Mexico's new president wants to try negotiations to lessen drug violence

(Image credit: Manuel Velasquez/Getty Images)

published 2 July 2018

Running on a slogan of "abrazos, no balazos" — "hugs, not gunfire" — Mexico's new President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador is planning a radically new approach to drug violence in his country.

López Obrador argues that more than a decade of militarized response to drug gang violence has been unproductive, and that combating violence with more violence cannot work. "You can't fight fire with fire," he said on the campaign trail, proposing negotiations with drug cartels in pursuit of a "plan for reconciliation and peace," as well as anti-poverty programs to lessen the appeal of smuggling work, potential legalization of some drugs, and perhaps even amnesty for nonviolent drug offenders.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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