A quick follow-up on the last post about the banners allegedly hung by the Zetas in support of President Otto Pérez' drug legalization proposal in Guatemala:
In brief analysis of the situation from insightcrime.org, that author states that the banners were most likely the work of those wishing to make Pérez look soft on crime. He claims that the Zetas would never support the legalization of drugs because the intent of these policies is to hurt drug traffickers. Although I'm not convinced it was the Zetas who wrote these public notes, I'm not terribly convinced by this argument, either. Drug traffickers won't be happy that transporting drugs in Guatemala would be legal? I'm not saying that it wouldn't lower violence linked to drug trafficking (although who knows, perhaps it would mean higher stakes and stiffer competition for those who control Guatemalan trafficking routes?), but I hesitate to take a stance on this either way, since I don't know the details of Pérez' plan, nor the numbers in terms of how much stays in Guatemala and how much moves on to Mexico and the US. The banners do seem to be more of a hoax than anything else, but saying that the Zetas wouldn't support legalizing drugs just because the policy is intended to hurt drug cartels seems like taking too much on faith. Unintended consequences are a major issue for any public policy, and I'm sure there are forces behind these proposed policies that we don't know about.
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