Mexico | Ain't Complicated

Tightening the Border

A week from this morning is scheduled to be my first morning in Mexico in almost a year.

So this headline just caught my attention: Dozen die in Mexico clash ahead of Obama trip

I clicked it to see where the latest mayhem happened and where President Barack Obama is planning to go.

In my quick scan (which answered both of my original questions), I saw this:

The Obama administration is tightening the U.S.-Mexico border

Good deal. Maybe that will slow down the illegal flow (of drugs and “undocumented workers”) northward.

But the sentence continues:

to prevent trafficking of U.S. guns to Mexican cartels

Oh.

Yesterday’s News

I saw three stories last night.

Central Oregon man stuns cheesemaking world at contest

A Brazilian-born cheese maker who traced an unlikely path from Silicon Valley to a former pumice mine near Bend just captured one of the most prestigious prizes in his profession.

Flavio DeCastilhos’ flagship goat cheese finished second in the 2009 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest, considered the Academy Awards for U.S. cheese makers.

By all accounts, the accomplishment is extraordinary.

Astronomers catch a shooting star for 1st time

For the first time scientists matched a meteorite found on Earth with a specific asteroid that became a fireball plunging through the sky. It gives them a glimpse into the past when planets formed and an idea how to avoid a future asteroid Armageddon.

Last October, astronomers tracked a small non-threatening asteroid heading toward Earth before it became a “shooting star,” something they had not done before. It blew up in the sky and scientists thought there would be no space rocks left to examine.

But a painstaking search by dozens of students through the remote Sudan desert came up with 8.7 pounds of black jagged rocks, leftovers from the asteroid 2008 TC3. And those dark rocks were full of surprises and minuscule diamonds, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature.

Headline correction: They found it.

How nice that they can look into the past. 😆

U.S. to blame for much of Mexican drug violence

“Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the death of police officers, soldiers and civilians,” Clinton told reporters during her flight to Mexico City.

Obviously she didn’t read (yet?) this or this.

Oh well.

Mexican Army: Wish Them Well

The UK Mail Online reports:

Thousands of Mexican soldiers pour into the country’s most violent city in crackdown on drug gangs

Armed to the hilt, they came from land and air, determined to restore order to Mexico’s most violent city.

Nearly 2,000 Mexican soldiers and armed federal police poured into the border town of Ciudad Juarez last weekend.

The city – just across from El Paso in Texas – has been ravaged by drug gangs. Just this month 250 people were killed there by hitmen fighting for lucrative smuggling routes.

The soldiers’ mandate is clear – and ambitious.

‘This is to reinforce the operation in general … to eradicate kidnappings, extortion, assaults and homicide,’ army spokesman Enrique Torres said.

The soldiers are the first contingent of as many as 5,000 troops and federal police being sent to Juarez.

President Felipe Calderon’s military operation is supported by the United States, which is concerned the violence could destabilize Mexico, a key trading partner, and spill over the border.

Mexico has deployed some 45,000 troops across the country to try to crush drug gangs, but clashes between rival cartels and security forces killed around 6,000 people last year.

Read it all

“A Triumph for Human Rights”

United Nations Population Fund Leader Says Family Breakdown is a Triumph for Human Rights

A leader in the United Nations Population Fund UNFPA has declared that the breakdown of traditional families, far from being a “crisis,’ is actually a triumph for human rights.

Speaking at a colloquium held last month at Colegio Mexico in Mexico City, UNFPA representative Arie Hoekman denounced the idea that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births represent a social crisis, claiming that they represent instead the triumph of “human rights” against “patriarchy.”

“In the eyes of conservative forces, these changes mean that the family is in crisis,” he said. “In crisis? More than a crisis, we are in the presence of a weakening of the patriarchal structure, as a result of the disappearance of the economic base that sustains it and because of the rise of new values centered in the recognition of fundamental human rights.”

“Day after day, Mexico experiences a process of this diversity and there are those who understand it as a crisis, because they only recognize one type of family,” one of the speakers on the panel also told the audience.

This must be one of those stories buried by the regular press.

Maybe they just missed it.

HT: The Berean Call

Borderline Perspectives

So here’s the story: Drug violence spins Mexico toward ‘civil war’.

And here’s the piece that provokes this post:

…the United States helps fuel the violence, not only by providing a ready market for illegal drugs, but also by supplying the vast majority of weapons used by drug gangs.

Victimhood in international relations — great.

How about an alternate rendition?

…~~the United States~~ Mexico helps fuel the violence, not only by providing a ready market for ~~illegal drugs~~ weapons used by drug gangs, but also by supplying the vast majority of ~~weapons used by drug gangs~~ illegal drugs.

Interesting, no?

So…do I (and/or you) do this sort of thing in my our own communicating?

Right to Life in Mexico

From yesterday’s good news:

Colima Amends Constitution to Protect Right to Life

In an overwhelming 19-0 vote, legislators in the state of Colima, Mexico, decided Tuesday to amend the state’s constitution to protect the right to life “from the moment of conception.”

Article one of the state’s constitution now reads: “Life is a right inherent in every human being. The State will protect and guarantee this right from the moment of conception. The family constitutes the fundamental base of society. The State will encourage its organization and development. For the same reason, the home, and particularly the children, will be the object of special protection on the part of the authorities. Every measure or disposition for protecting the family will be considered to relate to public order…”

[…]

Similar amendments have been passed recently in the states of Baja California, Sonora, and Morelos. However, the constitutionality of the Baja California amendment is now being contested in the nation’s Supreme Court. If the Court rules negatively in the case, all similar amendments could be negated as well, making it impossible to defend the right to life at the state level.

I don’t know if amending a state constitution in Mexico is as simple as that. If it is, then that must be the law of the state.

And if it is, it’s too easy. Nineteen votes in favor is an awfully small number…especially when there were no votes against.

Maybe their Supreme Court will decree similar sentiment.

In any event, thank the Lord for good news like this.

Pray for My Young Friend

He’s 24 or 25 years old with a wife and three children. He lives in northwest Mexico. I’ve known him since (his) babyhood. His initials are GS.

He has been trying to get help for his back injury from the government hospital. (Such help is supposed to be facilitated by and paid for by his employer.) Neither has been helpful, at least not much at all.

So, after receiving a money gift from up here, he set out to get some tests and opinions from a private (as opposed to a government) specialist.

The specialist can’t proceed without some sort of signed paper from the government hospital. GS went to get that on Monday.

As I understand it, when the government hospital/doctor learned why GS wanted that paper, they changed their tune and said they would help him. (Apparently, the private doctor could get them in big trouble for not helping him.)

So GS was admitted to the government hospital on Monday. He’s still there. He’s afraid of the notorious carelessness and cold-heartedness of so many doctors and nurses in that system. In an earlier “event” with them a year or more ago, they worked on one of his fingers and left it worse. Understandably, he’s very leery of them working on his back (or ruptured disc or cracked vertebra or whatever the issue is).

I texted him for more details a few minutes ago, also asking how he wants us to be praying for him. Here’s my translation of his reply:

It looks like they are going to do some tests on my spine to learn what really is my problem. Pray that God would show Himself in all this.

Thanks,
Mark