The Sadness of Mexico

Siege is a good word to describe Mexico these days.  Ask anyone who has relatives living there.  Monterrey is a horror movie with dead bodies swinging from over passes so often that all the children of the city must have a permanent case of PTSD.  The villages in the mountains of San Luis Potosi are all controlled by narco families.  Michoacan has a new narco government called "La Familia" that has societal rules that keeps things in order.  People trying to drive from Laredo or Reynosa towards Monterrey are stopped - told to pay money (usually $200) or lose their cars.  If they drive a nice truck it is often taken away.

There are many more stories like this.  Its hard to say what part of the country is safe these days.  Unfortunately its not safe to dwell too long on these stories - at least not in public...

One more thing.  The new bill introduced to Congress allowing people receive VISAS if they purchase an expensive house may be a response to the current problem in Mexico.  Many of those who can afford to leave are desperate to move ---  Its not very fair.  There are millions of poor who are trapped inside the violence.

MTH

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Postscript - Los Angeles Times

Is Mexico 'under siege'?

Drug-related violence has spread to many formerly peaceful areas of the country.

October 22, 2011

Since June 2008, The Times has been reporting on the drug-related violence on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border...
...All the placid tourist trips into the back roads of Yucatan or Baja do little to dispel that truth. Those areas are exceptions solely because they no longer lie in the drug trade routes (the Caribbean and Pacific routes have shifted). But drug violence is no longer a "fringe" or "border" state problem in Mexico: Interior states that never experienced this level of violence before include much of central Mexico, from Michoacan up through Nuevo Leon. And violence has entrenched itself in Veracruz state, on the east coast. It's not just border states. It's pandemic.  MORE