Mexico Needed a Wall against the US Gift that Keeps on Giving: US Guns

 

One of the biggest reasons people are fleeing their homes south of the border is violence born of drug trafficking… and the politicians’ drug money, most of which comes from users in the United States, that feeds their outstretched hands. We forget little things like MS 13, now heavily focused in El Salvador, that was actually born in the streets of Los Angeles and spread by California’s gang-infested prison system. We also forget that the narco-traffickers control their fiefdoms, often entire countries with the millions of US firearms that were bought easily in the US and then even more easily smuggled south. Cops, military officers, politicians, even entire police departments, bought and thoroughly paid for by US users. Cartels are happy to close the final mile.

But for those not banging on our southern border seeking asylum, those who remain behind and are not facing drought-damaged farms that no long produce crops… who just want to live in the country of the birth… life is often very tenuous. There are ways to deal with this violence – none of which is about US forces invading Mexico and killing cartel members off (remember Afghanistan and the heroin traffickers we never stopped?) – (i) accept and counter it or (ii) change the reported statistics. As Patrick J. McDonnell and Cecilia Sánchez Vidal, writing for the January 1st Los Angeles Times, noted… with Presidential elections looming over Mexico… that: “Mexico’s violence is a key issue for voters… For many Mexicans, it was difficult to square the headlines with official statistics showing that homicides are on the decline.

“Mexico had 32,323 homicides in 2022, down 9.7% from 2021, according to the government, which has reported that killings were on pace to fall another 9% in 2023. The total is about 50% higher than it was a decade ago.” But few believe the declining numbers. Mass shootings, massacres actually, are rather common. Narco-cartels exterminating competitors… and their families and sometime even the local villager to show who’s boss. In December, one more example of unrestrained urban warfare produced on attack of at “least 195 shells expended in the Dec. 10 assault, which left 11 people dead….

“The attack was one of three high-profile massacres last month in Guanajuato state, an industrial and agricultural hub that in recent years has mutated into a battleground for organized crime. With the country preparing for national elections in June, it was not surprising that the violence quickly became politicized… ‘This barbarism cannot continue,’ Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz, the leading opposition candidate for president, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. ‘An urgent change is needed to the security policy of the federal government.’

“Taking aim at President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his strategy to fight crime with ‘hugs not bullets’ by improving economic and educational opportunities, Gálvez continued: ‘Enough with hugs for the criminals and bullets for the young people.’” LA Times. Convoys of bullet proof vehicles ferry mega-wealthy Mexicans, with their very well-armed guards, from their armed fortresses they call home. Protecting politicians, especially those in the lower reaches of any administration, often misses more than a few here or there. And journalists? They have a life expectancy only slightly longer than their counterparts in Gaza.

“Nationwide, more than 90% of homicides go unsolved… Many of the victims of the recent violence ‘belong to a generation that has spent all of their lives in the middle of a lost war,’ wrote columnist Salvador Camarena in the newspaper El Financiero, referring to a battle against drug cartels that began in 2006 and is widely blamed for sparking a massive rise in homicides. ‘All they have heard about are cartels, massacres, police, soldiers, kidnappings’....

“Polls have indicated that insecurity is the major worry of Mexican voters before this year’s elections, which include balloting for a new president… Perhaps nowhere is that more true than in the state of Guanajuato, which once stood out as an island of relative calm. General Motors, Mazda and Toyota make autos here, and U.S. tourists and retirees flock to the leafy enclave of San Miguel de Allende.

“Now the state has the fourth-highest homicide rate in the country, with a total of 4,256 killings in 2022, or 68 for every 100,000 residents. Though that figure is down 20% from 2020, it is well over double the national rate and nearly seven times the rate for Los Angeles.” LA Times. Guanajuato reported a recent spate that killed 100 people in 7 days, according to the Yucatan Times (6/26/2020). What’s even worse about all this is that Mexico is hardly the worst of the lot. Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have proportionately worse statistics.

But specific gang wars can ramp up death and destruction in bullet-ridden competition. “Across Guanajato, a local crime syndicate known as the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel has been engaged in a bloody turf war with the much larger Jalisco New Generation cartel… The rivals battle for control of contraband gasoline, local methamphetamine markets and dominion over drug-smuggling routes leading north to the United States.” LA Times. Ah yes, that same United States that blames those running for their lives seeking asylum in the very nation that caused this mess, where pressures to close the border completely have become a cause célèbre among the pro-gun House Freedom Caucus MAGA uber-rightwing, constantly holding the House of Representatives hostage for their many absurd demands.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for those anti-“woke” Republicans telling their compatriots to “man-up,” I would suggest that taking responsibility for your actions, whether as a former president attempting to overturn an election by inciting violence or legislators opposing gun control and appointing judges to issues highly expanded rules permitting guns everywhere, of almost every kind, almost all the time… is the “man-up” they really need to implement.