that’s turning, I think, the tragedy of what’s going on to Mexico, to possibly another kind of story.

I think we might be seeing in Mexico the emergence of one more nail in the coffin of the failed drug war; which, of course is going to celebrate 40 years since Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971, I think it was in this coming June, marks the anniversary.

Dean Becker: Yes.

Greg Berger: But I think that Mexico is turning into a crucial battleground to try to overturn the policy of the drug war as articulated by the United States. So I’m excited for that.

Dean Becker: Yeah, and I am too. Once again, we’re speaking to Mr. Greg Berger, Mexico-based filmmaker, journalist, renaissance man if you ask me. He’s got a great film out – a dark satire about the drug war in Mexico. It was just profiled in Proceso, Mexico’s most important news magazine; and they even have a English overdub version available new there at narconews.com.

And this brings to mind something I wanna share with you. You’re talking about you couldn’t find but one out of thirty who didn’t think legalization should be considered. And I’m a speaker for a group called law enforcement against prohibition.

I wear the shirts and it’s got a little leap badge on the front and the back says “Cops say legalize drugs, ask me why.” And I haven’t had anybody ask me why in about a year. Because I think more and more people get it. It’s a silent response if you will. Your thought.

Greg Berger: I absolutely agree with you. It’s interesting when people here in Mexico—the vanguard movement to legalize drugs—were looking at the referendum in California. In fact, some people called last November’s referendum the most important election for Mexico of the last decade, even though it was an election in California.

And people here got it. They saw the fact that even though the referendum didn’t pass, more people came out to the poles to vote against legalization than ever before. People took to note of that here. I think that’s extraordinary.

It is something that more and more people are just accepting as a fact of life. And I think it’s—we know that it’s inevitable that drugs will be legalized. It’s a question of not if, but when. I’m hoping that within the next few years, we see the legalization of drugs here in Mexico.

It would be an utter slap in the face to the failed and toxic policies of the United States towards Latin America, with its insistence to keep waging this drug war in the continent. I think it’s gonna happen. The events of the past couple of months have really convinced me of that here on the ground in Mexico.

On Thursday, there’s going to be a huge march from the city of Cuernavaca where I live to the capital Mexico City, 70 KM away, 50 miles-45 miles away. And we’re gonna see, I think, perhaps the largest mass mobilization against the drug war, in favor of the demilitarization of the fight against organized crime, and in favor of drug legalization that perhaps anybody has ever seen anybody-anywhere.

I think that this is going to be—2011 in Mexico is going to be remembered by historians who later document the dismantling of the drug war.

Dean Becker: You know today, as every day, there are stories in the Houston Chronicle, and I think every paper on the planet dealing with the drug war. And the Chronicle has a little, you know, comment section. And what I get, you know, as response to my post tend to be right on, exactly right; but then there are those that say, “sure, the cartels will put down their guns and become choir boys.”

But the truth of the matter is that we will rob them of billions – tens of billions of dollars that they will
not be able to then use to corrupt, bribe and otherwise inflict harm upon your country and mine. Your thought.

Greg Berger: Yeah that’s exactly right, people say that all the time, “Oh, they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna suddenly become choir boys,” or things like that.

The fact of the matter is that just maintaining the—maintaining drug prohibition is a kind of a mega-subsidy for these drug trafficking organizations. It’s what provides the guns that kill people here. It’s what provides the money that goes to corrupt Mexico’s institutions.

Of course if drugs are legalized, there’s still going to be people who do things that aren’t nice and are harmful to society. But so much of their income is going to go away. That’s just clear.

So that argument doesn’t hold water. That, “Oh well they’re still gonna go into other things.” I mean all you have to do is look up a history of prohibition of alcohol in the United States. Of –people scramble to diversify into other things – illegal gambling, numbers running and so forth, but the major cash cow which funded all the violence that happened in the United States, it went away. And that’s what’s going to happen here.

Now the problem is that, I think that unfortunately the policy of maintaining the drug war is a cynical policy. Those that had have created this toxic policy in Mexico know perfectly war-perfectly well that it’s an unwinnable war.

But if you scour over the Wikileaks cables that came out from the US Embassy here in Mexico City about the drug war, you’ll see that the drug war itself from Washington’s point of view has another motive. You see in those Wikileak’s cables specific statements about how the Mexican armed forces are collaborating with the Pentagon, with the U.S. embassy more than ever before.

And you see a kind of celebratory tone in those cables that talk about the policy objectives that have been obtained by the drug war. What they’ve managed to do is essentially dismantle something that was a keystone in Mexican policy since the revolution a hundred years ago; which was to maintain its sovereignty in the face of the world’s greatest imperial power.

The fact of the matter is that now the United States is more intimately engaged in the military affairs of Mexico than ever before. Here in Cuernavaca, a year and a half ago, one of the major drug traffickers Beltran Leyva was killed by the Mexican marines in a raid that was organized by the U.S. Embassy. The U.S. embassy had essentially had operatives that directed the Mexican navy.

Now that’s huge. That essentially means that the Mexican armed forces is starting to essentially outsource its leadership to the United States. That’s a major foreign policy objective for the United States.
I think that’s one of the real reasons that the drug war is—continues here in Mexico because that’s of course is what the United States has wanted to do for a long, long time. Integrate Mexico into its—into its security objectives; into what they call the Northern Command. That’s starting to happen and the drug war is doing it nicely for them.

Dean Becker: Yeah. Hey Greg, I applaud you for that thought because that’s—that just runs parallel to what I’ve been thinking of late; is that, you know, the drug war is making money for bankers and pharmaceutical houses and on down the line—all kinds of people. Criminals and white-collar criminals alike.

But the truth of the matter is that it is the means by which the United States is able to insert itself into the politics of every nation on this planet, and offer them the silver or the lead. Either you take our money for participating in the drug war, or you’re no longer a fair trade partner. And that’s plotar plomo, isn’t it?

Greg Berger: Yeah, that’s what’s happening. But I think that—remember, great moments in history are made when people stand up and say, “No. we’ve had enough.” That’s what happened in Egypt just a couple of months ago.

And I can tell you that my students who have been watching the events in Egypt very closely, are feeling extremely inspired by events in Egypt. My students at the Art Department are oftentimes—let’s say—wary of political art. They’re fired up right now though, more than I’ve ever seen them before.

When Juan Francisco, Javier Sicilia’s son, was murdered a month ago, it really-it really struck them to the core of their being. And they all stood up together and said, “No, we’ve had enough.” And they’ve been producing videos, photos, installations against the drug war—creating a kind of shared language of resistance like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

Now, they were all watching what happened in Egypt. And in fact, you mentioned Egypt before about Facebook heroes like Khaled Said, the martyr who was killed in Egypt last year; and who’s Facebook page in his honor and his memory helped to rally people to the Egyptian resistance, to the Egyptian revolution.

My students started a Facebook page called, “Todos Somos Juan Francisco Sicilia – We are all Juan Francisco Sicilia,” inspired by the “We are all Khaled” Facebook page. They’re using it as a way to communicate with people across the country and internationally to create this language of dissent.

And I think that we’re seeing here in a certain sense, well the Egyptian revolution is going viral. People looking at it here; people are taking the lessons of it. And I think that we may see the lessons of the Egyptian revolution come here to Mexico as direct inspiration for what promises to be a long and successful fight that’s gonna put an end to this drug war.

Dean Becker: All right, once again, speaking with Greg Berger, also known as Gringoyo. He’s a Mexico-based filmmaker, journalist, and as I said renaissance guy – I like this guy.

Now, Gregory I talked to you a few minutes before the show. I mentioned the fact that the jump page of The Houston Chronicle is talking about the border and—this is in bold headlines, an inch tall--“Incentives Outweigh Price-tag of Drug War”. Your response to that, sir.

Greg Berger: Yeah. I mean, you have to either be very cynical or very stupid to think that the drug war can win. The more – the higher you put up a wall, the more you send the military to go after the drug trafficking organizations, you raise the price tag. And you—of course it—you not only still have the incentive to traffic drugs across the border, you increase that incentive.

And people know that, people know that very well. Because it’s not about stopping the flow of drugs, it’s about other things—it’s about other policy objectives. And you know I’m telling you, I’m so glad that we’re seeing people finally wake up to this fact and I’m looking forward to these collaborations between people here in Mexico and in the United States on this shared common cause to defeat the drug war.

I’m working on a new satire right now. It’s called “Narco Mania” and it’s a satire of the silly narratives that both the governments of Mexico and the United States and the commercial and state media on both sides of the border try to promote. This idea that, “oh, well we’re making progress in breaking up the cartels—breaking up the cartels.”

They – and they try to make it seem as though the drug kingpins are the cause of the problem. They’re not the cause of the problem, they’re like FedEx. They bring the product from one side to another side. They’re well paid and they’re kind of like FedEx drivers who will run over half a town to deliver their product.

[laughter]

But that’s not the problem. They’re gonna keep doing it. They’re gonna keep doing it. The more you try to prohibit it, the more they’re gonna try to bring it across the border.

Now, obviously people are starting to ask here, “Why is the Mexican government not going after the money launderers? Why are they not going after the money trail? Why are they putting the military in the streets to act like cowboys and shoot it up in public squares, killing civilians and children in many cases in the process?” Well because again, it’s not about stopping the flow of drugs.

This is really a tragedy what’s happening in Mexico. I’ve heard people say in Mexico that Felipe Calderón is the most traitorous, treacherous president in the history of Mexico since Santa Ana who gave away half of Mexico’s territory. I’ve heard several people say that. People are really fed up with things.

The slogan by the way of this new movement is, “Estamos Hasta la Madre,” which is a very Mexican phrase. It sort of means, “We’ve had it up to here. We’re really fed up with things.” People are saying, “No. Hasta acqui. You Go. This is as far as it’s gone and no more of this.”

This is gonna be a big month, I’m telling you, for the movement against the drug war. I hope that your listeners do look for news about the march that Javier Sicilia is organizing, which again leaves Cuernavaca on the fifth, this Thursday.

Dean Becker: Okay. You know Greg, I – it was a year and a half ago, I was in El Paso at a seminar. I went across the border with a bus load of other speakers and so forth, to another seminar in Ciudad Juarez. And I felt some safety being with that bus load.

But then again, what they’ve done to other bus loads around the border areas should have given me more concern. Now you work with Al Giordano, Narco News and others; I admire you. I admit, I am afraid to go down there to that march. I would like to; I’d like to be part of it. But, it’s not too safe for journalists in Mexico, is it?

Greg Berger: Well, you know, that’s a difficult question for me to answer. It depends on where you are and what you’re going after. I’ve lived here and I’ve worked in Mexico since the ‘90s. I’ve spent most of my adult life here in Mexico. I have a son, who has lived all of his life here in Mexico.
I think it depends on what story you’re reporting. Of course, we know that Mexico is a very dangerous country for journalists. There’s no question about that.

I don’t spend my time going after stories about drug traffickers, because I think that those stories – chasing the body count and going and looking for the drug traffickers – it’s not something that I’m that interested in because I think it’s in – I think it’s sort of a tangent from the real point. As I was saying before, I think that the drug war is really about ulterior motives. That’s what I’m interested in uncovering. My – that’s why I make satire that uses humor to call attention to these toxic policies from the United States. I think that it’s a way that I can report on what’s going on without being in the line of fire.

Dean Becker: Yeah.

Greg Berger: And I think that as far as the march is concerned, there’s two things that I have to say about that. I do not expect there to be any violence whatsoever during the course of this march. I don’t think that it’s in the interests of any parties to try to attack that march. Not at all.

Dean Becker: Okay. Greg. We gotta wrap it up here.

Greg Berger: Oh, yes, okay.

Dean Becker: Please, share your website and we gotta go.

Greg Berger: okay, my web site is www.gringoyo.com. That’s gringo, Y-O, dot com.

And I just wanna say Dean this has been a great conversation. I admire the work that you’re doing. I’m so glad that you’re doing this; it’s fantastic. I admire the work that you do, and I want to give a big shout out to everybody in Houston. I have a lot of friends there, and I love that city. I think it’s a great city.

Dean Becker: Well, I appreciate it Greg; and we’re gonna bring you back soon. There’s so much more we need to talk about. Thank you so much.

Greg Berger: Thanks you have a good one.
Dean Becker: You too.
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Dean Becker: Alright, once again, I wanna thank Greg Berger, also known as Gringoyo. He’s got a great film. You should see the satire; if you think mine’s macabre, well, yeah. Check it out if you will.

Be sure to tune into this week’s Century of Lies show. We’re gonna have speakers from the Medibles panel. We’re gonna be talking about the best ways to turn cannabis into, you know, decent medical treats.

And I dunno, we’re about out of time. She tells me we’ve got a few seconds left.
And I guess i just wanna say, maybe we can start a revolution here too. Maybe we could demand an end to this madness. And as always I remind you because of prohibition, you don’t know what’s in that bag. Please be careful!

[Music]
To the Drug Truth Network listeners around the world, this is Dean Becker for Cultural Baggage and the Unvarnished Truth.

This show produced at the Pacifica studios of KPFT, Houston.

Tap dancing… on the edge… of an abyss.