THE BORDER REPORT

Suddenly, the Americans’ attentions are turning back to Mexico, eyes slowly narrowing.

The wires are abuzz with the news this morning that 128 Americans were murdered in Mexico in the past three years.

It’s leading to a curious reaction on the U.S. side. The restrictionists are taking this as yet one more example to revile our neighbor. The open borders lobby is caught in the regular quandary of defending a country that so easily shocks Americans.

The number comes from the U.S. State Department which released the information last week in a list of how Americans have died in Mexico. Most of the 667 deaths were accidents; car crashes, drownings and the like.

But 128 were murders committed in border cities. Tijuana: 31; Nuevo Laredo: 21; Ciudad Juárez: 6. I was a little surprised at the two in sleepy little Magdalena de Kino. The little religious icon town is birthplace to Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta and lies about an hour south of the border city of Nogales.

These “non-natural deaths,” in the vernacular of State, were tallied between Jan. 1, 2005 and Dec. 31, 2007. Of course, these are only the murders reported to State Department. And State never releases information on how many Americans are kidnapped in Mexico.

Here we go again.

Predictably, it didn’t take long for the news to hit the American talking heads networks and even the senior senator from Texas, Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, had a column in the El Paso Times Sunday, warning against the violence spilling over. To be fair, she probably signed off on the column before State released the numbers, but it only added to the hysteria.

It didn’t help that the same newspaper published the “oh-my-god-there’s-a-bomb-threat story.” Briefly, the “oh-my-god-there’s-a-bomb-threat story” is a kind of alarmist story the American papers historically vowed not to report because it incites copycats. Mexican papers, also historically, seem to relish these things.

In this case, it came as an e-mail that went chain throughout Cd. Juárez and El Paso last week warning of a wave of murders that would be unleashed throughout Juárez, gunmen spraying down shopping malls and all. U.S. intelligence agencies surprised me, telling The Dallas Morning News that the threats were against the Juárez Cartel. Really? Because it sounds like just the type of virtual-world cherry bomb in the garbage-can scene a lot of 13 year olds would enjoy.

And now the stats.

I suppose the beauty of statistics is that they make it so easy to hang a news peg on. Particularly when you don’t know the context of the numbers.

I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a cynic, but no matter how the American talking head networks try to spin this, I will never believe that every case of the 128 murders was a sheer victim/antagonist incident. I doubt these are Americans in flip-flops, button-downs and baggy shorts caught by rocket launchers as they get their picture taken on a painted-stripe donkey.

No, I’m thinking the perspective of winner/loser describes many, if not most of these murders better. Here’s a stat the media will probably leave out: Twelve million Americans visit Mexico every year. Here’s another: New York City alone, with 8 million people, boasts that in 2007, it’s murder rate was below 500.

To the American, Mexico has always been a bit of a savage place, sort of like New Orleans. Maybe it has something to do with tourists’ behavior in this country, they can get away with things they wouldn’t dare try in the U.S. One vile image of a drunken 50-year-old woman climbing on top of a table in a bar in Mazatlán to dance along to “Mi Niña Mujer” is forever etched in my mind. Her subsequent fall was far from grace.

But perspective will matter little.

Mexico’s caught Americans’ attention yet again, and as usual, it wasn’t for anything good.

-- Michel Marizco