Pubdate: Sun, 17 Oct 2010
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2010 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo
Note: Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo is a novelist and historian.
Note: Translated by Kristina Cordero from the Spanish.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Mexico
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Marijuana)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

MONTERREY'S HABIT

Monterrey, Mexico - INVISIBLE paths to the United States, it seems, 
have always passed through Monterrey. People and their merchandise 
come and go via paved roads and dusty lanes, but also through the 
famous little walkways, somewhere between manicured and overgrown, 
that are hidden among the thickets of underbrush.

Increasingly, Mexico has a hidden drug problem - but it's not 
entirely the kind that you'd think. And the traffic won't stop until 
it's exposed.

As early as the 1940s, the local newspapers were reporting on 
captured smugglers. Those going north to the United States 
transported humans (generally seasonal farm workers) and substances 
for attaining those "artificial paradises" that so fascinated the 
French poetes maudits of the late 19th century. The other group, 
those going south, could bring almost anything they fancied into the 
country - you could bring a building into Mexico, people joked, as 
long as it fit under the bridge. And they knew, though they talked 
about it only in hushed tones, that quite a bit of money was being made.

I grew up thinking that "sardos," the lowest-ranking members of the 
army, were the only Mexicans who smoked marijuana. But by the 1960s, 
the hippie generation had popularized pot, and during my university 
years several of my classmates smoked. As for harder drugs, few of us 
knew anything more than what we saw in the movies; only in the 1970s 
did we become aware of psychotropic pills that "drove you crazy."

Around then, popular music, always a reliable witness, began to 
recount the stories of people transporting drugs beyond the Rio 
Grande. With each decade, the songs got more and more explicit. 
"Camelia la Tejana," one of the most emblematic, is about a woman 
whose car tires were "filled with the evil weed." It ends with a 
shooting death. But soon, lyricists stopped killing off their 
antiheroes. Drug trafficking became an adventure story, or a comedy: 
in one famous song, smugglers disguised as nuns traded "white powder" 
they swore was just powdered milk.

Still, we didn't think of drugs as our problem. In Monterrey over the 
years we sang about them, sure, we even smoked them - but we kept 
insisting they were only passing through, north to the Americans. We 
saw the construction going on in Monterrey, the new fortunes, and we 
knew the phrase "money laundering," but we looked the other way.

After 9/11, the drug industry became harder to ignore. From then, day 
in and day out, the news media reported on the border: on 
interceptions of huge marijuana and cocaine shipments, dozens of 
deaths caused by warring gangs and stories of coercion and corruption 
among government authorities and policemen.

And still the habit grew, among the young and not-so-young, though it 
was always denied, never admitted. In certain neighborhoods here, it 
was said, absolutely anything could be gotten.

We have come face to face with the violence associated with the 
business, we acknowledge it. But we don't acknowledge our own drug 
problems. If those secret paths from south to north passed through 
some other country, some other state, perhaps Monterrey wouldn't have 
the drug traffic it has today. But people here also buy and consume 
these paradise-inducing substances.

By ignoring this, we only put off learning the magnitude of our own 
addiction. There can be no solution until we come to terms with the 
truth. And after that, who knows?
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake