Mexico – Failed State
Bribery has been the semiofficial system in Mexico for many years. If you needed for a government worker to simply do his job, you paid him a small bribe, some grease. If you needed to achieve results more quickly, you applied more grease. Of course this system favors the wealthy, and it destroys the idea of rule-of-law. Inefficiency and corruption thrive, accountability becomes nonexistent.
The judicial system in Mexico simply does not function. Take 100 serious crimes, like murder or rape. Maybe 2 or 3 are even investigated – the rest are just ignored. Take 100 of these investigations and only about 2 or 3 result in arrests. Once people are arrested they are tortured until they confess, they they are exhibited to the media, but out of 100 only 2 or 3 of them actually go to trial...the rest are released; especially if some grease is applied strategically. Very few people get convicted in a trial, and once in jail you find that the rich mobsters run the place, not the government authorities.
We are now beginning to see where such as system of dishonesty and corruption eventually leads. And we are just in the early phases. The drugs mafias clearly have the upper hand over the government. We are seeing a mass exodus from the country – both of human resources and money. I have recently seen Mexican Government numbers saying that 40% of homes in Juarez have now been abandoned.
Corpses which have had their hands, heads, and/or testicles cut off are hung by their feet from freeway overpasses almost daily. Normally there is a big hand painted sign nearby with some sort of a message from the killers to whoever they are especially pissed off at. Mass murders at teenage birthday parties are fairly common. The thriving and growing new profession in Mexico is kidnapping. Attractive girls are now becoming hit men for these narco mafias. Car bombings activated by cell phone have now begun in Mexico; the first was in Juarez.
Within the last few weeks stray bullets coming out of Juarez, Mexico have hit the El Paso City Hall and the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso. An American car driving by close to the border had his car shot, and kidnappings have begun here in El Paso. The El Paso Police had to close down a highway next to the border until the shootout was finished.
What does America need to do? If we legalized marijuana it might help a little, but the Mexican mafias have now begun diversifying away from just drugs and prostitution into much wider criminal enterprises like extortion and kidnapping.
It should not come as a surprise to anyone that many of the law abiding Anglo citizens of America are becoming quite intolerant of the Mexican culture and language. They see the same types of dishonesty and corruption spreading in America wherever large numbers of Mexican immigrants are settling. The Arizona backlash against illegal immigration by Mexicans should have been expected, and in some ways is almost logical.
I went into Walmart over the weekend. I asked the greeter to point me in the direction of sporting goods. She could not speak any English, at all. The greeter! Since I happen to be fluent in Spanish I asked her a second time speaking Spanish. She gave me good directions. I guess 10% -15% of the cars I see on the road in El Paso, Texas USA now either have Mexican license plates, or no license plates at all. Just total and complete disrespect for the idea of rule-of-law. Black SUVs with blacked out windows are becoming common. Very few of the TV and radio stations in El Paso broadcast in English; most now are entirely in Spanish, as are most of the newspapers.
On a personal level, I have a state issued license to carry a concealed firearm, and I am always armed when I leave the house. But this is just whistling past the graveyard. The big question is What does America Need To Do? What actions will be effective while being the least brutal?
Should we invade Mexico, then using Caterpillar bulldozers clear a strip of land one mile wide; a sort of No Man's Land? A free fire zone. Close off all trade with Mexico? We can take some of Obama's 50,000 non-combat troops out of Iraq and use them, their helicopters, and their armored vehicles to help patrol this no man's land.
Obviously this sort of extreme reaction seems completely out of line for a modern, civilized Democracy. Most of the Mexicans I have know over the last 60 years were fine people. Unfortunately just like with the Muslims, these decent people in the majority did not have the strength of character to weed out the corruption and the bad guys. It now is completely out of control and is overwhelming the entire country and the Mexican culture.
Americans have the right and the duty to protect ourselves from this cultural invasion of brutality, dishonesty, and corruption. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to reign in the bad elements of the Mexican culture.
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