It’s unfortunate that the two presidents chose to hold their May 2-3 summit in Mexico City. Both nations and Presidents Barack Obama and Enrique Peña Nieto would have been better served by a meeting at the border—where the grim reality of neighborly relations would not be masked by the pomp and circumstance of the grand presidential residence of Los Pinos.

You know well that this drug war is useless. We must not permit a public health problem, the problem of drug use, to keep being treated as a matter of national security to be combated by violence. Therefore, on this day in which NACLA celebrates 45 years of struggle for dignity, we invite you to travel with us on the caravan that will leave San Diego, California, on August 12, headed for Washington, DC.

John Gibler's 2011 book, "To Die in Mexico," does not pretend to offer an easy solution to Mexico’s drug war, but the voices of survival and courage in the face of the country’s brutal narco-violence are a testament to the strength of the human soul and a reminder to keep fighting for the change we want to see.

William Brownfield, U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), toured Central America last week to quell the growing opposition to U.S. drug war policies that have failed to reduce demand for drugs in the United States or disrupt supply routes from producer countries.