U.S.: Stupefied Gringa

The ambassador of the United States in Mexico, Carlos Pascual, is worried because the cost of doing business in Mexico increases every day due to the violence that organized crime is generating. Yesterday in Monterrey, he confirmed for businessmen that, in some regions of the country, it is not possible to live a normal life without thinking about the risks most people run every day. He remembered that the armed forces from his country train our police and military to better face this fight.

The former U.S. presidential candidate, Republican John McCain, in the middle of an electoral campaign in the state of Arizona, demanded the immediate deployment of the National Guard to face the drug cartels and illegal immigrants in order to end the violence he says “has converted Ciudad Juárez into the most violent city in the western hemisphere.”*

Both appreciate his positive attitude.

However, both cases require respectful clarification.

It’s difficult to understand why Ciudad Juárez is the most unsafe area on the continent, while its counterpart, El Paso, Texas, is considered the second most peaceful city in the United States. The tenuous safety net that ultimately divides both populations doesn’t manage to explain why everything happens on one side, while nothing happens in El Paso. It’s impossible that heaven and hell are geographically so close together.

The two cities are one and the same: our Berlin in the south and their Berlin in the north.

If we remember the series of elaborate reports in El Universal from May of last year — from Tijuana to Matamoros — the lack of control on the part of U.S. customs; the negligence to investigate the corruption that also facilitates, on that side, the circulation of drugs and weapons on U.S. soil; it’s possible to understand how criminals kill in one territory by day, and sleep peacefully in the other by night.

Mexico is involved in a different type of war, of which it has been said ad nauseum that we bury the dead while our dear neighbors deal with laundered money, weapons sales and drug abuse.

Two sides of the same problem, two territories from the same geographical region, and two symptoms of the same illness. If Mexico loses its competitiveness or the northern border becomes more dangerous, the same thing will inevitably happen on the southern frontier of the United States. Ambassador Pascual knows this but avoided saying it in Monterrey. McCain also knows, but he is campaigning with easy speeches for domestic consumption.

*Quote could not be verified.