Letter #38: Greed and Grief in modern Mexico

Walking into the science center where I serve in the Peace Corps this morning, I noticed the ordinarily jocund guard in a rather subdued state setting the three flags – those of the country, the national science council and the center itself – at half-mast. After I asked who had died, the kindly elder stated humbly, “Para las victimas del casino en Nuevo León…”.

Of course, three days before, I had heard President Calderón over the radio giving an impassioned speech out of step with our unfeeling time. The flags unfurled in the mournful remembrance of fifty-plus people burned to death by a narco-syndicate (i.e., the Zetas or the Gulf cartel). Analyses abound about whodunit and why (e.g., to knock off its balance the spin cycle of money-laundering through casinos); apparently what happened in Vegas did not stay in Vegas. This penetrating pedantry, nevertheless, misses the point.

In a speech coloured by its somber eloquence, el presidente Calderón not only called on his countrymen to rally against this state of 'anarco', he also called out United States of America as the root-cause of such grim criminality. Not the U.S. government as much as its drug-users. That’s right: our country, high-or-wrong. Would organized crime still exist South of the border without the unrelenting demand for drugs from the North? Certainly. But nothing on the scale witnessed in that casino, on the streets and during the years of fear.

El presidente Calderón’s question here becomes obvious with even the slightest reflection. Why has American leadership – Democrat, Independent and Republican alike – been intent on trying everything to stop the commerce of drugs except to address the root-cause? When will a leader risk his or her popularity – even re-election – to call us all to account? Where is the statesman needed openly to ask that hardest of all questions: Why do so many of our fellows, living in the epicenter of the American Century, find their lives so empty that they resort to drugs?

To her credit, Secretary of State Clinton has begun to say publicly that the U.S. bears at least some of the responsibility for Mexico’s tragedy. One reason that the obvious question remains unasked reflects the likelihood of no answer. Until an incumbent national leader cries out with the pain afflicting his people, as have great leaders through the ages from King David to President Lincoln to Prime Minister Churchill, the suffering will continue. My upbringing included a stricture that I not criticize the status-quo unless I had a solution. Of course, I have no solution, either.

While many leading citizens are proposing the legalization or de-criminalization of drugs, I remain uneasy with that approach because distribution channels are already in place to encourage consumption in the future of 'black-market' substances (i.e., stronger than allowed) by under-age users (i.e., children in junior high on up). In any case, the perspective of focusing on behavior patterns still fails to address the void inside most people – that quiet desperation Thoreau could not finesse – that seduces many into looking for oblivion, god, rapture, peer approval or allayed curiosity, whichever comes first.

One used to say that when the United States sneezes, Mexico catches pneumonia. The Mexican dictator of the nineteenth century was far keener with his wit: “Poor Mexico, so far from God but so close to the United States.” Perhaps we can change that ugly fact of life, not only for our neighbors but for ourselves by treating addicts and recreational users as people in pain, defenseless against the nothingness or the hopelessness that stalks them patiently, day in and day out.

There are no magic answers here because drug users have as many reasons for, and behaviors associated with, drug consumption as there are users. But recalling the pragmatism of F.D.R. in the face of a darker challenge to our national well-being presents a refreshing response. We take our best shot at giving the poor hope, the wealthy purpose and the middle class a future.

If a national system of rehabilitation centers does not work, then we try stay-home-approaches. If de-criminalization does not diminish crime, we start indicting drug dealers to under-age kids for human trafficking as well. If schooling the poor does not curb use, then we offer scholastic aid to those making the effort to stay clean. For the poor at least, up-or-out has an entirely different meaning than for untenured academics or foreign service officers.

In short, we do what it takes within the limits of democratic constitutionalism. America has a reservoir of goodwill within her people that, once properly stimulated, can better the lives of diverse Americans of all flags, taking Bolivar’s dream to a long-delayed destiny.