The Mexican Border . . . today.

Already  here?  Movie Poster announcing the film Sicario, Day of the Soldado is "coming soon".  On the border it's already arrived.

I recently had the privilege of catching up with an old friend from Texas.  A native born and bread there, although one who in his old age has take up residence for most of the year in Wyoming.

He's an interesting character and very well informed on a lot of things, including things going on, on the border with Mexico.

"You don't hear about this on the news" was a comment he made a couple of times, and he's quite right.  The things he was referencing, and he's a trustworthy soul, were hair raising.  

Indeed, so much so that the situation described reminded me very much of that depicted in the movie Sicario.*  For those who haven't seen it, Sicario is a violent film depicting the drug trade, corruption and ambiguous allegiances on a nearly lawless U.S.-Mexican border.  It goes beyond that, however and weaves in corruption or nearly illegal activity by the US government in regards to the situation, including the quasi legal use of special US armed forces units in order to attempt to address it. To hear my friend describe the situation, it doesn't differ much in reality from what is depicted in the film.  

Indeed, I was sufficiently surprised that I asked a couple of other knowledgeable Texans I know and they confirmed the degree to which the US border has become lawless and basically abandoned in some areas by agricultural operations.  People who work and live on the border go about armed in many areas for self protection.  The U.S. Park Service restricts its employees from entering some areas in one of the rare National Parks in that region as its too dangerous for them to enter.**  Large ranches have been abandoned and sold as they're too dangerous to operate.

And yet, as my friend notes, "you don't hear about this on the news".

Human trafficking and drug trafficking are the sources of the problem.   While news on the abhorrent separation of children from adults has been much reported on recently, the bigger problem isn't.  Even with a large reduction in Mexican illegal immigration into the US the border is still basically partially out of control and having an out of control border is irresponsible for any nation.  It makes a joke out of an immigration policy to start with, and the U.S.'s policy, which accommodates a huge legal rate of immigration, is out of control to start with.  The sources of illegal immigration now are Central American nations that have descended into chaos, largely due to the drug trade.  A person can hardly be blamed for wanting out of that situation, which is so bad in some areas that armed gangs control entire regions.  Mexico does little to control the trafficking through its territory for a presumed variety of reasons, in part because it has plenty of its own drug related problems and in part because the migrants are traveling through Mexico to the US and not stopping in it.

Drugs are also the reason that northern Mexico, in large areas, is controlled by criminal gangs that field what basically amount to sizable guerrilla armies.  The most well known, in the US, of these are the Zetas, named for the letter Z, which not only have a guerrilla army, basically, but were in fact formed by deserting members of the Mexican special forces.  It certainly isn't the only Mexican drug cartel by any means.  Nor are the cartels active solely in Mexico.  They have extensive contacts with the US and are allied and associated with various criminal gangs in the US.

The US appetite for illegal drugs is a huge part of this problem.  It's temping to say that the US is unique in this fashion, but that really wouldn't be true.  The US is indeed a huge market for illegal drugs, but Europe and Russia also have illegal drug problems and therefore trafficking.  Indeed, illegal drug trafficking tends to be sort of freakishly related everywhere as circles that smuggle to one region often end up connecting with others that expert the illegal substance on to somewhere else.  As a market, illegal drugs are darned near the perfect model of what Adam Smith imagined, in some ways, in regards to the wonders of free market economics.

Be that as it may, a semi unique aspect of the problem to the US is that the US has an extremely long border with a nation that's only now entering the First World and which isn't in control of all of its own territory.  The situation is so bad in Mexico that Mexico uses its armed forces against drug cartel armies, something that would be regarded as illegal in the United States save for the situation of armed insurrection, which in fact it basically is.  

We've posted here a lot here about the border in the early 20th Century. We haven't posted much about it after the 1920s.  Maybe we've been remiss in that.  There's never been a period in which illegal crossings, in both directions, haven't occurred, but not every period has been the same.  During the revolutionary period the border with Mexico remained tense, slowly easing as the 20s wore into the 30s.  The Depression brought new pressures to the border, but the modern border era really came in during World War Two when policies were created to allow for seasonal agricultural workers, which American agriculture very rapidly became dependant upon.  Still, that did not create a great deal of illegal immigration until the 1970s when economic migration from Mexico turned into a flood.  Policies designed to deal with that largely failed and its only been recently when they seemingly started to get in control, which has a lot to do with the Mexican economy, in spite of being burdened as it is, has improved and Mexico has become a middle class country for the first time in its history.

The period of large scale illegal migration from Mexico is largely over, which doesn't mean that it still doesn't go on, but now we're enduring a second period of large scale migration from Central America, and that doesn't seem to be close to abating.  And the drug trade, which has been a problem dating back into the 1960s, remains a full scale problem to the extent of causing local rebellions, effectively, and a species of warfare.

All of this summarizes the problem but it doesn't offer any solutions. What is clear is that turning a blind eye towards the problems does not amount to a solution.  Pretending that massive drug importation and creating a border that has become a No Man's Land in some areas hasn't happened is irresponsible.  Also pretending that American appetite for drugs hasn't created his problem is also irresponsible.

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*For those who may be curious, the word Sicario means "hitman" in Spanish and Italian, from the Latin word sicarius, which meant the same thing.  That word came about from the word sica, a curved dagger, which was the weapon of choice in Palestine for such operatives against the Romans when they were there.

**As an aside mini editorial, those politicians in Wyoming who constantly proclaim the virtues of "taking back" the Federal domain should note that there's next to no public land in Texas, which has brought about the current situation in which the general public has very little access to wild lands at all.