Heyyyy, maaaan. So, dudes, do me a favor and grow the weed yourself or make sure it's grown locally, would ya? Please, please, please, please, please stop purchasing it from unknown growers. There is a high likelihood that the people who grew it for you are only doing so to avoid having their children killed.
For some reason, the Mexican drug cartel territory wars and other activities aren't reported much in the U.S. national news, but there's a whole lot of crap going down just next door. Not to give you too crawly of skin right before supper, but there are daily beheadings, skinnings, executions, village takeovers, and all other manner of unpleasantries being carried out by cartel members - sometimes only minutes from our country's borders. The perpetrators do these things for revenge on opposing cartel members and to intimidate the townspeople into growing their dope and/or transporting it into the U.S. illegally. Crack, meth, and other drugs too, but mostly marijuana. There's a phrase in Mexico, plato o plomo, which means "silver or lead." In this application, it essentially means, "You can either accept payment to cooperate with us or a bullet to not."
Living in a Texas-Mexico border town and being exposed to immigration and drug issues, I am aware now of the pandemonium happening all over Mexico in a way I never really was. I haven't written much about this yet, though I would like to - maybe down the road, when we ourselves are a little further out of harm's way.
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Man from Tepehuan Indian tribe stands |
A man from the Tepehuan Indian tribe stands with his head lowered in Tierras Coloradas February 8, 2011. Just after Christmas, drug hitmen rolled into the isolated village of Tierras Coloradas and burned it down, leaving more than 150 people, mostly children, homeless in the raw mountain winter. The residents, Tepehuan Indians who speak Spanish as a second language and have no electricity or running water, had already fled into the woods, sleeping under trees or hiding in caves after a raid by the feared Zetas drug gang on December 26. Using murder and intimidation, rival cartels are fighting for control of this drug-growing area. Picture taken February 8, 2011. To match Feature MEXICO-DRUGS REUTERS/Mica Rosenberg * * * Here's the whole article. * * *
6 comments:
I am feeling extremely ignorant right now. Fill me in more when you have moved on.
Yeah, this stuff stresses me out. All the time.
I'll be glad when you guys are out of there. Real glad.
Great post.
Cam thinks it's funny that you told people to do something illegal. Ha!
Ok, Christi! :)
I thought of that, Rach - hope there aren't repercussions for a person in my position to suggest people do something illegal. It was a little jokeful, but also, hey, that's how I feel.
Yeah. The press and political commentators have really dropped the ball on Mexico, immigration, and undocumented immigrants. So much of the reason why we have problems with the border is the fault of U.S. policy, on many levels. As you say, if we weren't consuming drugs from Mexico and South and Central American countries the drug cartels would have a significant cut in their profits and thereby their power. But because we keep funding the cartels with our drug habits, they have more power, which leads to more poverty, which leads to people coming to the States because they are desperate (and because Corporate U.S. Agriculture wants the cheapest labor possible).
What ever happened to a national sense of being a good neighbor? Has it ever existed?
Thank you for the post. It is an important reminder to us all about how people suffer and how connected we are to each other.
Thanks for your comment, Jon. Yep, it is such a multi-faceted dilemma that it almost seems impossible to solve. But a good start would be big businesses cutting back on their greed and average citizens really wanting to know the source of the things they ingest.
ingest and inhale, that is
and wear
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