We might have to build that border fence - and man it with a lot of troops - faster than we think:
ZIHUATANEJO, Mexico -- Andres Sauzo collects newspapers, astoundingly grisly newspapers.
There's the one with the close-up shot of a severed human head. There's the one with the wide-angle of a man hacked to death with a machete.
But the worst in his bulky archive of drug-war gore rolled off the presses the day after someone found pieces of what used to be Sauzo's 24-year-old namesake. A hit man had decapitated Sauzo's son, then chopped off his arms and legs. The killer was so unconcerned about being brought to justice that he scrawled his own name and nickname -- "El Barby" -- on a note left with the mutilated corpse.
Still, Sauzo's mother, Cristina Gomez, didn't bother to go to the police. "Why waste my time?" she said in an interview. "This is the way it is in a town without laws."...
...While Mexico's government has struggled to contain drug violence, it is also contending with the anger, frustration and increasingly brazen actions of the poor in a country where 40 percent of the population lives in poverty.
In the past few months, a large federal police force has tried, and failed, to corral the armed bandits and hordes of protesters occupying the city of Oaxaca. A handful of bombs apparently placed by groups sympathetic to the Oaxaca protesters have exploded across Mexico City, including one that shredded part of the country's electoral tribunal building.
It was a little less than a century ago that Mexico fell in to revolution and civil war - a period of horrific barbarism which eventually resulted in Mexico volunteering to put itself under the corrupt rule of the PRI for decades. When the PRI unravelled over the past 20 years, there was no sufficiently strong national Party to take over, and so Mexico has drifted - still shackled to the corrupt PRI economic policies which keep Mexico poor, as well as the political cowardice which has given a "wink, wink; nudge, nudge" ok to shipments of illegals and drugs across the border in to the United States...with the Mexican politicians who allowed this to happen never thinking that the cartels who controlled this trade would ever turn on their Mexican government protectors.
There is precisely nothing the United States can do for Mexico in this case - if Mexico falls, then it will have to be Mexicans who pick up the pieces and put it back together. Our job will be to provide what humanitarian assistence we can, but also to seal our borders tight lest 20 million Mexicans try to flee the collapse of their nation.
Posted by Mark Noonan at November 29, 2006 12:42 PM
Comments
Leave Mexico to stew in its own juice (they have oil too, yah know), but we have to baby sit Iraq through a civil war?
Maybe we can build a big fence around Iraq too.
Posted by: Salvelinus at November 29, 2006 01:26 PM
Mark:
If a half-dozen murders in a month, let's say, and "handful" of bombs that destroy a single building is a warning of impending civil war, Iraq must well be into a major civil war.
Right?
Wade
Posted by: Wade at November 29, 2006 01:36 PM
Salvelius, there are some important differences between Iraq and Mexico.
The Iraq violence is, to some extent, the result of our invasion, which makes it our responsibility, whereas the Mexican violence is the result of their own internal problems.
We were already in Iraq before the sectarian violence broke out. We are not currently occupying Mexico.
Iraq is not sending millions of illegal migrants into the U.S., who trespass on private property, dump millions of pounds of solid waste into the environment, and send millions of dollars back home. (The term "millions" is NOT an exaggeration.)
A large portion of the illegal drugs in the U.S. come in through Mexico, as Mark noted, and not from Iraq.
A wall around Iraq would not be to keep the Iraqis in Iraq, and thus out of the U.S., but to keep Syrians, Iranians and Saudis (the so-called "foreign fighters") out of Iraq. (There's no wall, but we've built some border forts, which you won't find the MSM reporting.)
Posted by: Bigfoot at November 29, 2006 02:12 PM
Salve,
Bigfoot said most of it - but you've really got to think about this:
Intervention prior to a civil war - rejected by all sides in Mexico.
Intervention after civil war starts - rejected by the American people.
When I say there is precisely nothing we can do, it is just a recognition that the Mexican situtation is not amenable to any reasonable action on the part of the United States.
As for building the fence - that is to prevent any future Pancho Villa events like that which led us to intervene in Mexico in 1916.
I hope that the political ability arises in Mexico to nip this in the bud - but it doesn't seem to be there; if you think we're divided politically here in the US...well, we're in a left/right love fest compared to the animosities which have built up between the political factions in Mexico.
Posted by: Mark Noonan at November 29, 2006 04:17 PM
Those are rival drug cartel killings in Mexico not political killings. I don't think the drug cartels really want to take the place of the government. They like things just like they are, weak, corrupt government agencies that they can manipulate for their own benefit. The Mexican political system is actually very similar to ours and so are the freedoms they enjoy.
To tie all this back to Iraq and terrorists (as with everything), I have heard tales of terrorist training camps and terrorists crossing the porous border to attack us here. Why do the terrorists not attack Mexico? Mexico is an example of everything the terrorists are attacking in the US.
"They hate our freedom", Mexicans enjoy every freedom we have in the US. "They hate us because of our religion", Mexico is closer to a homogeneous Christian country than the US (large % Catholic). If the terrorists are in Mexico, why no attacks?
Posted by: Aztec at November 29, 2006 04:48 PM
I worry about Mexico. I worry about what they're gonig to do in the future. I would ask anyone with ideas on how we could possibly help to let share.
Posted by:
Gozer at November 29, 2006 10:24 PM
I wouldn't worry too moch about Mexico. I spend about 40 weekends a year in Mexico and the country is not falling apart. There are some protests going on by the party that narrowly lost the last election. The main thing Mexico needs is a stronger police force to combat the drug trafficking. This is improving albeit very slowly. The drug cartels use money and force to coerce officials as needed and it is difficult for the officials to resist this. Their choices are take the bribe or get killed in some instances. This makes things sould much worse than they are. The average citizen is never involved and the drug cartels like it that way. Mostly only the higher up officials have any value to the cartels.
Posted by: Aztec at November 30, 2006 11:25 AM
Please report any inappropriate comments to abuse (at) blogsforbush (dot) com. Be sure to include the title of the blog entry, the name of the commenter, and the text of the offending comment.
Post a comment
Leave Mexico to stew in its own juice (they have oil too, yah know), but we have to baby sit Iraq through a civil war?
Maybe we can build a big fence around Iraq too.
Mark:
If a half-dozen murders in a month, let's say, and "handful" of bombs that destroy a single building is a warning of impending civil war, Iraq must well be into a major civil war.
Right?
Wade
Salvelius, there are some important differences between Iraq and Mexico.
The Iraq violence is, to some extent, the result of our invasion, which makes it our responsibility, whereas the Mexican violence is the result of their own internal problems.
We were already in Iraq before the sectarian violence broke out. We are not currently occupying Mexico.
Iraq is not sending millions of illegal migrants into the U.S., who trespass on private property, dump millions of pounds of solid waste into the environment, and send millions of dollars back home. (The term "millions" is NOT an exaggeration.)
A large portion of the illegal drugs in the U.S. come in through Mexico, as Mark noted, and not from Iraq.
A wall around Iraq would not be to keep the Iraqis in Iraq, and thus out of the U.S., but to keep Syrians, Iranians and Saudis (the so-called "foreign fighters") out of Iraq. (There's no wall, but we've built some border forts, which you won't find the MSM reporting.)
Salve,
Bigfoot said most of it - but you've really got to think about this:
Intervention prior to a civil war - rejected by all sides in Mexico.
Intervention after civil war starts - rejected by the American people.
When I say there is precisely nothing we can do, it is just a recognition that the Mexican situtation is not amenable to any reasonable action on the part of the United States.
As for building the fence - that is to prevent any future Pancho Villa events like that which led us to intervene in Mexico in 1916.
I hope that the political ability arises in Mexico to nip this in the bud - but it doesn't seem to be there; if you think we're divided politically here in the US...well, we're in a left/right love fest compared to the animosities which have built up between the political factions in Mexico.
Those are rival drug cartel killings in Mexico not political killings. I don't think the drug cartels really want to take the place of the government. They like things just like they are, weak, corrupt government agencies that they can manipulate for their own benefit. The Mexican political system is actually very similar to ours and so are the freedoms they enjoy.
To tie all this back to Iraq and terrorists (as with everything), I have heard tales of terrorist training camps and terrorists crossing the porous border to attack us here. Why do the terrorists not attack Mexico? Mexico is an example of everything the terrorists are attacking in the US.
"They hate our freedom", Mexicans enjoy every freedom we have in the US. "They hate us because of our religion", Mexico is closer to a homogeneous Christian country than the US (large % Catholic). If the terrorists are in Mexico, why no attacks?
I worry about Mexico. I worry about what they're gonig to do in the future. I would ask anyone with ideas on how we could possibly help to let share.
I wouldn't worry too moch about Mexico. I spend about 40 weekends a year in Mexico and the country is not falling apart. There are some protests going on by the party that narrowly lost the last election. The main thing Mexico needs is a stronger police force to combat the drug trafficking. This is improving albeit very slowly. The drug cartels use money and force to coerce officials as needed and it is difficult for the officials to resist this. Their choices are take the bribe or get killed in some instances. This makes things sould much worse than they are. The average citizen is never involved and the drug cartels like it that way. Mostly only the higher up officials have any value to the cartels.