Wasn’t it just two days ago that I posted a blog touching on statistics about the downward trend in violence in Mexico’s Baja California?
Just yesterday, I was told by a colleague about a LA Times article on an abduction and murder case at Rosarito Beach, just two days away from the annual Rosarito to Ensenada Fun Bike Ride.
Such is the tentativeness and uncertainty that blankets the border Mexican towns and cities.
In that news report by Pete Thomas, a 16-year-old boy – son of a prominent Rosarito restaurant owner – was kidnapped a stone’s throw from his home the night before. He was purportedly practicing for the bike race when three heavily-armed hooded men swept in to capture him; a security personnel nearby who tried to intervene was also taken, and his decapitated body was found the next morning.
In the same article, this incident was confirmed by Ron Raposa, the spokesman for Rosarito Beach Mayor Hugo Torres. Raposa says that this is believed to be a kidnap-extortion bid as the cartels find their mainstream narcotic operations severely disrupted by the Federales. There is no known drug link in this latest episode, he says.
Mayor Torres has requested additional federal police to assist in the investigations, to have this happen just days before some 3,000 visitors are set to pour into the beach resort for the biking extravaganza must surely be a psychological setback of sorts.
One will expect Rosarito Beach, which has been at the forefront in terms of creative security initiatives to protect its visitors (see article on Rosarito Tourist Police Force) to step up the security presence to ensure that the Bike Ride proceeds smoothly.
But the troubling thought remains.
Even if the narcotic operations are disrupted as more and more government success stories against the cartels pour through, what happens if the cartels really do turn kidnapping into their next lucrative cash cow?
The challenge, therefore, is not just about stemming the flow of drugs, but also the dismantling of the cartels themselves because other forms of organized crime will continue to plague the local community.
And behind this is a far more complex web of issues that are feeding one another, such as government-wide corruption and a judiciary in need of reform (issues President Felipe Calderon has been accused of neglecting as he pushed for a military solution to the cartel operations).
A part of the equation lies with the U.S. side as well, with 90 percent of recovered arms in Mexico currently being traced back to the States (read Channel NewsAsia's 'Obama vows support for Mexico's Cartel Fight'; NY Times's 'U.S. Stymied as Guns Flow to Mexican Cartels'). As long as American weapons continue to percolate into the hands of the Mexican cartels, it will provide the latter with the means and the methods to perpetuate their illicit activities, whether it is drug trafficking, kidnapping, or others.
President Obama has already admitted shared responsibility in the problem, but also concedes a far greater challenge of trying to get the lawmakers to vote through an arms-trafficking treaty that may help to stem the flow of guns own south.
To me, it seems absurd that the primary reason for not ratifying this treaty is fundamentally because of 2nd Amendment rights and the freedom to express oneself.
Even if it means toting a gun?
Even if it means that high-grade weapons, bullets and bombs are making their way onto Mexican streets and contributing to the carnage there that is part of the cartel’s activities to secure the supply of drugs up north?
Isn’t the U.S., which espouses liberty for all, the same country where women did not enjoy equal rights as men until national suffrage for women came about in 1920 because of the ratification of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution?
Isn’t it because of cultural and societal norms that women didn’t enjoy the rights they do today back in the early 1900s? Where were the fundamentals about equality for all back then?
Looking at today, isn’t the ‘right’ to carry guns nothing more of a cultural or societal norm and not so much a fundamental liberty to be expressed?
Is the right to be able to buy a gun more important than the choice of not buying it just so that another person may live someplace else in Mexico? And isn’t the ability to make that choice without duress an expression of liberty in itself?
I could go on and on. And forgive me if I seem to be rambling, but something just doesn’t seem right.
America is indeed a land of many dichotomies.
I'm just saddened that countries like Mexico suffer the consequences for it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment