TW: A local publication in El Paso provides a different perspective on the border "crisis". They begrudge the hype by which national media and certain interest groups apply the story. No doubt they have a point (national media lives on hype). Certainly local media can have their own biases as well though. It is in their economic interest to downplay the violence lest investors and tourists go elsewhere. Their themes focus on a desire not to have troops patrolling their streets and for folks to understand the complex dynamics of a border economy rather than the simplistic characterizations framed by outsiders.
I would rely more on lcoal views than say, Lou Dobbs. I never watch Dobbs but we overheard his venom while at an airport recently, he is a bloviator of ignorance. Bill O'Reilly may be more constructive than Dobbs.
From Texas Monthly:
"...it’s the twisted perception created by border-warrior politicians and national news media, and foisted on Juarez’s relatively peaceful sister city. For El Pasoans and residents of nearby border towns, it might all be a mere oddity—maybe even worth a chuckle—if it didn’t mean the construction of 18-foot border walls, blustery talk about National Guard troop surges, and new resources for the disastrous war on drugs. While “troop surge,” “border wall,” and “drug war” might sound irresistibly sexy to politicians and pundits, it’s border residents who have to live with the fences and tanks and consequences.
The truth differs wildly from the perception. Certainly, El Paso’s symbiotic relationship with Juarez has been disrupted by the explosion of drug violence south of the border, which began to tick up in January 2008. But it’s not the kind of disruption brought to you by CNN, Fox, and the rest of the media pack.
The real impact of the ongoing tragedy in Juarez is felt by El Pasoans in more indirect and personal ways. While the brutality across the river has not caused a wave of kidnappings and murders in El Paso, folks do feel its effects every day. Families are divided. El Pasoans can no longer visit their friends, relatives, doctors or dentists in Juarez. Businesses on both sides suffer. The stories are legion: The high-school student who can’t visit her beloved, 105-year-old grandmother because her parents don’t want to risk her safety. The young Juarez woman who worries that her El Paso friends and relatives won’t be able to attend her wedding. And the many families mourning loved ones lost on the other side of the Rio Grande.
...Consider this gem from former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, now a consultant for ABC News, commenting on Juarez: “There is in fact an insurgency on both sides of the American-Mexican border, and it’s stepped up a lot in the last several years because the Bush administration ignored it and put its focus on Iraq.”
...According to the FBI, more than 1,600 people were killed by cartel violence in Juarez in 2008. El Paso, a city of 755,000, recorded just 18 murders last year. Laredo had 11; Brownsville and McAllen had three and nine, respectively. By comparison, Washington, D.C., with a population smaller than El Paso’s, had 186 homicides in 2008.
...The violence is not “spilling over the border” into the U.S. No, every time you say that, whether you mean to or not, you’re conjuring up images of crazed Mexicans crossing the border to burn Columbus, and you have it backwards. It spilled over from the U.S. into Mexico and Latin America long ago. ... [F]or the past 20 years, we’ve been slowly turning the border into a militarized zone, so let’s not say there isn’t violence associated with both sides of the drug trade and the Drug War. We could say that we’re now sharing the violence to a higher degree, an important distinction from the simple-minded terminology of “spilling over.”
...Negron cops to his own role in whipping up the frenzy. In January he penned an article for Texas Monthly called “Baghdad, Mexico,” comparing the carnage in Juarez to the insurgent violence in Iraq. He wishes he hadn’t made the comparison, he says, because it helped fan the blaze of overheated news coverage.
...It’s not that border mayors like Cook and Cortez aren’t deeply concerned. Even before the violence began to spike in Juarez last year, they had been asking Congress for more checkpoints to search for guns and cash heading south, and for more customs officials at U.S. ports of entry to stop drugs heading north.
...Tired of living under virtual house arrest, mayors, county judges and business leaders formed the Texas Border Coalition in 2006, the first year of Operation Jump Start. The coalition has tried ever since to educate state and federal policymakers about what U.S. border towns are really experiencing and what they really need. They’ve spent a lot of time pleading their case in Washington. It’s been uphill all the way.
The coalition fought the 18-foot steel wall through their communities.
...Now the coalition is trying to fend off calls for another National Guard “surge” along the border. It’s not easy, with fear-mongering about drug violence, spillover, and terror threats again reaching fever pitch.
...One problem, Cook says, is that Washington politicians and national media “don’t know how Mexico positively impacts our region”—including the billions in legal trade across the border. “Typically what happens in Washington is that they listen to you, and it sounds like you are getting through to them. Then you leave, and they do whatever it is they planned to do anyway.”
...The same disconnect between reality and perception, O’Rourke says, has derailed meaningful debate about immigration reform. “For the past two years, we’ve been told that Mexicans are smuggling terrorists, taking our jobs, and selling us drugs, and that we are being invaded,” O’Rourke says. “And it worked. It totally freaked people out, and they reacted emotionally to an issue that I think could be solved rationally.”
...He won’t stop trying. O’Rourke wants to organize a national conference in El Paso on U.S. drug policy. “We are ground zero in the drug war—this is it,” O’Rourke says. “We are disproportionately affected by any U.S. policy that deals with Mexico, whether it’s immigration or, in this case, drug policy. We should be the ones framing this and informing the policymakers at the national level—not Lou Dobbs or people in D.C. or other parts of the country. Because the reality is that Mexico scares them, the border scares them, and military interdiction seems to make perfect sense to them.”
...Local reporters and officials occasionally have a chance to give a national audience a window into what’s actually happening. But the story they have to tell is complicated and nuanced. It can’t compete, in the American imagination, with daily tirades from the likes of CNN’s Dobbs and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. Dobbs has been especially avid and persistent in calling for armed troops on the border. In a recent newscast, he had this advice for President Barack Obama: “Bring home the troops from Okinawa, Afghanistan, Iraq ... and bring them here to secure our border and stop the flow of illegal immigrants, drugs and terrorists.”
...Still, Negron tries to look at the bright side. “At least CNN sent Anderson Cooper to El Paso,” he says, “and not Lou Dobbs.”
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=3014
2 comments:
I live four miles north of a new section of border wall. The Rio Grande, which is the actual border, is roughly another mile further south, depending on which bend in the river you are measuring to. I have not seen any spillover of violence in my community, and certainly nothing to justify the $12 million per mile that was spent on the border wall in this area. It is nothing more than hype promoted by certain politicians who see it as being in their interest to claim that the new administration is not adequately defending the US, despite the fact that even if there were a threat to the US the wall does nothing to address it. It does not even stop people from coming in to pick lettuce, so the idea that it would stop determined smugglers or terroritst is absurd.
thx for the comment, interesting insight
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