The movie El Norte has stayed with me a long time. Anyone who has seen it will likely remember one horrifying scene when the two Mayan peasants from Guatemala–a brother and sister–cross the U.S.-Mexico border through a sewer pipe. It’s 1984. California is the border battlefront. And Guatemala, torn asunder by a long civil war…Continue Reading…
I love that The Washington Post has a new blog on Mexico’s drug war, called “Journey Along the Border.” Too bad it’s slated to last a week and half, the duration of the journalistic journey. Guys, the drug war won’t end when you reach Tijuana, so why fold up shop then? Keep the blog going….Continue Reading…
Imagine the histrionics when Lou Dobbs figures out the climate change angle to one of his pet causes. In the meantime, with respect to yesterday’s big report, this is a reasonable take on domestic security issues, particularly those related to the border: As much as the United States will have its hands full dealing with…Continue Reading…
A few years ago, a ranger at Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument told me that this would be a historic trail in fifty years. In the meantime, the tragedy continues: Already this year, 79 of the dead have been recovered. The season of death, deep summer, has not even begun.
The allure of technology is so great as the Ultimate Answer that politicians, policymakers and engineers continually chase after it the way a drug addict chases after that first high. And so, speaking of drugs, we learn today that a squad in the Homeland Security Department is trying out all manner of hi-tech gimmickry to…Continue Reading…
In 2004, I got a small glimpse of the unseen (and sporadically reported) desperation along the rugged Arizona borderlands when I wrote this small piece on Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Nothing’s changed. Yes, billions have since been spent on militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border, but to what end? As this wrenching blog post by Michael…Continue Reading…
Last week, when Time Magazine’s Joe Klein listed all the reasons why legalizing marijuana made sense, somehow he missed this one. Imagine what making pot legal in the U.S. would do for Mexico too.