Mexico, a Failed Country

See the previous article posted on this blog, for which this is an update.

Here in EL Paso (where this is being written), the stories about the violent chaos in Mexico are so frequent as to be numbing. Last week there was the massacre at a bar. Today's radio news report I heard was about an attack, in Juarez, Mexico on a family--man, wife, son--in a jeep. All three were shot--the wife killed and the man and son shot and injured.

Why is this news in El Paso? Well, as stated previously, El Paso is a stone's throw away from Juareze ,Mexico. Except for being in different countries, Juarez and El Paso are sister cities divided only by the Rio Grande and a man-made line on a map denoting the international border. But murder is so common in Juarez these days that the mere attack on one Juarez family might not ordinarily make the news.

This attack made the news in El Paso because the man shot crossed the Rio Grande and ended up at the La Hacienda resturant in El Paso (situated virtually on the U.S. bank of the Rio Grande). The border patrol picked the man up there, and transported him to an El Paso hospital for treatment of a gunshot wound in his arm. What confuses me sometimes is the transport of victims IN MEXIO--on occasioin--for treatment in El Paso, which often means putting people in the country hospital at risk if the Juarez cartels pursue the victims into the El Paso hosital (not yet happened, although extra cost for security is routinely incurred). I understand this case, because the man with the gunshot wound was picked up on American soil. I am not sure why El Paso otherwise accepts victims transported from Mexico (not, of course, the routine case, and this man's son ended up in a Juarez hospital). I digress.

The point is that the violence in Juarez is affecting El Paso in numerous ways. The El Paso City Hall has been hit with stray bullets from across the river. Bullets frin a gun battle in Juarez have caused the shutdown of a major El Paso street, and part of downtown El Paso. UTEP (the state university in El Paso famous for the basketball team that won a national championship under coach Don Haskins--see "Glory Road") has had buildings struck with bullets from across the reiver (meaning the bullets had to cross I-10, which runs for a distance along the Rio Grande in sight of Juarez). I bet you did not know that, if you are travelling to Phoenix or Los Angeles by way of I-10, that you are in some (very minor) danger of being struck by a stray bullet from a gun battle in Juarez. There was a report--never eally confirmed--of a car being struck by a bullet in that gun battle which caused the police to shut down a major border highway (not I-10).

What is amazing about al of this is that El Paso--statistically--is perhaps the SAFEST city of its size in the United States. There were lesss than 10 murders in El Paso in 2010. There were more than 3,000 murdres in Juarez--the city we can see right across the river and which you can walk to from El Paso (across the downtown bridge).

The people of El Paso and Juarez are essentially the same (El Paso being 85% Hispanic). The ONLY real difference between the cities is SYSTEM. One city is in the United States and the other city is in Mexico. You see why I call Mexico--accurately--a FAILED COUNTRY. And yes, every day the possibility exists that the vilence will finallly spread to El Paso--or that a tragedy will occur because of stray bullets from Juarez.