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MS Patient Arrested For Using Medicinal Marijuana In Congressional Office
(Press Release From Marijuana Policy Project In Washington, DC,
About Cheryl Miller And Her Husband, Jim Miller, Being Arrested
At The Congressional Office Of California Representative Jim Rogan
For Eating Cannabis During A Protest Against House Resolution 372 -
MPP Notes 'Patients Nationwide Are Angry And Beginning To Target
Hypocritical Members Of Congress With Direct Action - Patients Are Ready
For Civil Disobedience - Patients Will Target Not Only
The Congressional Leadership, But Everyone Who Supports Laws
That Criminalize Patients For Using Medicinal Marijuana')
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 15:07:55 EST
Originator: drctalk@drcnet.org
Sender: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: Marijuana Policy Project
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: M.S. Patient Arrested for Using Medicinal Marijuana in Congressional Office
Organization: Marijuana Policy Project
The event detailed in the following news release is garnering
substantial media coverage -- dozens of television cameras and
reporters were there, and many more reporters have already called
the MPP office. Please be on the lookout for any television, newspaper,
or other coverage of the arrest, and let us know the day, time, and
page number (if applicable) as well as the name of the network, local
station, or newspaper. (Fax or e-mail only, please -- we are unable to
handle any more phone calls.)
MPP fax 202-232-0442
e-mail MPP@MPP.ORG
Thank you.
***
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MARCH 30, 1998
MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS PATIENT ARRESTED
for Using Medicinal Marijuana
in U.S. Rep. Jim Rogan's Office
Other Patients and Supporters Joined in Protest Against
Anti-Medicinal Marijuana Legislation
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- This morning, Cheryl Miller, severely disabled by
multiple sclerosis, used medicinal marijuana in U.S. Rep. Jim Rogan's
office (502 Cannon Bldg.) with the help of her husband and caregiver,
Jim Miller. Both were arrested for marijuana possession in this act of
nonviolent civil disobedience.
Nearly a dozen demonstrators -- including another patient and a
doctor -- joined the Millers' protest against House Resolution 372. The
resolution, which the House is expected to vote on after the April
recess, states that the U.S. House of Representatives is "unequivocally
opposed to legalizing marijuana for medicinal use" and "urges the defeat
of State initiatives which would seek to legalize marijuana for
medicinal use."
"Eating marijuana relieves my pain and spasticity," said Cheryl
Miller. "Thanks to marijuana, I don't need to visit Dr. Kevorkian."
Multiple sclerosis is a very common ailment among those seeking
physician-assisted suicide.
WHY REP. ROGAN?
U.S. Rep. Jim Rogan (R-California) voted in favor of H.Res. 372
when the House Judiciary Committee approved the resolution on March 4.
"Rogan betrayed patients by voting for the anti-medicinal marijuana
resolution," said Chuck Thomas, director of communications for the
Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). Rogan voted for
favorable medicinal marijuana legislation in the California legislature
in 1995. During the debate in committee, Rogan even explained that his
cousin had successfully used medicinal marijuana to combat nausea and
vomiting while undergoing chemotherapy.
"In a heartless turn-around, Rogan voted for H.Res. 372,
proclaiming `unequivocal' opposition to medicinal marijuana," said the
MPP's Chuck Thomas. "Tens of thousands of patients nationwide are using
medicinal marijuana. The federal penalty is up to one year in prison for
a joint -- and up to five years for a plant. Congress should remove
criminal penalties for patients like Rogan's cousin and Cheryl Miller,
instead of proclaiming its `unequivocal' opposition."
"Patients nationwide are angry and beginning to target hypocritical
members of Congress with direct action," said Thomas. "Patients are
ready for civil disobedience. Patients will target not only the
congressional leadership, but everyone who supports laws that
criminalize patients for using medicinal marijuana."
MPP helped organize protests outside of U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum's
(R-Florida) district office in Orlando on March 19 and outside of
Rep. Rogan's district office later today in Los Angeles. "We've only
just begun to turn up the heat," said Thomas.
ABOUT CHERYL AND JIM MILLER
Cheryl Miller, age 51, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in
1971. She and her husband Jim live in Silverton, New Jersey. Cheryl has
taken all of the standard prescription drugs for her condition. She had
to stop taking both Dantrium, because of liver toxicity, and injectable
steroid ACTH, because it is no longer available due to several harmful
side effects. She still takes baclofen and other drugs -- all of which
have harmful side effects.
In 1992, Cheryl's neurologist prescribed Marinol, which consists of
THC, marijuana's primary active ingredient, in a gelatin capsule. "The
THC pill helps, but not as much as eating marijuana," said Cheryl
Miller. "Like Bill Clinton, I don't inhale. My doctor told me that he
would prescribe marijuana if it were legal, but he was afraid to put
anything in writing. I need marijuana to treat my pain and spasticity."
Because Cheryl cannot move her arms, her husband Jim fed her the
marijuana in Rogan's office. Jim's wedding vows, made 14 years ago,
included serving as Cheryl's arms and legs when necessary. Today he was
arrested for helping Cheryl commit her heroic act of civil disobedience.
"Every day, I live in fear that my husband and I will be arrested
and imprisoned," Cheryl said. "But we can't let this awful resolution
pass. I was arrested today so that some day, other patients will not
have to be."
Cheryl eats marijuana to avoid the harm that marijuana smoke may
cause in the respiratory system. Unlike the THC pill, marijuana contains
60 other active chemical compounds, called cannabinoids, several of
which have been shown to be quite effective at treating pain and
spasticity.
Cheryl has received extensive media coverage throughout New Jersey
for traveling across the state in her wheelchair to protest the punitive
laws against medicinal marijuana users.
OTHER PROTESTERS
Another patient, Michael Krawitz, participated in the protest. Mike
is a 35-year-old father and a disabled veteran living in Elliston,
Virginia.
Fifteen years ago, he fell victim to a poorly constructed roadway
and crashed his motorcycle. "I've had ten surgeries and two total
artificial hips," Mike explained. "I use cannabis as an adjunct to my
narcotic pain medicine in treating my sometimes extreme pain. Cannabis
also treats the nausea caused by my internal injuries."
"I have had a prescription for natural smoked cannabis from my
doctor in The Netherlands since 1996. I find it particularly offensive
that in the country where I was born and served in the military, my
medical needs are not similarly respected."
Denis Petro, M.D., was also on hand to discuss the scientific
evidence of marijuana's efficacy for treating pain and spasticity.
Dr. Petro has conducted marijuana research and has been published in
peer-reviewed journals, verifying that marijuana is a useful medicine.
The Marijuana Policy Project is a harm-reduction advocacy
organization based in Washington, D.C. MPP believes that the most
harmful effects associated with marijuana are the criminal penalties
that countless seriously ill patients must face. "Patients should not
have to live in fear of being arrested and imprisoned for using
medicinal marijuana," said the MPP's Chuck Thomas.
***
For up-to-date information on the status of House Resolution 372
and how to oppose it, please visit the MPP's World Wide Web site
at http://www.mpp.org/la031398.html.
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As Miranda Rights Erode, Police Get Confessions From Innocent People
(Lengthy 'New York Times' Article Cites Cases In Which Police
Used Long Interrogations, Death Penalty Threat - Other Suspects
Are Mentally Retarded, Delusional Or Otherwise Highly Susceptible
To Suggestion)
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 15:44:43 -0500
To: DrugSense News Service
From: Richard Lake
Subject: MN: US: NYT: As Miranda Rights Erode, Police Get Confessions From
Innocent People
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Kevin Zeese
Pubdate: Mon, 30 Mar 1998
Source: The New York Times
Author: Jan Hoffman
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
AS MIRANDA RIGHTS ERODE, POLICE GET CONFESSIONS FROM INNOCENT PEOPLE
The victim was a taxi driver, a 45-year-old father of two. The Nassau
County police proudly announced the arrest of Robert Moore, who had
confessed to being with two acquaintances as they robbed and killed the
cabby. Prosecutors said they might seek the death penalty.
Three weeks later, the prosecutors sheepishly revealed they had caught the
real killers, who produced the murder weapon and said they had never heard
of a Robert Moore.
His confession, it turned out, had been utterly false.
During a November deposition for his federal civil rights lawsuit over the
1995 episode on Long Island, Moore said he had falsely confessed only
because investigators grilled him for 22 hours, threatened him with the
death penalty and even brought in a cousin to urge him to come clean. He
had been tired, lonely and scared. "I wanted to go home," he said.
In the U.S. Supreme Court's Miranda decision in 1966, Chief Justice Earl
Warren wrote about police interrogation techniques of such compelling power
that they could produce untrustworthy confessions. To alert suspects that
they had the right to stop the questioning, the court created the famous
warnings.
But after three decades of rulings that have undercut Miranda's reach, and
the increasingly savvy tactics of investigators, the warnings have become
an easily slipped latch to the interrogation room, with the vast majority
of suspects waiving their rights. Once a suspect voluntarily enters that
room, courts permit interrogators to use tricks, deceptions and lies --
anything short of threats of violence or promises of lenience -- to extract
confessions.
Thousands of guilty criminals have been caught in this fashion. But in a
number of cases, the incredible occurs: the police extract a confession
from an innocent person.
Determining that a confession is false is a risky, arduous and often
fruitless quest. But in recent years, more confessions have been
successfully contested because of modern forensic tools like DNA testing, a
burgeoning social science of analyzing confessions for their truthfulness,
and the increased skepticism of juries about police conduct.
Although the number of false confessions is in dispute, their prevalence is
shaking the confidence of both prosecutors and juries in the reliability of
confessions, which have long been the crown jewel of criminal prosecutions.
In an attempt to restore the credibility of the confession -- and of the
police themselves -- at least 2,400 sheriff's and police departments around
the country are audiotaping and even videotaping not just confessions, but
often interrogations as well, according to a federal Department of Justice
study.
And the practice is growing. William Geller, a police consultant who
conducted that 1992 study, said that law enforcement officials were
realizing that "one simple use of technology served the disparate interests
of efficiency, effectiveness and legitimacy."
On the East Coast, particularly in the New York region, videotaping of
interrogations is rare, because prosecutors fear it will make detectives as
well as suspects self-conscious and give defense lawyers more targets to
attack.
But others have found it useful. "It will shore up our case at trial: if
there is any doubt about an investigator's ethics, we can say, 'Hey, let's
look at the videotape,' " said T. Brett Swab, a former prosecutor in Tulsa,
Okla., where interrogations of suspects in violent crimes have been
recorded since the mid-1980s. "It adds to our credibility."
Some recent trials show that juries are less likely to be convinced by
cases that rely heavily on confessions. In early 1997 on Long Island,
Nassau County jurors acquitted a man who had confessed to two murders,
after he testified that the police had physically and psychologically
abused him. Detectives denied the allegations.
And in September, Suffolk County jurors acquitted Gairy Chang of the
first-degree murder of two drug dealers even though he had signed a
six-page confession; he testified that the police had interrogated him,
naked and handcuffed, and squeezed his testicles. James Catterson Jr., the
Suffolk County district attorney, said Chang had lied on the stand.
The Confession: He Said What They Wanted to Hear
Arcadia, Fla., is so small that when police officers were looking for
the killer of a local shop owner, a woman suggested they question that
stranger riding a bicycle around town. And because the officers mistakenly
assumed he was the same fellow she said she had seen outside the shop right
after the murder, they swooped down on Jerry Lee Louis.
It was about 4:30 on a July afternoon in 1992 when the police told Louis
that witnesses had identified him. How could that be, he asked. Louis told
the police he had been at his girlfriend's house, fixing his bicycle.
Louis's girlfriend confirmed his story, but the skeptical sergeant did not
tell interrogators, who assumed his alibi was false.
Through the night, seven officers handled the questioning, according to
interviews with lawyers in the case and a judge's written decision. Louis
kept protesting his innocence. No way, they told him: They had also found
his fingerprints and hair at the scene.
They were lying, a common -- and legal -- tactic.
Thousands of accurate confessions have been produced under such
circumstances. But these same elements -- a high-profile crime, the absence
of hard evidence, a long session of psychologically forceful questioning --
can also lead to a different outcome.
Louis agreed to a polygraph test. The results were inconclusive, but the
officers told him he had failed. Help us out, they said: Can you explain
all this evidence?
Using what training manuals refer to as "minimization strategy," they said
the victim had died of a heart attack. You probably meant only to rob him,
and not kill him, right?
Louis had a criminal record, had served time in a juvenile prison, and now
exhausted and frightened. What if he had gone to the store, he offered,
according to court testimony, and found the owner tied up? OK, an officer
would counter, then why were your fingerprints on the body?
By 1:15 in the morning, after insisting on his innocence for nearly nine
hours, Louis sat down for an audiotaped confession. As he would later tell
his lawyer, Tobey Hockett, Louis had given up hope that telling the truth
would earn him back his freedom. Broken in spirit, he thought that if he
just told them what they wanted to hear, he could go home.
He made two confessions, both wildly at odds with the crime scene and
witness reports.
That was not for lack of trying by the officers.
Officer: "OK, think of him laying there on the floor. What -- what is
underneath him? Is there tile, carpet or something else? Think about it.
Close your eyes. I've got mine closed. There was something under him. I
remember it."
Louis: "Wasn't paying attention. I was scared."
Officer: "Was it like a blanket underneath that you remember or a ... a
tarpaulin or something like that?"
Last March, after Louis had spent four and a half years in the DeSoto
County Jail waiting trial on murder charges, a judge, ruling that the
police might well have suggested details to Louis, threw out the state's
only evidence -- the confession. Louis was conditionally released.
"Suppressing a confession based on perceived procedural violations by law
enforcement is outrageous," said the prosecutor, John Collins Jr., who
maintains that Louis knew details only the killer could have known.
But last month, an appellate court agreed that the confession had to be
suppressed.
The Psychology : Some Are Prone to Confess Falsely
Psychologists have found that a few personality types are more likely
to make false confessions. Some unstable people are drawn to the lurid
glamour of notorious cases: When Charles Lindbergh's son was kidnapped, at
least 200 people claimed responsibility.
The police speculate that Glenville Smith, a Queens, N.Y. man who confessed
to the rape and murder of his landlady's missing daughter in January, was
fascinated by law enforcement. He claimed he was a security guard, and led
New York officers to 13 locations where the body might be buried. Then the
teen-ager showed up, very much alive.
"The detectives were very anxious to find the body," said Gregory Lasak,
the executive assistant to the Queens district attorney. "They had
questions about his credibility, but he also had the opportunity and he was
confessing, and it would have been foolhardy to let him go."
On rare occasions, a suspect may incriminate himself to protect the real
offender. Other suspects say they committed one crime, hoping to draw the
investigators' attention away from another.
In January, Manhattan prosecutors acknowledged that a four-year-old
confession in a murder case was flawed. During questioning in 1993 for a
Central Park robbery, Anthony Moore, a career criminal, wondered if he
could avoid prison if he offered details about the recent shooting death of
a retired police sergeant. He eventually incriminated himself and a second
man.
Moore was convicted of murder, and the man he named as the gunman was
charged with murder. But last winter, prosecutors received an informant's
letter saying that neither man was involved in the retired sergeant's
death; the confession may have been false. They have dropped charges
against the second man and have reopened Moore's case.
Many suspects are mentally retarded, delusional or otherwise highly
susceptible to suggestion. During an 8 1/2 hour interrogation in 1987,
Robert Lee Miller Jr., a vagrant, told Oklahoma City detectives he had had
a dream vision about the murders and rapes of two elderly women. His
statement had 112 inconsistencies, his lawyers said; he had earlier told
investigators that he was the Lone Ranger and an Indian warrior and that
his family had visionary powers.
Miller was convicted and sentenced to death. In 1995, DNA testing excluded
him and identified a convicted rapist, who has been charged with the
crimes. Miller was finally released in January.
The case still rankles prosecutors. The DNA results "never changed our
opinion; it just means he got away with it," insisted Ray Elliott, a senior
Oklahoma City prosecutor, who believes that the men committed the crimes
together. "But knowing and proving it are two different things."
Even seemingly normal suspects are vulnerable. Welsh White, a law professor
at the University of Pittsburgh, has written that an innocent suspect who
believes that the police have incontrovertible evidence and that a
confession will bring him lenience "could rationally conclude that
confessing is in his best interest."
The Tactics: Find a Weak Spot; Blame the Victim
Many police departments use a manual called Criminal Interrogation
and Confessions, which advises detectives to create an atmosphere in which
the suspect will feel it is better to confess than to sustain the anxiety
of lying. They learn a nine-step method to foster that anxiety.
It offers tips, for example, on how to open questioning: "The interrogator,
while still standing in front of the seated suspect and using the case
folder as a prop, should state clearly and briefly something along the
following lines: 'You're Joe Burns? I'm here to talk to you about the
break-in at Jason's Jewelry Store last week.' As that comment is being
made, the interrogator should finger through the case folder to create the
impression that it contains material of an incriminating nature about the
subject."
The ability to read body language is critical. Marvin Miller, an
Alexandria, Va., defense lawyer who studies interrogation techniques, says
that detectives are sometimes taught to face a suspect with no furniture
between them for a better view of tapping feet, to see whether a topic
prompts a suspect's pupils to dilate abruptly, to distinguish between a
suspect who gazes upward (remembering something) and one who looks away
evasively.
Richard Ofshe, a social psychologist at the University of California at
Berkeley who is an authority on confessions, said that detectives seek the
suspect's weak spot. In the case of Robert Moore, the man who confessed
falsely to the murder of a Long Island cabdriver, the police not only
brought in his cousin to induce him to confess, Moore later recounted in
court papers, but a detective who had investigated the homicide of Moore's
mother, years earlier.
Another tactic singled out by Ofshe: blame the victim. A Pasco County,
Fla., interrogator told a suspect: "I think you killed your wife. I think
you got into an argument, I think she hit you. She's got a temper."
Other examples reveal the detectives' creative flair. Recently, a former
New York City sex crimes detective, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
recalled: "We had a small fax machine and the suspect was told it was a new
kind of lie detector that didn't have to be hooked up. And that whenever he
told a lie it would beep.
"So he would make a statement like, 'I was with my girlfriend,' and we
would make the thing beep without him seeing. We got a pretty good
admission from him."
Detectives, writes Ofshe, have warned a gullible suspect that they use
"laser technology," just like in "Star Wars" -- did you know it can lift
fingerprints off corpses? And detectives in Richmond, Calif., told a
suspect he had been identified by the department's very own Neutron Proton
Negligence Intelligence Test.
One trick finally spurred a court to suppress a confession. Florida police
not only told a suspect that DNA had tied him to the crime, but they also
showed him a fake test result on official-looking stationery. An appellate
court said that lying was acceptable, but that the police could not create
false documents that would taint legal proceedings.
These tactics and others have produced thousands of confessions that proved
accurate, but also those that turn out to be false. Joseph Buckley, a
Chicago-based interrogation consultant and an author of the popular manual,
stands by the nine-step method. "We have developed a procedure that is very
effective at getting a guilty person to tell the truth," he said. "The
courts have said it is fine. But if it's abused, it's like anything else --
it can lead to problems."
The Videotapes: A Safeguard and a Backstop
The number of false confessions is perpetually in contention, with
prosecutors saying that many defendants recant confessions by claiming that
the police had coerced them, and defense lawyers saying that false
confessions happen more frequently than prosecutors acknowledge. But the
confessions that do prove false usually occur in highly publicized, violent
cases in which the police have few leads and are under pressure to make an
arrest.
To bolster the integrity of interrogations, legal scholars and even some
prosecutors have urged that they be recorded. "Not just the confession,"
said Kevin Doyle, chief of New York State's Capital Defender Office,
"because that's the opening night performance. You want to see those
rehearsals."
In New Mexico, for example, officers often carry tape recorders on the hip.
Interrogation recording is the law in Alaska and Minnesota, and has been
proposed for two years in Connecticut, at the urging of supporters of
Richard Lapointe, whom they believe falsely confessed to murdering his
wife's grandmother.
In 1994, the Minnesota Supreme Court ordered the police to record custodial
interrogations whenever feasible. The penalty for failing to do so, the
court said, could be the suppression of the suspect's statements at trial.
The court was inspired by a murder case in which a suspect said officers
read Miranda warnings late in the interrogation, did not ask whether he
understood his rights and fabricated statements.
The decision has had a powerful impact on law enforcement, said Mike
Freeman, the county attorney in Minneapolis. Officers keep tape recorders
in squad cars and most interrogation rooms have one-way mirrors and video
recorders. Every month, prosecutors study 300 to 400 tapes.
As a result, fewer defendants claim confessions were coerced, he said. "But
it can be tougher on cops when they're convinced a suspect did it," Freeman
said. "If they could do some special coercion he'd sing, but they can't
because the tape is on."
The rule has also produced some intriguing legal challenges. "It's not
feasible for an officer to be holding a gun in one hand and a tape recorder
in the other," Freeman said drily.
In Tulsa, Okla., law enforcement officials decided almost 15 years ago to
videotape interrogations so that juries could study suspects' reactions to
a barrage of questions and see them dressed very differently from their
cleaned-up court attire.
Sgt. Mike Huff, a detective supervisor for the homicide squad, said that in
a murder case that ended with a death penalty conviction in December, the
suspect walked into the interrogation room, unaware the video camera was
rolling, and made some incriminating statements. When he was given Miranda
warnings, he stopped talking. But because the earlier statements had been
made spontaneously, outside of interrogation, and were recorded
electronically, they became potent evidence at trial.
"So we're going to worry about spending $5 on tape for a major crime
investigation?" Huff asked.
Geller, who studied interrogation videotaping for the Department of
Justice, found that although the police and prosecutors initially resisted
the practice, their attitudes changed markedly. That is because recording
led to a wealth of positive effects: Defense lawyers folded their cards
more quickly and jurors' doubts about police testimony were dispelled.
This is significant because jurors have become less accepting of cases
built exclusively on confessions, said Fred Klein, a senior Nassau County
prosecutor. "Jurors are watching a lot of Court TV and they're getting used
to thinking that if you charge someone with a crime, you have to have six
different ways to prove it."
Videotaping is what probably saved Richard Bingham of Sitka, Alaska, from a
first-degree murder conviction. Last summer, he went on trial, charged with
raping and murdering a 17-year-old. No forensic evidence tied him to the
crime. But prosecutors had Bingham's confession.
Because of Alaska law, his interrogation had been recorded. Jurors could
see how Bingham, who suffered from alcoholic blackouts and had no memory of
the crime that interrogators said he had committed, kept missing all the
cues being fed him. They acquitted him.
In cases like Bingham's and Louis', the defendant became a victim who
suffered from the rush to judgment. But crime victims and the victims'
survivors, to say nothing of the public, also suffer from the false
confession.
"Even after an acquittal, the police usually refuse to reopen the
investigation," said Ofshe, "because they refuse to admit they made a
mistake."
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Tijuana Band Has Fans Hooked On Drug-War Ballads ('San Diego Union Tribune'
Says Los Tucanes De Tijuana, Who Have Sold More Than Two Million CDs
In The United States And Mexico, Join A Growing Number Of Norteqo Groups
Using Traditional Mexican Ballads, Or Corridos, To Tell The Stories
Of Mexico's Illegal Drug Industry In Songs Known As Narcocorridos)
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 23:34:55 -0800
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
From: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)
Subject: MN: Mexico: Tijuana Band Has Fans Hooked On Drug-War Ballads
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Newshawk: Tom Murlowski
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Contact: letters@uniontrib.com
Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
Pubdate: Mon, 30 Mar 1998
Author: Sandra Dibble - Staff Writer
TIJUANA BAND HAS FANS HOOKED ON DRUG-WAR BALLADS
TIJUANA -- Before roughly 35,000 fans, Los Tucanes de Tijuana stood
shimmering in silver-spangled suits and black hats on a recent Saturday
night, belting out one of their best-known numbers. It told of a piqata for
adults, filled not with candy, but little bags of "something more
expensive": in other words, drugs.
As drug smuggling proliferates on the U.S.-Mexico border, Los Tucanes de
Tijuana join a growing number of norteqo groups using the traditional
Mexican ballads, or corridos, to tell the stories of today's drug
traffickers.
Bungled police raids on suspected safehouses, a drug-laden airplane buried
in Baja California Sur, corrupt U.S. and Mexican anti-drug agents, a farmer
who gets away with growing an illegal crop -- all are topics of recent
songs, known as narcocorridos, by the Tijuana-based group.
"We have an abundance of material," says Mario Quintero, the four-member
group's 27-year-old songwriter and lead singer. "All you have to do is
watch the news or buy a newspaper."
Los Tucanes are certainly not the first to sing about drug smuggling. Los
Tigres del Norte and other bands playing northern Mexican music have been
incorporating the theme into their repertoire for decades. But the brash
lyrics of Los Tucanes songs have taken the genre a step further, say
critics worried about the effect on young audiences who flock to their
concerts.
The group hit the headlines last year when a suspect described by law
enforcement authorities as a member of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix
drug cartel said that his bosses had subsidized Los Tucanes and other
norteqo groups.
Los Tucanes shrug off such accusations, conceding they might have
unknowingly performed for members of the Arellano Felix cartel at a private
party, but haven't met them personally. "We haven't had the pleasure,"
Quintero says.
"Everybody criticizes them, but they don't take into account their
generosity, their philanthropy," Quintero says of the powerful drug
cartels, said to have built roads and schools in rural communities and
known to have contributed sums to the Catholic Church. "We respect these
people; we admire them."
Simply attributing Los Tucanes' popularity to their narcocorridos would be
missing the mark. The group's four latest compact discs have sold more than
2 million copies in the United States and Mexico, and many of their
most-popular songs are not about drugs, but love and relations between the
sexes. Their current song, number 20 on Billboard's list of Latin songs, is
called "Hacemos Bonita Pareja," "We Make a Cute Couple."
Still, the surging popularity of drug themes popularized by groups such as
Los Tucanes speaks to their growing pervasiveness in Mexican culture, says
Manuel Valenzuela, a researcher at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte outside
Tijuana.
"Clearly, the codes of narcoculture are becoming incorporated into everyday
life."
Success story
In some ways, Los Tucanes tell a Tijuana success story. They are from the
town of Guamuchil in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, in an agricultural
valley adjacent to a major marijuana and poppy-growing region.
Band members are cousins who came to Tijuana like so many others do -in
search of greater opportunity. Quintero, a junior high school graduate,
worked for a while in a maquiladora.
Sons and grandsons of musicians, Los Tucanes began playing together 11
years ago, performing at bars, weddings, baptisms, 15th birthday parties,
or quinceaqeras. Back at the beginning, longtime associates say, the group
dreamed of one day warming the crowds for better-known norteqo groups such
as Banda El Recodo or Los Temerarios or Los Huracanes del Norte. Now
they're packing their own crowds.
Voices of concern
Despite their growing renown, not everyone is applauding.
Across from Texas, in Ciudad Juarez, the state government's human rights
representative, Eustasio Gutiirrez Corona, two months ago called on
authorities to ban narcocorridos by Los Tucanes and other groups from the
airwaves, saying they encourage crime. But nobody listened, he concedes.
"They're still playing them."
Here on the Tijuana-San Diego border, two popular Spanish-language music
stations under the same ownership, Radio Latina and X-99, refuse to play
narcocorridos.
"Just ask the children who listen to narcocorridos, just ask them what they
want to be when they grow up," says Lorena Salas, programming director at
X-99.
Narcocorridos "represent a reaction against the norms and laws of society,"
says Monsignor Salvador Cisneros, who heads a Catholic parish in Playas de
Tijuana. "There is a segment that looks with curiosity and admiration upon
these men who have evaded justice."
Laced with irony and doubles-entendres, the lyrics played by Los Tucanes
are among the most brazen of the current waves of corridos. "They represent
something that is culturally legitimate, although it's very frightening,"
says James Nicolopulos, a University of Texas professor who has studied the
corrido.
"They're expressing the viewpoint of a marginalized section of society on
both sides of the border, the people who are going to see drug traffickers
as heroes, figures who have escaped a system designed to keep them down,"
Nicolopulos says.
A colorful history
Corridos have been around since the 1800s, and outlaws have been a popular
subject from the beginning: 19th-century textile smugglers, liquor
smugglers of the 1920s, immigrant smugglers in the ensuing decades.
Though earliest narcocorridos can be traced back to the 1940s, the current
wave dates back to the 1970s, pioneered by Los Tigres del Norte, a norteqo
group whose music continues to command a wide following on both sides of
the border.
But in the earlier songs, Nicolopulos says, "the trafficker was beating the
system, getting out of poverty. The element that was celebrated was not
drugs, but the dangerous situation in which these people found themselves."
With Los Tucanes, "there seems to be much more focus on selling and using
the drugs. There's more braggadocio, about 'See, I am getting away with
it.' There's a whole throwing down the gauntlet at the ideology of the drug
war."
The band members shrink from such analysis, and insist they're just playing
songs about what they see around them.
"We're surrounded by narcoculture," says Quintero. "Our public wants to
play narcocorridos, and we can't strip them of that pleasure, because we
depend on them."
Back in Tijuana this month, Los Tucanes drew a record crowd to the
Terrenazo Caliente for an outdoor performance that lasted well over two
hours.
Against a lavish backdrop that included fake palm trees and a mechanical
waterfall, Los Tucanes pounded out song after song, Quintero taking center
stage with his plaintive twang and 12-string guitar, or bajo sexto, as Joel
Higuera, the accordionist and second voice, acted the clown as he hopped to
and fro.
"Mario, Mario, Maaaaario," young girls from both sides of the border
shouted, pushing against the barricades, pleading for a moment of the
singer's attention. Farther back, clusters of youths strutted in elaborate
silk shirts, snakeskin boots and ten-gallon hats.
"Their songs make your blood rise," said Enrique Dmaz, a 21-year-old
maquiladora worker, reciting the lyrics of his favorite Tucanes song,
"Manos Verdes": "Me Dedico al Negocio Prohibido -- I engage in forbidden
trade."
Rosemary Quiroz, 16, listened with a cluster of her girlfriends from Castle
Park High School in Chula Vista. "You get into the music, the beat makes
you dance," she says, then adds: "What people really think about drugs,
they say it in their songs."
Copyright 1998 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
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Drug Politics In Colombia A Trap For US ('Toronto Star'
Says The United States Is Risking Another Vietnam
By Labelling Columbia Rebels As Narco-Guerillas)
* By labelling rebels narco-guerrillas, America risks
another Vietnam
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:19:46 -0500
From: Carey Ker
Subject: Canada: Drug politics in Colombia a trap for U.S.
To: mattalk@islandnet.com
Newshawk: carey.ker@utoronto.ca
Source: Toronto Star
Contact: LetterToEd@thestar.com
Pubdate: March 30, 1998
Author: Linda Diebel
Drug politics in Colombia a trap for U.S.
* By labelling rebels narco-guerrillas, America risks
another Vietnam
By Linda Diebel
Toronto Star Latin American Bureau
MEXICO CITY - A chill warning came out of the Amazon
jungles of southern Colombia: American soldiers are
going to die.
The threat came from rebel Comandante Fabien Ramirez this
month after his Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) unit attacked one of the Colombian army's crack
battalions.
Eighty-three soldiers were killed, 43 more were captured and
scores were left wounded and unable to be moved to safety
for a week.
Ramirez said U.S. military advisers (usually Special Forces
soldiers) are heading covert counter-insurgency operations
against the rebels, rather than fighting drugs as the United
States is supposed to be doing.
The guerrilla chief spoke to Reuters journalist Karl
Penhaul in an extraordinary interview in a jungle hideout in
Caqueta province. Colombian Air Force bombs pounded the
surrounding hills the whole time.
``The claim that the United States is combatting drugs in
Colombia is a sophism,'' Ramirez said. ``All the military
and economic aid it is giving to the army is to fight the
guerrillas.
``Most (Colombian) battalions have U.S. advisers, so it is
clear that Colombian rage will explode at any moment - and
the objective will be to defeat the Americans.''
The U.S. takes Ramirez seriously. He handed the Colombian
army its worst defeat in 30 years of fighting.
Two weeks ago, a top U.S. general rushed to Bogota for
talks and, in a more and more belligerent mood on Capitol
Hill, Congress is increasing spending to boost Colombia's
armed forces.
Colombia is torn apart by, essentially, a civil war between
government troops and guerrilla groups, among them the
powerful FARC.
Right-wing death squads, shown to be allied to the
Colombian army, have turned the country into a vast killing
field in which hundreds of thousands - mostly innocent
civilians - have perished over the last decade.
The U.S. role in Colombia has been changing rapidly over
the past year. Already, military aid has risen to an
estimated $195 million annually.
And in recent weeks the number of military advisers - from
Green Berets to Navy Seals - has doubled to about 225,
according to reports. (That's only what has been made
public, mostly by human rights groups.)
Analysts now warn of the ``Vietnamization'' of U.S. policy
in Colombia.
They see the same slow escalation - a bit more money, a few
more advisers and trainers, maybe some regular troops - that
led to the U.S. entanglement in Vietnam almost 40 years ago.
``What happens when American boys start coming home in body
bags?'' asked Eduardo Gamarra, of Florida International
University, in a telephone interview. ``The guerrillas are
already saying the American military adviser is a legitimate
target of war. What do you think the U.S. reaction will be
when they start dying?''
Gamarra and others argue that Washington's involvement in
Colombia no longer focuses on the highly touted war on drugs
throughout the hemisphere. U.S. military aid in Colombia can
be spent against rebels only if they are shown to be
narco-traffickers. But that line has been blurred by a
campaign to paint all rebels as narcos.
``In my view, there is already a (U.S.) covert war in
Colombia,'' said Gamarra, ``and that's a very dangerous
proposition.''
Lt.-Col. Byron Conover, from the U.S. Southern Command,
shrugs off the Vietnam comparison. ``We haven't got that
many folks down there,'' he told reporters recently. ``I
don't consider it a Vietnam type of thing.''
At the Washington Office on Latin America, a
non-governmental human rights watchdog, Coletta Youngers
warns that the push to increase the U.S. role in Colombia is
dangerous, for Colombians and Americans.
``By going into Colombia we're exacerbating political
violence,'' she told The Star from Washington. ``We run the
risk of being enmeshed in another civil war with no end in
sight. . . .
``It's jungle warfare and you can look at case after case
when the U.S. slides down this same slippery slope, from
Vietnam to El Salvador.''
Youngers is especially concerned about the U.S. aiding a
military linked to death squads.
In its report, Colombia's Killer Networks, the group Human
Rights Watch/Americas last year documented how the U.S.
defence department and the CIA oversaw a revamping of
military intelligence that created death squads throughout
the country. The squads carry names like ``the
Headcutters.''
In another report, Amnesty International showed that the
United States provided weapons to 13 of 14 Colombian army
units cited for human rights abuses, including the massacre
of civilians.
The Toronto-based InterChurch Committee on Human Rights in
Latin America has criticized the Liberal government for
selling Canadian helicopters to Colombia.
And, after an investigation into ``Colombia's Gringo
Invasion,'' the U.S. magazine Covert Action Quarterly
recently printed top-secret military documents in which U.S.
army lawyers assessed the extent of any public relations
damage over human rights abuses by the Colombian military.
``The U.S. army was more concerned with covering its brass
than stopping abuses,'' concluded the report.
The Colombian military, backed by allies in Congress, has
succeeded in selling the perception that all Colombian
guerrillas are narco-guerrillas. Any war on guerrillas,
therefore, is a war on drugs, which merits the use of U.S.
money and resources.
A case in point: The U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey, a
retired general, says there are 15,000 narco-guerrillas in
Colombia. That happens to match estimates of the total
number of rebels.
``That everybody-is-a-narco strategy is just wrong,'' said
Gamarra, adding he's well aware that ``some rebels are
narcos, just as some soldiers are narcos.
``But, to go in there with the wrong intelligence - a
complete misreading of the real conditions in the country -
can be pretty ridiculous and very dangerous.''
to 1998 Daily News index for March 26-April 1