Blogs For Victory

These are the wages of turning a blind eye to the illegal cross-border traffic between Mexico and the United States:

Mexican Brigadier Generak Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñones, along with his bodyguard and driver, were kidnapped, methodically tortured, and then driven out to the jungle and shot in the head.

This ambush did not take place in a remote area of the country, but in Cancun, one of Mexico plush tourist attractions.

Their bodies were found Tuesday in the cab of a pickup truck on the side of a highway leading out of town. An autopsy revealed that both the general’s arms and legs had been broken.

Tello, 63, had retired last month from active duty and moved to the Caribbean resort city to work with the mayor in the fight against drug cartels that have permeated a large part of Mexican society.

The full-dress military funeral last Wednesday was attended by President Felipe Calderón his defense secretary, attorney general, security secretary, and other high-ranking officials, who flanked a general’s coffin as an honor guard.

Spokespersons for the military and other government agencies issued expressions of outrage over the violent triple killing, in a drug war that cost the lives of more than 5, 000 people last year. The military has become increasingly active in Mexico’s initiatives to destroy the cartels and the leadership has vowed it will not allow Tello’s death to remain unsolved or unpunished.

According to U.S. officials, the attach on the general intended to drive a city into submission. One representative said, “That’s why it was done. (The General) was going in to take back the streets.”

Perhaps he was – but given the way Mexico has worked lately, there would be no surprise if we later discovered that the general was killed because he was trying to kick one gang out in order to allow another gang in. This is not to cast aspersions on the memory of General Tello – for all I know, he was an honest and upright officer, but the plain fact of the matter is that gangland corruption is rife in Mexico from top to bottom, and it largely stems from the way the drug cartels have managed to grow strong moving illegal people and goods across the US/Mexico border with the “wink/wink, nudge/nudge” cooperation of the Mexican government, hungry for that American money which has kept Mexico’s economy afloat.

But now the cartels are so strong and have intimidated or co-opted so many parts of Mexico’s government and security forces that they are essentially vying for control of Mexico – each cartel being run by a war lord who wants to be top dog in his area. Its a frightening lapse back into the Mexican Revolution early in the 20th century which ended up costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and which led to two American interventions in Mexico. The bloody and mostly senseless revolution spilled over several times into the American side of the border, and with larger populations and vastly improved communications of all sorts, what happens in Mexico will just pour over our border in larger numbers, faster, than it did back in the 20th century.

There is, unfortunately, not much we can do to help Mexico – prickly national pride prohibits any American attempt to intervene in Mexico unless we want to invade the whole country and take over, which is an action no American government would ever contemplate. But we can take the lesson – because we, too, turned a blind eye. We made much noise of securing the border and fighting the drug trade, but we really did neither. We wanted the cheap labor and didn’t want to be bothered with having do to the right thing, which was to have enforced our laws, given that all democratically created laws are to be enforced not only for the good of the law-abiding, but for the law-breakers, as well. The rising death and despair in Mexico is a direct outgrowth of two peoples and two governments unwilling to enforce their own laws.

It is to be hoped that the Mexican government will find those hard nosed, patriotic and honest Mexicans who will carry the fight to the drug cartels until they are destroyed. But my fear is that we’re seeing merely the first act of a long, bloody tragedy in Mexico – and a tragedy we helped create. Always, always, always do the right thing – no matter how painful it seems at the moment, its less painful than what will come after, if we take the easy way out.