U.S. Consulate Deaths are No More Tragic than Our Own
"Expressions
of shock and condolence on the occasion of the U.S. citizens' deaths would be
commendable in themselves, were it not for the lack of
similar words addressed to the countless innocent Mexicans slaughtered in the
course of this confused and ugly 'war.'"
The execution-style killings of three U.S.
Consulate employees in Ciudad Juarez, two of whom were U.S. citizens, has
brought the problem of violence plaguing the country to a new level, since
it raises the pressure on Washington to step up its interventionist actions
in Mexico. Just consider the unusual tone of the White
House statement issued on the subject (President Barack Obama “is deeply
saddened and outraged by the news” and “In concert with Mexican authorities, we
will work tirelessly to bring the killers to justice” are two of the sentences
in the document), and envision the type of measures being prepared by the U.S.
government.
The inescapable
historic reference point is the 1985 murder of Enrique Kiki Camarena [photo, left], an undercover agent with the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration. In the following months, several Mexican
citizens were kidnapped by order of Washington, brought illegally to the neighboring
country and tried there, while our nation's authorities had to endure a
multi-year campaign of open hostility on the part of the U.S.
[Editor's Note: From the U.S. Justice
Department Web site, "Special Agent Enrique S. Camarena,
of the Drug Enforcement Administration's resident office in Guadalajara, Mexico, was kidnapped and tortured by Mexican drug traffickers on February 7, 1985. His body was discovered on March 5. On the afternoon of his
disappearance, Special Agent Camarena was en route to
meet his wife for lunch. He was abducted by five assailants as he left the U.S.
Consulate, one of whom identified himself as a Mexican law enforcement
official. Special Agent Camarena was never seen alive
again, and is believed to have been extensively tortured for two days before he
died from a crushed skull. This event triggered Operation Leyenda
[Operation Lawman], the largest homicide investigation that DEA had
undertaken up to that time].
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
In the quarter century since
then, our institutions have undergone a process of decline and decay that
has now reached alarming proportions, which has led to an exasperating degree
of ineffectiveness. Rule of law and the government's maintenance of territorial
control have disappeared from huge swaths of the country. Based on what can be gleaned
from available sources, the official strategy for public security and the fight
against drug trafficking have provided the opposite results of those advertised.
Violence officially associated with organized crime claims dozens of victims
day after day - more than 17,000 since the beginning of [President] Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's administration. And the firepower of criminal
groups, along with their capacity to co-opt and operate, has driven the public into
a state of anxiety and helplessness never experienced by modern Mexicans.
THE
GIANT SKULL OF DEATH SAYS:'WELCOME TO JAUREZ.'
THE
GIANT SKULL OF DEATH ASKS:'WILL DEA AND CIA AGENTS
REALLY
COME TO THE CITY OF JUAREZ? … THEY ARE WELCOME.'
The reaction of the federal
government to the triple assassination that took place in the bloody border
city yesterday is, moreover, doubly deplorable and inopportune. Because the expressions
of shock and condolence on the occasion of the U.S. citizens' deaths would be
commendable in themselves, were it not for the lack of similar words addressed
to the countless innocent Mexicans slaughtered in the course of this confused
and ugly “war.”
No such comments were uttered
when Ciudad Juarez students were killed last January 30, an event that
overflowed the cup of public exasperation. Neither were
such condolences offered for the victims of subsequent massacres in Ciudad
Juarez, Coahuila, Sinaloa, Durango or Guerrero. Significantly, among the 50
violent deaths that occurred this weekend, only three - of the employees of the
U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez - merited the sympathy of our president, even
though among the dead were people as alien to the world of crime as the Acapulco
woman riding in a taxi who was shot in the head in a crossfire between paid
assassins on Vicente Guerrero Boulevard.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Moreover, the promise made by
the Foreign Ministry to Washington that, “Mexican authorities will work
with determination to clarify the circumstances under which the events occurred
and bring those responsible to justice” seems, to say the least, not very
credible, simply because in Ciudad Juarez as in other parts of the country,
there are no authorities capable of undertaking such a task - and there haven’t
been for quite some time.
