Mexico--Life Is Bad And Getting Worse

The war zone starts not quite a hundred miles south of the canyon where the Geek lives. Just the other side of the Great Fence, the killing and dying goes on with a vengeance. So also does the kidnapping and dying.

"See Mexico--and die." That might be the new national motto of our neighbor to the south.

Grim but accurate. This year Mexico rivals Afghanistan and perhaps surpasses Iraq as a killing zone. Without even the assistance of American helicopter gunships or fast movers, the Mexican internal war(s) has pushed the country into the Big League of body counts. True, Mexico City does not yet come close to Caracas for the number of homicides recorded in a capital city, but, given time even that may happen.

It may not even take that much time since there is an excellent chance that the overall quantity of social unrest will be increasing rapidly. Not because the Mexicans have any inherent love of facing death straight in the face. Not because the Mexican population is naturally more violent than that of any other country.

Not even because the gangs who batten rich, fat and powerful from the transport of drugs to the US have a decreasing market over which they must fight. Nor because these self-same drug runners are running more and more scared from the crackdown ordered by the Mexican president.

No. Social unrest and its almost inevitable violent expression will come because the employment safety valve known as the United States is not wide open as it was a year ago. Or even six months ago.

The Heimatsicherheitsamt--as the Geek unaffectionately calls that bureaucratic monstrosity created in a fit of panic by the current administration and a spineless Congress--has crowed with its customary willingness to take credit when no credit is due, noting that the tide of illegal immigration has slowed and even reversed. The reason for this, of course, is the tanking of the American economy.

This tanking of America caught not just the neocon ninnies of the current US administration with undue surprise, it did the same to the Government of Mexico (GOM.) The folks in charge in Mexico City and the capitals of the various Mexican states never thought there would be both a decrease in remittances from illegals in the Land of the Big PX and a reverse flow of newly impoverished former "undocumented workers."

The Mexican National Institute of Migration (the Geek loves this term for an outfit that studies illegal immigration from Mexico to the US) estimates that no fewer than 600,000 Mexicans will be crossing the border from the north to the south. The National Institute further estimates that no fewer than 1.5 million Mexicans have repatriated from the US in the twenty months ending in August of this year.

Here is the where the vibram hits the sand. No government anywhere in Mexico including GOM has made any financial provision for the relief or employment of this tide of men without jobs. GOM, or at least some in it, are pushing the panic button with the demand that a 1.8 billion peso emergency "rescue fund" be established in the 2009 budget.

Without such an emergency measure (and perhaps much more) the decrease in remittances from illegals working in the US coupled with the needs of the returning unemployed "could convulse half the country," according to one Representative. In an interesting wrinkle, it has been proposed that illegals remaining in the US would be eligible for assistance from this "rescue fund."

That would be a first. Pay those of your citizens who are illegally resident in another country to stay there.

(Hmm, the Geek ruminates, perhaps he should seek Mexican citizenship so that GOM can pay him to stay where he is. Yeah, the Geek concludes, he could live with that as a concept.)

From the Mexican perspective having illegals stay in the US even if GOM has to pay them is a far less-worse alternative than having jobless (and perhaps hopeless) men come on home. Jobless and hopeless men are desperate men. And, as is well shown throughout history, desperate men do desperate deeds.

The last thing Mexico needs right now is an increase in the available pool of pistoleros and mules employed by the trafficking gangs. The next to the last thing the Mexicans need is more individuals given to the latest money making fad in the country--kidnapping for ransom.

Traditionally kidnappers have snatched the progeny of people with lots of money. But not any more. At least not in Mexico. The lean and hungry have lowered their sights a bit. A very large bit.

In one recent kidnapping which took place in a suburb of Mexico City, actually a place that is rather much of a slum, the child-victim had parents who were fruit sellers in the street market. Selling fruit may be an honest occupation but it is not one noted for making its practitioners rival Donald Trump or Warren Buffett. The kid was killed by an injection of acid even before the snatchers made their ransom demand. A tip from a taxi driver led to the arrest of the teenage perps and their adult companions.

It was just one more sordid event. One more kidnapping in the estimated five hundred that occur every month throughout the country.

Desperate men do desperate deeds.

The influx of returning out-of-work illegals will provide more desperation at a time when most Mexicans are losing faith in the capacity of their government to provide that most basic of governmental services--personal, physical safety. Unlike too many Norteamericanos, Mexicans do not expect perfect safety. They do expect that the police will at least make a show of deterring criminals and arresting those whom they do not deter.

GOM is in a heap of hurt. The crackdown on the narcotraffickers is bogging down in blood and fear. Kidnappings threaten every family, even those whose economic viability is marginal. The senior levels of the police and Federal prosecutor's office have been shown to be penetrated through and through by paid agents of the drug gangs.

GOM could not even take advantage of the oil price boom because their fields are running dry. The petroleum infrastructure is ragged and near collapse. The new, large potential off-shore fields cannot be developed because there isn't enough money for the national oil company to do it. And, the foreign investment which would bring the new potential online cannot be sought due to the touchy understanding of national sovereignty which is a legacy of the long, long internal wars of the early 20th Century.

Now, to help stave off more symptoms of apparent collapse, Mexico must spend a lot of that which they do not have much of--money. Money spent on "rescue" isn't there for constructive purposes such as bringing new oil fields into production.

Money spent on keeping illegals safely in the US isn't available for something real, productive and future oriented such as laying the basis for long-term private sector employment. But, considering the current situation and making even a very conservative assessment concerning the probable social destabilization of Mexicans flooding home, what real choice does GOM have?

As the Mexicans have muttered for years, "Poor Mexico. So far from God. So close to the United States."