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December 03, 2008
Down Mexico Way
The article on El Paso in the current Newsweek caught my eye for a good reason: I'd spent five years there- between the Summers of 1958 and 1963- first as a dispensary officer at Fort Bliss fresh from a civilian internship at San Francisco General Hospital, and then from September ‘59 through August ‘63 as a resident in General Surgery at William Beaumont Army Hospital. Although I haven’t been back since, I retain many intense memories, most of them pleasant, of that formative time in my life.Newsweek’s description of the changes that have taken place on the boder in the intervening forty-five years can only be described as appalling; they also aptly illustrate two of the major problems that beset our modern world, neither of which is being addressed or discussed as they should be. The first is runaway population growth: when I was there, El Paso and its cross-border neighbor, Juarez, numbered about 250 000 people each. Both cities felt safe, and Nixon’s drug war was still six years in the future when I departed. The idea of a feared drug cartel anywhere in Mexico would have been considered bizzare.
How thing have changed! There are now a total of 2.1 million people in both cities, and while El Paso still has relatively few murders, the same can't be said of Juarez, which counted 1300 last year alone. The balance between the cities is also rapidly changing as the cartels increasingly cross the border to abduct or murder those thought to owe them money or suspected of cooperating with law enforcement. The carnage described in Newsweek, and apparently taken for granted on both sides of the border, is attributable almost entirely to the wrong-headed and counterproductive prohibition policy being aggressively pursued by both governments. Also, the fraying economic conditions now troubling both nations won't improve the situation.
Meanwhile, the US is trapped between presidential administrations while the incumbent is busy adding to his mischief and his successor is forced to wait in a power vacuum. If I believed in a deity, I might ask him/her for help, but as it stands, I’m left with the hope that Obama is as smart and honest as he seems, and lucky enough to avoid either assassination of nuclear war before January 20th.
Even if those wishes are granted, it will still be day to day for quite some time.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at December 3, 2008 09:51 PM