Weekly Report - 15 November 2012 (WR-12-45)

“I am scared of narco trafficking, not drugs”, President José Mujica of Uruguay said in an interview with BBC Mundo published last weekend. In it, he explains why, despite “being somewhat against” the legalisation of drugs, he eventually promoted that controversial strategy in the small Southern Cone nation. One of the main reasons, he said, was witnessing the increase of violence in Mexico during the presidency of Felipe Calderón – “Mexico shook up my soul”. And while Uruguay still has negligible violence levels when compared with its regional counterparts, Mujica was scared by the rise of crimes that were previously unheard of in the country and which are directly related to the drugs trade, like “settling of scores”.

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