The Drug War Becomes Personal



Julian Le Barón lives in the Mormon community of Galeana, Chihuahua.  He has had multiple family members tortured and murdered in the insane War on Drugs.

The endless War on Drugs
“Trying to combat drugs with violence is turning Mexico into a graveyard.”


The insane "War on Drugs" goes on and on providing full employment for lawyers, prosecutors and police . . . but only death and suffering to everyone else.

Americans do not bat an eye as millions of people from Rush Limbaugh to Michael Jackson use or sometimes even get addicted to so-called "legal" drugs given out by a doctor's order through a pharmacy.  But if people dare to consume non-government approved drugs then a "war" is declared.  The legal drugs result in only a small amount of crime, but those "illegal" drugs fund billionaire cartels of violent drug lords.

Here is a drug war story that puts a face to the mass killings.

Julian Le Barón lives in the Mormon community of Galeana, Chihuahua. A group of pecan farmers, relatively wealthy for the area, Colonia Le Barón became a target for kidnappings for ransom and extorsion two years ago.

Julian’s brother Benjamin started a movement in defense of the community after a younger brother, Erick, was kidnapped. The community refused to pay the $1 million ransom and got Erick released. They began to organize to protect the community and investigate and prosecute criminals. Benjamin Le Barón, a natural leader and Bishop of the local church, led the movement.

On July 7, 2009, men dressed as soldiers entered Benjamin’s house, tortured him and carried him off with his brother-in-law, who had come over to help. Both were brutally assassinated.

Julian Le Barón:   “Two years have gone by–we’ve made our declarations, we’ve done everything they asked us to on our part and there isn’t a single person sentenced for this crime. Or any other crime in my family–I have a brother-in-law assassinated, an uncle assassinated, another brother-in-law kidnapped, my brother was kidnapped, I was beaten by hitmen and my brother Benjamin was assassinated.”

"The state government gathered the evidence then announced that the federal government was in charge. Since the funeral of his brother, state government officials have not returned to the community."

On the Drug War and Prohibitionist Policies:

“There are other institutions, I don’t think that you can use a rifle to assure morality in a society. It isn’t the way to confront the problem. It has been a disaster, said Le Baron.

“They tried to prohibit alcohol in the United States for twelve years, from 1920 to 1932 and it was a total disaster. The most popular president in the history of the United States, the only one to be president for three terms, the first thing he did was to lift the prohibition on alcohol. It’s a huge business for many people.

“I don’t understand why in this society we have tolerated 40,000 of our brothers and sisters assassinated.

We are here to move consciences, to begin to see the magnitude of the genocide, of the Mexican holocaust.

“You can’t use the army to have morality in a community. It isn’t the right institution. We need hospitals, schools and family; we need churches and other institutions.

“Benjamin Le Baron was 33 years old when he was tortured and murdered. His death left five children behind, all under the age of seven. Luis Widmer went over to help him when he heard the noise… and he was brutally assassinated. My brother Erick was 16 when he was kidnapped.

“Trying to combat drugs with violence is turning Mexico into a graveyard.”

The Mormon Colony

"All we want to do is live in peace. We want nothing to do with the drug cartels. They can't be stopped. What we want is just to protect ourselves from being kidnapped and killed," said Marco LeBaron, a college student who came home for the funeral of his brother, the slain anti-crime activist. Marco LeBaron is one of 70 Mormons who have volunteered to join a rural police force to protect the town. The Mexican government has given them permission to arm themselves.

For all the violence swirling around them, the Mormons have mostly stayed out of the fight. Their ancestors first settled in Mexico in the 1880s, during the reign of dictator Porfirio Diaz, who offered the religious outcasts refuge from the harassment and prosecution they faced in the United States for their polygamist lifestyles. Some men in Colonia LeBaron and surrounding towns continue to follow what early Mormon prophets called "the Principle," marrying multiple wives and having dozens of children, though the custom here is fading. Polygamy was banned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the official Mormon Church, in 1890.

The Mormon community based in Colonia LeBaron, numbering about 1,000, has one motel, two grocery stores and lots of schools. There are no ATMs and no liquor sales. Many Mormons are conspicuous not only for their straw-colored hair and pale skin, but also for their new pickup trucks, large suburban-style homes with green front lawns, and big tracts of land for their pecans and cattle. They are wealthy, by the standards of their poor Mexican neighbors. Most of the Mormon men make their money working construction jobs in the United States.

 At the LeBaron funeral, attended by more than 2,000 people, including the Chihuahua state governor and attorney general, Benji's uncle Adrian LeBaron said, "The men who murdered them have no children, no parents, no mother. They are the spawn of evil."    (Arizona Daily Star)

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