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December 10, 2012
This Mexico Business: Gringo Madness Interrupted. But throw in Hope, too.
Even more than old enduring good ideas, and new compelling good ones, I remain in love with human beings at their best. I love, in particular, their resilience and courage when they are confronted with the worst. I feel that way even as humans continue to disappoint us all. A problem: most of us sell ourselves short. We live in fear, and in a comfortable fog of conformity. To remedy that uneasiness, we blame others for our refusal or inability to grow. We make excuses. We hate.
Sometimes, though, humans surprise me.
It's been a long time--about 6 years to be exact--since my European clients or friends on business or holiday in the U.S. asked me excitedly to whisk them in the Mexico-ready vintage Saab or a rented car down to Baja California, Mexico (25 minutes tops from where I now live) to Puerto Nuevo or Ensenada for a drive and a lobster dinner in a close-by extoic venue. They no longer ask.
The reason for that doesn't seem to be going away. The lowest estimate of those killed since 2006 in the Mexican Drug War--something that scares even Western veteran war corespondents--is now just shy of 60,000. The trip into Baja, once all the Gringo rage, doesn't come up much anymore in conversation with folks who live in Bonn, Cardiff or Kent.
But articles like one in The Telegraph last week give me hope. See "Mexico's Drug War: A Poet and the People Fight Back. It will be especially interesting for you to read this if you are unfamiliar with the fact that Francisco Sicilia Ortega, son of the famous poet Javier Sicilia, was killed by a Mexican drug cartel in March 2011 (apparently for no reason connected with his father's notoriety) along with six friends.
The new "people's movement" in Mexico against the cartels is even more risky and brave than the anti-Putin protests in Russia during the holiday season last year. When mom-and-pop movements around the globe gain momentum, they are very hard to stop. Humans at their best and bravest.
Photo: The Telegraph/Noah Friedman-Rudovsky
Posted by JD Hull at December 10, 2012 07:18 PM
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