Poor Mexico, so far from God....

Being the eternal oddball that I am the perpetually unlucky nation of Mexico has always held a certain fascination for me. The blame probably rests with any number of Jimmy Buffett songs and old movies making Mexico in my mind an exotic land of adventure and mystery.

When Jimmy, or any of his tropical rock-singing buddies, croons about the country south of the Rio Grande, I think of ocean breezes, beautiful senoritas, and easy living. Given my early onset curmudgeon-like behavior and my growing nausea at anything to do with American culture and politics that alone is enough for me to idle away even more hours dreaming about permanently flying south like some pissed off goose desperately seeking a tequila drenched Margaritaville.

The old movies that influenced me generally portrayed Mexico as a refuge for heroic losers running from bad memories, lovers, or crimes they may or may not have committed. The movie I remember best setting that mood ended with Humphrey Bogart in a white linen suit standing by a balcony overlooking a Mexican beach waiting for the beautiful Lauren Bacall. The two had spent the greater part of the movie set in late 1940’s Los Angeles trying to figure out what Bogart’s amnesia suffering character had done to draw the ire of the local mafia and cops. I only saw that movie once but the closing scene made such an impression that I often imagine myself as a Bogart-like character sitting in some Mexican bar overlooking a tropical beach awaiting a gorgeous woman whenever I need to tuned out the whining of someone bitching about how unfair the universe is to him or her.

Despite these romantic notions idiots like me cling to, Mexico is a country that even in its early years seemed cursed in many ways.  One of my college history professors put it best about Mexico’s misfortune, “Poor Mexico,” he would say with a theatrical air, “so far from God and so close to the United States.” For the 19th century and at least a third of the 20th, our fine neighbors to the north the Canucks had the benefit of the British Empire blunting the worst of American imperial dreams of a true continental Manifest Destiny. Poor Mexico with no powerful protector got close to half of its area sliced off and incorporated into the United States and was damn lucky not to be totally carved up like Poland found itself in the late 18th century.

Adding insult to injury, White Anglo-Saxon Americans have always looked down upon anyone they considered not to their standards and proper ethnic breeding. Over the centuries, this promoted a very high level of American meddling and outright domination of the entire Latin American world. This created enough bad feeling that ultimately the United States had to deal with the likes of Fidel Castro coming to power in Cuba and inviting the Russians to grow a garden of nuclear tipped missiles on their soil. That brouhaha almost toasted the entire planet in a multi-megaton nuclear fire complete with a radioactive fallout icing.

At least we Americans were gracious enough to allow our Mexican neighbors to cross the border and work in the broiling sun picking our vegetables and fruits, clean our nasty toilets, and take care of rich Anglos children allowing them plenty of free time for the country club. Despite the widespread use of this cheap and dependable source of labor padding the pockets of many who would otherwise have to shell out huge bucks paying for American labor we have not always treated these people kindly.

I believe this has largely to do with the fact that we do not want them to stay in this country, if they do it might upset the delicate balance with it getting so bad that daughters might come home to introduce some “Juan” or “Miguel” to daddy while explaining about the growing bulge in her belly.

Well, in the fine tradition of reaping what you sow the United States has once again created a situation that is well on its way to blowing up on our doorstep. And wonder of wonders, those nasty Muslim terrorists that many Morlock-Americans are convinced are out to impose Sharia law on us good Christian folks have nothing to do with it at all.

It all starts with a population here in American that loves to get high on illegal substances, now do not get all defensive or high and mighty, this crosses all ethnic and race lines here in the United States, in short we are the proverbial demand. After that throw in the nation of Colombia, which exports drugs like China ships out electronics and you have a supply anxiously wanting to meet the waiting demand up north.

In the middle, you have Mexico who is now embroiled in a horrific war trying to stop the flow of drugs to the land of the free and the home of the brave. All they are seeing for their efforts to stem the tide is an Afghanistan-like breakdown in society with many government officials dropping everything and running away in hopes of saving the lives of their families and themselves.

Of course, this war is going largely unnoticed here in the United States. Hell, we spend damn little time paying attention to our own ongoing imperial adventures in southwest Asia. We have two-hundred satellite television channels available here with a wide array of shows devoted to the latest in narcissistic celebrity escapades, groveling political pundits, and any sport under the sun. What is it to us that some banana republic is undergoing yet another civil war?

Thank you for asking because I am here to answer that trillion-dollar question.

At one point early in this war, largely inspired to pass the American drug problems on to someone else, it was concentrated in the northern Mexican states along the border with the United States. This has allowed many gringos to sit back and go tisk tisk and push even harder to “build the dang fence” like McCain grumpily complained in his frantic bid to be reelected back in 2010.

Now the violence has begun to spread rapidly throughout the rest of Mexico. For the American assholes who think the world is their private playground and for those for whom Profit is the one true god this chaos will put a big crimp in their vacation plans and cut into the corporate bottom line. Since I consider myself to possess some small fragment of a conscious I get sick to my stomach knowing innocent people are dying and suffering because Americans cannot pull their collective heads out their asses and come up with a more effective way to combat substance abuse. But then again it all goes back to having a relatively informed American public and at least a semi-competent United States government. However, the former is laughable and the latter is something from the realm of extreme science fiction bordering on fantasy.

Since Americans like to live under a cloud of fear and threat there is one avenue I can think of that might goad them into action, if the drug-related violence continues to spread and grow it will ultimately push a wave of refuges northward across the border. The good gringos, ever worried about their tax dollars, will be forced to live up to their supposed Christian credo. They might even have to raise taxes a little cutting into their golf club budget.

Few Americans are even vaguely aware that in Mexico’s last presidential election they came very close to electing their own version of Hugo Chavez. The American backed guy, Felipe Calderon, was able, somehow, to snatch victory from the jaws of electoral defeat but many Mexicans openly questioned his legitimacy. Now I know as sure as God makes little green apples the fair and just United States government would never interfere with another country’s elections but living under a real state of daily terror Mexicans might not want to keep Uncle Sammy satisfied by putting his man in office next time.

God save us from the hysteria that would erupt here in United States if Mexico elected a certified commie unfriendly to American corporate interests, Given the current mindset that may leave our government no choice but to invade and spread "real" democracy again. However, before America goes and does something seriously stupid again, in my humble opinion it would be better for us gringos to rethink our attitudes and policies concerning our fellow North Americans before we have an Afghanistan just on the other side of our southern border.

Enough of my insane rambling, Fred Reed, an American expat living in Mexico has the real scoop on what is going on:

Fred On Everything: Scurrilous Commentary by Fred Reed

An Intrusion of Reality

Never a Good Thing

Things change, usually for the worse, and always against the innocent. (This truth is a principle of curmudgeonry.) When I came to Mexico some eight years ago, it was a peaceful, moderately successful upper-Third-World country—middle-class, barely, literate, though often barely, and as democratic as the United States, which is to say barely. Things were improving, though often they had a long way to go. The young were visibly healthier than preceding generations. The birth rate was in sharp decline. Women entered the professions in substantial and growing numbers. 

And it was safe. Expats sat over coffee at the plaza laughing at people back in the States, insular, fearful, ignorant of the world outside their borders. (For recent college graduates, Mexico is a country south of the United States. “South” is down on maps.) Mexico, they believed, was most astonishing perilous. Don't drink the water, avoid ice. Salads were thought especially lethal. The Federales would kill you for sport, like squirrels. On any given day, you would probably be shot several times by bandidos. It was nonsense. 


Then Vicente Fox left office, and Felipe Calderon came in. He declared war on the narcotraficantes. Why he did this, I don't know, since Mexico didn't have a drug problem. My guess is that Washington pushed him into it, but I don't know.

Unfortunately Mexico, which neither produces nor uses a lot of drugs, lies between Colombia, which produces vast amounts of drugs, and Americans, who want vast amounts of drugs. Washington does not want Americans to have vast amounts of drugs. Neither did it want to lose votes by imprisoning white users of drugs, such as college students, high-school students, professors, Congressmen, lawyers, and blue-collar guys driving bulldozers. The answer was to make Mexico fight Washington's wars.