Guatemala leader to propose legalizing drugs

[happyslug]

19. You are missing one other possibility, the belief that drugs would weaken the demands of the poor

After the Watts Riots (and similar Riots of the African American Communities in the us during the 1960s) the accusation was made that such communities were flooded with hard drugs so that people would start using them, and once using them be to stoned to riot. How true is this is unknown to me, I have NOT seen any records proving it or disproving it, but I bring it up for Guatemala and most of Central and Latin American have seen a huge disparity between the rich and the poor. The poor live in shacks like their Native America Ancestors did when Cortez first conquered Mexico, while the rich live up to the level of Upper Middle Class Americans. Such disparity existed among the Native American Population (and was one of the Reasons Cortez could find allies among the Native American in his conquest of Mexico).

Since the end of the Guatemala Civil War, the economic situation has become worse. During the Civil War, in the effort to separate the peasants from the Revolutionary movement, improvements in Peasant villages were done by the right wing dictatorship, but most such efforts failed to separate the peasants from the revolutionaries.

At the same time, the Rich were taking the land of the Peasants and converting them to cash crops for exports to the US and Europe. This taking of land forced many peasants into the urban areas, which had the side affect of minimizing the support such peasants could give to the rural revolutionaries. With the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba had to cut off what support it was giving to the revolutionaries, so that the revolutionaries agreed to end their fight in exchange for elections and "fair treatment" of themselves and the peasants. In the subsequent elections the left fair poorly, mostly due to less then clean elections, but the left knew that when it signed the peace treaty, the war was NOT helping the peasants and unless the fighting had a chance of improving the positions of the peasants the left saw no reason to continued fighting.

Just pointing out one of the reasons for the Right to Support Drug legalization is a hope that many supporters of the left will instead turn to drugs rather then votes (or guns) to make their life feel "Better". This was the accusations made by African American Militants after the Riots of the 1960s as the price of Heroin dropped in African American Urban Communities. There is strong evidence that the RIGHT WING believe that increase drug use will result from making drugs legal, and that increase use will be mostly by supporters of the left, and thus votes for left wing politicians will decline (Please note, I do NOT accept the concept that legalization will increase drug use, but I am reporting that such increase use is accepted dogma among the right wing and as accepted dogma, could be the reason the right wing politicians are supporting the concept in Latin America).