The Mexican Drug War On Both Sides Of The Border: NPR Talk Of The Nation 19 October 2010

OS was driving to the bank and heard this conversation on NPR. Barely believing his ears, he looked it up this morning.

Jason Beaubien, NPR's Mexico City correspondent, was being interviewed about conditions on the ground in Mexico, and it was even more alarming than OS had believed--and OS has a pretty dark opinion of that part of the world.

The upsetting part was buried in the middle:

(Beaubien) You look at the number of drugs that are getting seized, that continues to be incredibly high. You know, you look at the insecurity, it seems like more parts of the country seem to be more insecure. Tamaulipas, which also it's just above Monterrey, is sort of below south Texas, below Laredo, McAllen, Brownsville, that area - that's where they killed these 72 migrants earlier this summer. That part of the country really feels I find it frightening being there at times. And people don't go out at night. You get major shootouts. The press doesn't report anything about what's going on.

You know, I was up there just two weeks ago, and the Zetas actually have lookouts along the river. And they're just...

CONAN: The Rio Grande?

BEAUBIEN: Along the Rio Grande, on their side, making sure that no freelancers go and just sort of move people without paying Los Zetas off to...

CONAN: So the Mexican the American government can't patrol the border, but the Zetas do.

BEAUBIEN: Yes. Yeah. It's incredible. And the migrants are terrified of them. And the locals know that if you want to move migrants across or if you want to smuggle across here, you have to cut a deal with the Zetas in order to do this. And there's a sense, in that part of Mexico, particularly, that things are really under the control of the cartels. And when you start talking about failed state I don't believe at all that Mexico is a failed state. But there are parts of it which feel like they have failed and which feel like the government is completely not in control.

Did you catch the remark? Sometimes, they speak in such dispassionate tones, one barely perceives what is being said:

'So the Mexican the American government can't patrol the border, but the Zetas do.' And this is from left-edge NPR, ya'll!! These aren't paranoid guys who live in Momma's basement, collect guns, and play soldier on the weekends.

The whole transcript is at the link above. It's a balanced view, and not all bad news.

And Beaubien makes a most valid point--when we cease to be a market for the poison they sell, they will go away, and sell it to someone else. When we control our own border, the bloodshed south of us will abate dramatically. Innocent people are being murdered, and live in fear and despair, because of our out-of-control appetites, and our blind refusal to do the minimal things necessary to enforce our southern border.

It's not a Democrat/Republican issue, ya'll. It's a good/evil issue. We are allowing innocent people to be irreparably harmed because we will not do the right thing. And this is a problem we can go a long way toward solving.

If we have the will.