See previous entries under this heading.
The radio news, as I woke up this morning in El Paso, was AGAIN about the "ongoing violence" in the DRUG WAR going on along the Mexican border (especially in Juarez and surrounding areas, although I may just happen to be more familiar with this area).
Yes, the radio report this morning was about another gunshot victim beinng rushed to an AMERICAN hospital from Columbus, Mexico--the place, I believe, where the POLICE CHIEF sought asylum in the U.S. from about two weeks ago.
The El Paso Times has even begun carrying stories about it being DANGEROUS for people to go to Juarez. You know things are BAD when there start to be warnings about going into Mexico. The economy of El Paso depends a good deal on Mexico, and El Paso hardly wants people to get the idea that Jurarez is a DANGEROUS place to visit. Peoople visiting Juarez generally go through El Paso.
To me, this DETERIORATION along the Mexican border (I have never seen it this bad in the 40 years I have lived in the region) is much more significant than recent RIOTS between teenage street gangs in Mexico (the subject of a Time Magazine article). Punks, metalheads and emos (look it up on Google if you are interested in what that is) have been rioting in Mexican cities--evidently mainly attacks ON emos, although counterdemonstsrations have occurred. However, the teenage "music subculture" gangs seem to me to be yet another symptom of a FAILED COUNTRY.
Mexico is spinning out of control, in a downward spiral. Meanwhile, another recent story here is that Mexico does not know what to do with its oil money!!!!! The oil price rise has been a boon to Mexican oil revenues, but there is no evidence that it has helped the country.
We MUST control the Mexican border. It is not an option. Yet, there appears to still be not much urgency among politicians here (or even most of the public). See my response to the comment uncer the "CBS: "Immigration Nation" entry yesterday.
And the media wonders why 80% of the public supposedly (another useless poll) thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction. I am amazed at that 20%. Problem: Democrat politicians are WORSE than Republicans on this issue, and Republican politicians are pretty bad.
Meanwhile, the national mainstream media is pretty much ignoring the deteriorating situation along the Mexican border (even as it has become almost daily news in El Paso), as they continue their propaganda against any effective action to control illegal immigration or to secure the Mexican border.
This situation just does not look good.
1 comment:
What do you suggest we do to "control the border"? Build bigger fences? Electric fences, perhaps? Fences that char people alive when they touch them? Add more border patrol agents, with bigger guns and orders to shoot first, ask questions later?
You could do all of that, and it would not matter, for the very reason cited in your headline; Mexico is a failed country. People are fleeing Mexico and coming here; they are leaving their families and coming miles and miles to a country they don't know, a language they don't know--they are vulnerable to crime, they are vulnerable to being arrested, they risk losing all contact with their family for a very long time. Ask yourself what people who come here risk, and then ask yourself if anyone can build a fence high enough in the face of that kind of desperation and destitution.
The solution is not to control or beef up the border; it's to help Mexico. Becuase they're our neighbor, becuase no fence big enough can keep desperate people from trying to cross (you would too if you were in that situation and had a family who was depending on you), and becuase the border, at the end of the day, is just an imaginary line; too many things cross borders with little regard for that line (crime, disease, poverty, people, commerce, pollution) for us to fool ourselves into thinking we can simply lock Mexico out.
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