I'm going to start writing about the US-Mexico border. It is not an easy thing to do. Nothing on the border is straightforward or clear-cut. The US government lies, the Mexican government lies, the MSM doesn't get it. This being the case, there is a good deal of confusion about border issues on this site and in this country. The Right scores political points, and wins elections, by sowing, and then taking advantage of, further confusion. Many on the Right are overt racists. The Left, reacting to the racism, sees border issues as being primarily about race and in so doing often weakens its own credibility. My goal is to bring some objectivity, some clarity, to the discussion, insofar as that is possible. I ask for a sympathetic reading and the benefit of the doubt. I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood.
The Six Lies presented here are taken from Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields by Charles Bowden, Nation Books, NY, 2010. Mr. Bowden is my favorite source on border issues. He knows more about the border than anyone else I can think of and he's a damned fine writer. If you're not reading him, you should be.
Here then, are the Six Lies, with some commentary of my own:
Lie #1
That the president of Mexico is fighting a war against drug cartels. This is nonsense. Over forty thousand Mexicans are now dead, almost all of them poor people. Their murders have not been investigated, and the only thing really known about these people is that they are no longer alive. In the meantime, the drug industry has not been touched - there is no shortage of drugs in the United States and no price rise. If the industry were touched, Mexico would become an economic ruin, since the $30 to $50 billion a year it earns in foreign currency is the largest single source in the Mexican economy. This is a war for drugs, not against it.
There's a reason he led off with this one. It's important to understand. The Mexican government doesn't want the drug trade to end, they want their share of the proceeds. A very orderly, if thoroughly corrupt, system broke down with the election of PAN candidate Vincente Fox in 2000. When Mexico was a one-party state under the PRI, everybody knew their place, the business was smooth. Now, with other parties in power and state and local governments no longer automatically loyal to the president, it's wide open. This is what the "Drug War" is all about. It may also be the case that the Calderón government has sided with one of the cartels against the others. You rarely read about members of the Sinaloa gang being taken down and the government has announced an offensive against the Zetas, close allies of the Gulf Cartel. Oh, the second biggest source of foreign currency ? Remittances from Mexican citizens working in the US.
Lie #2
That NAFTA is a success. Wages in maquiladoras peaked around 1983 and in real pesos have steadily declined since then. Workers in Juárez earn forty to sixty dollars a week, a slave wage. Since NAFTA's passage, the largest migration on earth has streamed out of Mexico as the treaty crushed peasant agriculture and small industry.
I don't think anyone on this site is going to disagree with this one. With the effects of the FSMA and the CFMA now clear, it's hard to tell if NAFTA was the worst thing Bill Clinton ever did, but it's up there. Note also the phrase "the largest migration on earth." Clinton-era Border Patrol policies funneled this migration through Southern Arizona (Thanks again Bill). We're taking one for the team, I suppose, suffering environmental devastation and giving wingnut politicians something to run on so the rest of the country can have the cheap labor and drugs they seem to require.
Lie 3#
That the Mexican army is fighting the drug industry. Under Plan Mérida, the United States gives Mexico half a billion dollars a year, mainly for the army. This has resulted in mass murder and government death squads, all while the flow of drugs continues north unabated. In over three years, the army has lost maybe two hundred soldiers - this does not include the tens of thousands who have deserted to the drug industry - and thousands of complaints have been filed by Mexicans against them for robbery, rape, torture, extortion, kidnapping and murder. The recent seizure of 134 tons of marijuana in Tijuana means exactly this: that the product of one harvest from eight-nine acres has been burned (well, maybe burned - we only know that something is burning in the photographs). Seizures of heroin and cocaine, the really money products of the drug industry, have been miniscule.
The Mexican army is a criminal organization. It is possible that a sort of coup has taken place and the army no longer answers to the civilian government. Again, it's about the drug money. It looks like the army may be just another drug gang.
Lie #4
That violence is spilling over the border. This lie is beneath contempt but not beneath being used by the American political class. U.S. border communities have had declining crime rates for a decade and are actually safer than much of the rest of America. The truth is that the violence is spilling south because of the U.S. prohibition of drugs, and because of economic policies that create slaves in the maquiladoras, a situation that in turn creates children with parents absent in the factories and left to the streets.
Drug related violence, so-called "spillover", may be the most difficult issue to deal with. The Republicans stoke fear among their ignorant base by conflating two distinct sets of border-crossers, economic refugees and drug gangs, and then subtly pinning the acts of the latter on the former. As if the immigrant flipping burgers in the fast-food joints are the ones doing the home invasions. That said, the concerns are real, or ought to be.
If Mexico as a whole is not a failed state, Sonora and Chihuahua damned sure are. There is no effective law enforcement down there and the Drug War violence taking place in these border states is almost inconceivable. The Cartels are active in cities all across the country and say what you will about crime statistics, drug-related violence is occurring. A US Border Patrol agent was shot in the Peck Canyon corridor, there was a drug-related beheading in Chandler and drug-related home invasions are occurring. A cartel member was murdered in El Paso, uniformed Mexican soldiers have crossed the border into Texas and the Sinaloa Cartel has threatened local police in Nogales.
I understand Mr. Bowden's point that the violence is a legacy of decades of misguided US policies, but if the violence in the Mexican border states is a glimpse into our future, I don't want to be here.
Lie #5
That there is a river of iron flowing south from U.S. gun shops. In reality, most of the guns seized in Mexico are not from America. There is no way to identify the majority of them, because the army refuses to let the seized arsenals be inspected - almost certainly because they come from the Mexican army itself. There is no U.S. gun shop, for example, peddling hand grenades, although they can be bought for about six and a half bucks apiece in Central America as the legacy of our dirty little wars there.
This is one that I had bought into, that US gun shops are the main source of Cartel weapons. It's understandable, given a steady stream of articles like these:► Most guns seized in Mexico traced to US ► What Led to "Project Gunwalker"? ► Tucson man gets 5 years in ammunition export case ► Gun-shop owner charged in straw purchases. So OK, US gun shops are not the source of cartel guns, but they are a source; a crick if not a river.
Lie #6
That the wall will stop illegal immigrants and drugs and terrorists. This is absurd: The wall stops nothing but wildlife. There are no terrorists trudging north with prayer rugs. The drugs cross through our ports of entry, thanks to corruption. And the poor continue to come as best they can, propelled by our drug policies that have made their world a killing zone and our economic policies that have destroyed their ability to survive.
What can you say about this but, "Amen Chuck, amen." The Wall won't do what it's supposed to do, it's expensive to build and maintain, the Sierra Club doesn't like it because it interferes with wildlife migration and I don't like it because it's damned ugly!
Alright then, there's a few issues to think about, a starting point for a discussion of border issues. I hope you've learned as much reading this as I did putting it together. I intend to do more in the future. I want to deal with what I call the Naive Historical Argument (the border is where it is, it's got nothing to do with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and I didn't take their land), the Drug War (legalization, of course, but would that include meth?) and that stickiest of wickets, that most treacherous of minefields, Illegal Immigration (I favor amnesty and I'm not afraid to call it that).
Resources: Wikipedia is not bad on the Drug War and Illegal Immigration. Some websites on border issues are: Border-Boletin at the Arizona Daily Star, Borderland Beat and the notorious Blog del Narco. Bowden's seminal Mother Jones piece Exodus: Border-Crossers Forge a New America makes a good backgrounder and a 40-minute video of Bowden presenting the Lethal Lies can be found here → America's Favorite Lethal Lies About the Border