Calderon rival has new answer to the drug war

[naaman fletcher]

Uh oh, the U.S. isn't going to like this!

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/mexico/111116/calderon-drug-war-lopez-obrador-pena-nieto

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — The death toll in Mexico’s drug war has topped 50,000 in five years. Soldiers and marines are accused of widespread human rights abuses. Officials have been assassinated or died in mysterious air crashes.

But the whole mess can be cleared up in the first six months of a new administration. At least, that's the campaign pledge of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the silver-haired presidential hopeful of the Mexican left.

Lopez Obrador, also known as “El Peje” after a tough fish from his native state of Tabasco, has jumped into the drug-war debate this week after winning the candidacy of three leftist parties for the 2012 presidential race.

A lifelong defender of Mexico’s poor and downtrodden, the 58-year-old Lopez Obrador argues that soldiers should be sent back to their barracks and replaced by social workers and jobs.