I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
About three weeks ago, my sister-in-law and her 21-year-old daughter were waiting in her car for her son to finish his stint as a waiter at a downtown restaurant in Chihuahua City, Mexico. Both women had just been shopping and the car was filled with the clothes and chuchulucos they had bought.
As they sat chatting and waiting for her son to get off his shift, three armed men approached them in the mall parking lot and forced them out of the car at gunpoint. All of her newly-purchased clothes disappeared as the three thugs drove away in her car, leaving the two women shaken but unharmed.
This incident brought home to me in a very personal way the carnage of violence and death that is raging just 270 miles south of Albuquerque, and barely a few minutes’ walk across the border from Santa Teresa, New Mexico.
Yet, New Mexico is home to 330,000- plus Mexicans, according to the Census Bureau’s 2000 estimate. The majority of them are either recent immigrants from Chihuahua, or descendents of Chihuahuenses. Stories like mine about relatives suffering from the generalized violence and crime in Chihuahua state are commonplace today among New Mexico’s Mexicanos.
Rather than share stories about our family celebrations and our last trip down to visit friends and relatives, as we once were accustomed to doing, we now trade tales with other Chihuahuenses of the latest burglary, or carjacking, or assault or murder of one of our loved ones.
The facile response from many of my fellow New Mexicans to the economic, social and political agony Mexico is undergoing is to blame the victim. It is Mexicans who are creating the problem, they say. It’s that Mexico is a corrupt state, they argue. And I’ve heard the usual ration of jingoistic and xenophobic claptrap as well.
The North American summit getting under way today in Guadalajara, Mexico, with President Obama personally attending, will undoubtedly draw attention to the rash of violence currently plaguing our southern border.
But many Americans tend to react to the U.S.-Mexico issue as if we are the injured party when it comes to our relationship with Mexico. But we all know that it takes two to tango and our long and complicated relationship with Mexico is no exception to the two-to-tango rule.
Where, for example, is the discussion about the fact that U.S. citizens are consuming such massive quantities of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs that we are almost singlehandedly keeping the narco-empires in business?
Where is the in-depth and thoughtful reflection on our economy’s critical need for reliable human labor from Mexico since the mid 1800s? Or that is has been in our economic interest to ensure that Mexico continue to maintain an economy totally dependent on our economic needs?
Where is the debate about the need for a hemispheric solution to border issues with Mexico that includes a fundamental reform of both the U.S. and Mexican economic models?
While we vigilantly guard the border against Mexicans attempting to cross — armed with picks and shovels desperately looking for work — we conveniently ignore the assault rifles and automatic weapons pouring into Mexico to arm criminals and narco-traffickers (thank you NRA) in their war against civil society.
Instead, former President Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress gave us the border fence. And it appears that President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress will give us more of the same. Since 2006, Congress has set aside $2.7 billion to build 700 miles of fence along our country’s 1,900-mile border with Mexico.
Unfortunately, logic and common sense will likely not enter into the ongoing discussions about how best to solve the critical issues Mexico and the U.S. now jointly face. To be sure, the Mexican government has historically been a major reason why Mexicans suffer so much today; Mexico has consistently been betrayed by its political and business elites since the country’s inception.
Still, I can only hope that someday soon, Mexico and the United States will find a long-term solution to the agony occurring just down the road from us by leaving emotion and idiotic politics aside, embracing instead a healthy partnership filled with a dose of common sense and a sharp focus on regional economic reform.
I would also hope that the United States would look closely at its own deep societal fractures and seek a solution to the massive drug culture that has swamped our country in hopelessness and despair.
But I may be asking way too much.
