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May 01, 2010
Parsing Mexico, 2
Although I’d spent five years in El Paso, one in an Army dispensary at Fort Bliss and the next four across the highway as a surgical resident at William Beaumont Hospital, I hadn’t been back there since August, 1963. Thus I’d found it difficult to reconcile descriptions of violence and mass murder now emanating from El Paso with the peaceful memories I still have of that interval in my life. One source that's helped has been Charles Bowden, an author I’ve yet to read in detail, but, thanks to Google, one who has already filled in several blanks in my understanding of how crime and corruption have changed that part of the border. it's important to note that Bowden probably has more than a nodding acquaintance with drugs, but he's clearly not a reform activist.I didn’t visit Mexico again until 1975 when we spent a week in Mazatlan on vacation from a burgeoning civilian practice. There followed, at intervals, similar weeks in Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta: the last in the mid-Nineties. By that time we’d settled on Puerto Vallarta as a favorite destination, partly because it was so easily reached on a Alaska Airlines. Perhaps providentially, a growing interest in drug policy had radically changed our travel destinations from 1995 on.
Another thing I recall from our visits to Mexico is how surprised I was to learn of the relative value of its petroleum reserves, a hot topic of conversation in the Eighties. What Bowden’s essays also brought home is that same industry’s relative decline because of aging infrastructure and depleted reserves, not to mention the growing global demand. In other words, Mexican and US petroleum are in the same quandary. Quite apart from global warming, there's a looming oil crisis. The only questions are when, and how violently it will become manifest. Ditto water, for that matter.
All of which helps focus on the factors mentioned in yesterday’s entry. Although "foreign," Mexico and the Gulf are near neighbors, yet we seem to have trouble thinking about their current problems; perhaps because there are no easy solutions. However those problems are approaching crisis levels, thanks to prolonged neglect (denial).
I haven’t even mentioned “marijuana,” a contrived name for a product long associated with Mexico, but one that didn’t begin to become an important economic engine in both nations until it’s anxiolytic properties were discovered by American "kids" over forty years ago.
Just how that happened and the socio-economic significance of pot's illegal market will be topics for another day.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at May 1, 2010 08:10 PM