THE BORDER REPORT

Another story this morning on the border woes, this one comes from the Los Angeles Times which struggled to make the argument that violence from Mexico is "spilling over" into the United States. Has the newspaper just discovered the U.S.-Mexico border?

First of all, noone can tell me that Mexico should be defended in this case; the country allowed the narcos to flourish through years of tolerance and backroom deals. Now, with a war between feuding drug cartels, there's been more than 1,500 organized crime killings in the country this year alone. Adjusting for population and time, roughly the same number were killed in Ireland between 1969 and 2003, 3,300 in the political troubles there. The Irish troubles were viewed as an international crisis; in Mexico's case, it's viewed as a way of life.

Recent attacks in once-peaceful cities like Cananea have become the norm. I'm told there's been a gunfight every night since I reported the commando attack on a police substation last week. At least one reader has reported being stopped by men in civilian clothes carrying AK-47s along the Naco-Cananea highway. Two reporters I know in the area have been threatened into silence; without their reporting, regional papers like El Imparcial don't know what is happening. And when El Imparcial doesn't know what's going down, American papers like the Arizona Daily Star and the Arizona Republic don't know.

There's no excuse for this bloodshed; the best answer Mexico has ever been able to give is that the fighting is between warring cartels and doesn't involve peaceful citizens. The straw man argument constructs the implication that if you're shot or killed, you deserved it. Not one of the 15 police officer killings that took place this year has been solved. Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours called last week's Cananea attack a fight between migrant smugglers; it was not. That"levelling wind" Yeats refers to is blowing hard in Mexico. Let the murders continue and the fragile democracy in Mexico will crumble and blow away in the desert sand.

"Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the levelling wind."

-- 1919 --

-- WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

But this "spilling over" notion that is the premise of the Times story is myopic, alarmist and disappointing. The implication is that the narco-problems are Mexican in origin, and the United States tries to do what it can against this violent neighbor.

I'm not making an argument for drug legalization which is where most stories in defense of Mexico lead to. Rather, I think it's dangerous for a major American newspaper to pretend the problems that exist in Mexico do not normally exist here. That is a foolish, deadly sentiment.

I'm thinking of the ease with which 70-plus public officials took the bribe money in Operation Lively Green; that alone shows the human condition toward corruption. When it comes to migrant smuggling, I'm thinking of a February Pinal County case where the survivors reported to investigators that the white-skinned killers wore black berets and spoke thickly-accented Spanish.

Who could forget Hector Soria, the Three Points torturer who pried out the toenails and bashed out the teeth of three illegal migrants trying to extort their families in Mexico?

But such examples negate the Times' premise and it's better to ignore them. Instead, the newspaper plucked examples out of the regional stories, from San Diego to Phoenix to Tucson to El Paso to Brownsville to build their case.

In the Arizona example, it's "The border-crime issue became so urgent in Arizona that top officials met in Tucson in June with their counterparts from Sonora, Mexico. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano agreed to help train Sonoran police to track wire payments to smugglers. Sonoran Gov. Eduardo Bours agreed to improve police communications with U.S. authorities."

Well, no. Actually, the plenary session of the Arizona-Mexico Commission is an annual event. In most years, Sonora and Arizona sign a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate. Such meetings are good for capturing Arizona fugitives hiding in Sonora but little more. As for Bours' improving communications with U.S. cops, well, how hard can it be to exchange business cards and cellphone numbers? The better question is why these basic "law enforcement tactics" weren't conducted before.

"The small town of Sierra Vista, Ariz., learned firsthand of the rising violence in 2004, when police chased a pickup carrying 24 illegal immigrants on the border town's main drag, Buffalo Soldier Trail. Speeds reached up to 100 mph. The truck went airborne, hit half a dozen cars and killed a recently married elderly couple waiting at a stoplight."

This would be a good example of violence – except that it happened three years ago. Nowhere does the Times mention the spike-strip a U.S. Border Patrol agent placed on Buffalo Soldier Trail that caused the car to flip over in the first place.

"Even more brazen have been several kidnappings of 50 to 100 immigrants by rival cartels, which hide them in stash houses in and around Phoenix until families pay a ransom."

When haven't migrants been kidnapped, extorted and ransomed off in Phoenix? The problem has been prevalent since 2000.

" ... records indicated that cocaine and heroin seizures may end up twice as high as last year. Marijuana seizures are increasing 25%. Nine months into the current fiscal year, he said, his team had already seized more pot than all of last year."

Drug seizures are no indication of narcotics smuggling quantities. A more accurate gauge is street price and marijuana street prices have stayed consistent for the past decade.

I was somewhat amused to find the Times including Tucson's Jennifer Allen, executive director of the Border Action Network, in the list of American authorities with the likes of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Allen has long argued against militarization of the border as a government response that only increases violence. Arpaio, in spite of his posturing, has rarely been able to solve a migrant homicide in Maricopa County.

"A House subcommittee on domestic security has investigated the "triple threat" of drug smuggling, illegal border crossings and rising violence, and it found that "very little" passes the border without the cartels' knowledge. The panel found that cartels send smugglers into the United States fully armored with equipment -- much of it imported to Mexico from the United States -- including high-powered binoculars and encrypted radios, bazookas, military-style grenades, assault rifles and silencers, sniper scopes and bulletproof vests. Some wear fake police uniforms to confuse authorities as well as Mexican bandits who might ambush them."

Has the Los Angeles Times just discovered the border? When haven't drug cartels, going back to Pablo Acosta and Miguel Felix Gallardo, not used radios, silencers, bulletproof vests and fake cop uniforms to strong-arm a narco-plaza?

But it's Sunday and I've ranted enough. The point is this: Mexico's organized crime problems are nothing new. What is new, and what's a more complicated story, is the rise of the Gulf Cartel and the subsequent response of the Sinaloa Republica and the Mexican government.

I expect a newspaper like the Los Angeles Times to not take the alarmist approach and report this issue as new. Drug violence isn't spilling into the United States. It's already been here and it isn't going away any time soon.