• PETITION: US family members of November 7 massacre in Northern Mexico have launched an official petition to the White House asking the Department of State label the Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations given the atrocities they commit south of the border.
• REQUIREMENTS: In order to merit a response from the White House, the online petition launched by Bryan LeBaron -cousin of one of the women killed in a remote community in the state of Sonora- has to gather at leas 99,000 signatures but the process will bring the issue into the public debate.
• TEXT: “Each year, there are approximately 35% more murders committed in Mexico than by all officially designated terrorist groups combined. We cannot afford to continue the same failed policies used to combat organized crime. They are terrorists, and it’s time to acknowledge it!”, says the petition.
• CAPITOL: Earlier this year in February, two Republican congressmen (Mark Green-TN and Chip Roy-TX) penned a letter to Secretary of State asking the US Government to label Mexican drug cartels as terrorist given they use “barbaric tactics including those adopted by ISIS and Al Qaeda”.
