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HispanicVista Columnists

By Raoul Lowery Contreras

June 2, 2009

 

Cable Networks Hate Mexico

By Raoul Lowery Contreras

As this is read hundreds of thousands of illegal narcotics transactions are going down throughout the United States with billions of dollars changing hands from people with some money to people with more money.

Most of the buyers are white middle-class, most of the sellers are from the ranks of stuck-in-ghetto poverty classes. They don’t keep all the money; they only keep part of it, most of it goes to filthy rich Mexicans and Colombians.

There are those among us who object when someone points out that the basic problem is that Americans are willing to break myriad laws to satisfy weaknesses that demand drugs to buttress quiet lives of desperation, boredom or economic or social poverty much born of laziness, illiteracy and arrogance.

In other words but for the lawlessness of so many Americans rich “narcotrafficantes” of Mexico and Colombia would be just regular Mexicans or Colombians. Some would be well-off, some would live in poverty.  

Few, if any, would head organizations that terrorize cities using weaponry bought all over the world. Many people would not be found shot to death in Tijuana or Juarez. People would not be found all over Mexico beheaded by the dozens.

Another complaint by some Americans is that America is being blamed for the illegal importation of guns into Mexico from the United States.  Juvenile reports on Fox News, for example, try to poke holes in the Mexican complaint that “90 percent” of confiscated weapons in Mexico come from the USA.

Juvenile wannabe reporters say the Mexican complaint is false that only a small number of these weapons come from the USA. Authorities point out that the percentage is determined by serial number of those numbers turned over to the American authorities. Not every confiscated weapon is turned over to the US for tracing, only the obvious American ones.

The basic question is: Are any American weapons smuggled into Mexico and used in illegal assaults and killings in Mexico? Yes or no?

The answer is YES!

Rifles and pistols are purchased in the USA at gun shows and from gun shops and sent to Mexico. We know this because a huge number of them are confiscated by Mexican authorities and the serial numbers are traced by American authorities to American sources.  Thus, Fox News is partially right, some of these illicit weapons do not come from the USA. But, for a wannabe reporter to nitpick the numbers is stupid.

His sources are pro-gun lobbyists and anti-Mexico activists.  Their hatred of Mexico rises above the illegal importation of any guns from the USA to Mexico and becomes, as it always does, a manifestation of hate.

The fact that Fox News runs these stories without being fair and balanced demonstrates that as a network it reflects the hate Mexico attitude seen at CNN with Lou Dobbs and myriad personalities at MSNBC. Mexico and Mexicans have few friends on cable news.

The gun stories are but the tip of the iceberg.

Rarely do we get a truthful story out of Mexico.  Certainly we are flooded with stories about killings in Mexico but not the details that in almost every case the dead are themselves drug people dying in a death struggle for power and American drug markets.

Where are the laudatory stories about the courageous Mexican President who has made it his number one mission to face down the drug cartels and to destroy traditional Mexican police and judicial corruption? Where…?

On top of the hate manifested by Dobbs, CNN, Fox and MSNBC, why can’t we get reports done by reporters who know anything about Mexico? Pretty faces, styled hair and little more are the requirements for making news reports on these networks.

Where are the reports that Mexican birth rates have plunged in the past two decades? Or where are the reports that the number of work age young men has fallen to levels that in six or seven years there won’t be any Mexican labor surplus? Where is the analysis that when the numbers of young working men falls below current levels few if any young Mexican males will be able to come to the USA to work, legally or illegally? Wages will rise in Mexico; the young men will stay home.

Intelligent, well-educated reporters with solid Mexican history, sociology and politics backgrounds would be making these reports, not dumb reports that only some illicit American weapons are smuggled into Mexico, sent there by American criminals who are protected by dumb reporters and the gun lobby.

Contreras’ books are available at www.amazon.com

 His speaking schedule is available by e-mailing him at sdraoul@att.net