Mexico becoming like Somalia?

[If all you want to do right now is enjoy the inauguration and feel good about a change finally coming, quit reading right now, and come back another day. My mood has not been celebratory as I read so many articles of problems that seem way too big for fixing. We will definitely need a lot of luck in the next four years as well as skill.]

Among the questions that might limit a person's capability of making a dream come true, it is impossible to ignore what has been happening in Mexico and in many other places around the world. While the media's interest has been centered on terrorism from Muslim sources, what about what is going on closer to home?

This week I read an article about how Mexico has the potential to break apart and become another Somalia with pirates and a government unwilling or incapable of controlling anything. Unfortunately I didn't bookmark it at the time, but it was easy to find a lot of articles warning of the same thing: Mexican violence growing, "Join us or die", and Intelligence study predicts more Mexican violence.

Americans, who do not live in border states and who don't read about the kidnappings for ransoms and killings, the police forces that often the citizens would be afraid to call for fear of which side they were on, often see the Mexican situation purely in terms of a source to get their illegal drugs or inexpensive laborers.

Oh you think most Americans disapprove of illegals coming up here for jobs? If those jobs weren't here, they wouldn't come. How many have all too happily paid construction or landscaping contractors who they clearly know are hiring illegals but the price is too good to miss and after all they are one degree removed from a crime, right?

The violence problem isn't in the laborers, who are often good people. It's who brings them and the drugs across the line. It is what has been created in the doing of it.

If you live in Arizona, you know what it's like and how the border has changed. My first time down there was 1965 and as young adults, we could play out in the desert, walk up arroyos and only have to worry about rattlesnakes. There weren't coyotes (the human kind), who started out just bringing across illegals but were soon bringing up drugs (or was it the other way around?).

Back then I could go anywhere in Nogales with an easy walk across the border and it was fun to shop. It seemed like it would have been a good place to live, not a lot of money but a good feeling from the people who sold their crafts with pride. Ask if it's good today with kidnappings, gun battles between rival drug gangs, and those who have moved into the border because of the opportunities.

I have seen the change on both sides of the border. I remember one of our trips into Arizona's back country, dirt and gravel roads down along the border, and having a militia jeep in camouflage speed up to check us out, followed by half an hour later, closer to the border, a fast driving Border agent. I know what is in the back country and how risky it can be to see the wrong thing.

Another time, we were driving one of those back roads and saw ahead two vehicles blocking the road. We slowed. Was it neighbors visiting or something that would mean we needed to have our own gun ready? The vehicles broke apart for us to pass. We always traveled with a gun down there-- in the open as the concealed permit up here is not good in Arizona but open carry is permitted in the back country. It likely wouldn't have been enough protection given the kind of people one might come across and who you don't want to come across.

As far back as 2000, I saw how Nogales had changed (in case anyone wants to blame this only on Bush). The feel of the street had an undercurrent that made me very uncomfortable and from what I have read, it's only gotten worse. I wouldn't go there anymore and wouldn't need the current US government warning to know it; or if you do, to go alert. How could that have happened to such a joyful little town?

From what I am reading (and it is especially scary to me with a home in Arizona but should be to all Americans as what starts one place grows), Mexico is a nation much in danger of having a totally ineffective government, where violence is more and more uncontrolled-- and sometimes is the 'government.' What if Mexico does become another Somalia? That border fence that was never finished, barely started, it won't contain what grows there.

Dreams have to be practical and they grow best in fertile soil. What kind of soil are we as a nation preparing for ourselves? I don't say we can blame our own government for what is going wrong in Mexico, but we better not kid ourselves about what it is. It is another huge problem that Obama is inheriting and that often isn't even discussed. We need to be thinking of some answers if we don't want those kidnappings to spread up here. In case you thought it was just the wealthy, it is not. When a culture runs amok, the most ruthless take what they want.

Joint Forces report warns Mexico and Pakistan could destabilize. One is on our border and the other with nukes. Is this what the Bush administration meant by the spread of democracy?

Rice gave Bush a going away gift of five flags representing countries he had liberated as the Senate and House praised themselves on their own good work: [A Plaque on all their Houses by Dana Milbank]. They might fool themselves and think by saying something it will be true, but the American people better be a little more realistic-- a lot more.

I know how many people would rather not even read something like this, but it's there and not knowing won't make it go away. Being prepared, coming up with real ideas to make a difference, that could make it go away. It better because if we remain blind, what is coming ahead will be worse than what has been behind.