Pubdate: Wed, 01 Sep 2010
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2010 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: 
http://www.sacbee.com/2006/09/07/19629/submit-letters-to-the-editor.html
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Marcos Breton
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/Area/Mexico
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

WE'RE PART OF MEXICO'S DRUG WAR

It sometimes seems that California is sharing a border with Iraq or 
Afghanistan instead of Mexico.

A war is in our midst, though the carnage and militarization in 
Mexico and our connection to it  is often background noise.

So in case you missed it: Reuters is reporting that beginning today, 
the U.S. government will deploy surveillance aircraft  Predator B 
drones  to monitor the approximately 1,900 miles of border Mexico 
shares with the United States.

Where commercials once extolled "The Warmth of Mexico," now there is 
the horror of Mexico. Corpses of 72 migrants were found last week in 
the northern border state of Tamaulipas. A survivor told of being 
abducted by drug cartels that executed the migrants one by one and 
stacked their remains in a barn.

A state investigator probing the massacre has disappeared. A 
Tamaulipas mayor was recently murdered, his 6-year-old daughter 
wounded by gunfire. Two car bombs exploded in Ciudad Victoria, the 
capital of Tamaulipas. Explosives went off in the city of Reynosa, 
directly across from McAllen, Texas.

In all, roughly 28,000 people have been killed in the three years 
since Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on Mexico's 
ominous drug cartels.

What a tragedy.

Mexico is so close to our daily lives and yet so far from our daily thoughts.

When we focus at all it's in election season silliness, as when 
former Gov. Pete Wilson goes out to beat the immigration drum in 
support of Meg Whitman, the GOP candidate for governor.

Wilson infamously rode immigrant hostility all the way to re-election 
in 1994. Considering the ocean of Mexican blood spilled by fighting 
drug lords doing business in California and every other state, the 
scapegoating of Mexico today is even more cynical than it was in '94.

I covered the Mexican elections that year for The Bee, when Mexico 
was still a one-party dictatorship deserving of scorn. It's now a 
fledgling democracy with opposition parties and progressive initiatives.

Calderon recognized that drug lords had permeated every institution 
in the nation. For any democracy to be taken seriously, its 
institutions must be taken seriously.

In this context, the push to legalize marijuana in California is an 
insult to Mexico. The fantasy that murderers will somehow go legit if 
their product is legalized is a joke.

What? Cartels that think nothing of slaughtering children will change 
their ways because suddenly their wares are legal?

It's a stoner's pipe dream. Meanwhile, Mexicans fight to protect 
their institutions and pay for our addictions with their blood.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom