Lauren the Ghoti says:

How much you wanna bet that pile was 3 times that size before the arrival of los Federales?

In totally unrelated news, dozens of men in Mexican police uniforms have been sighted in Houston and Los Angeles, pricing out Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Bentleys.

Lauren the Ghoti says:

4) Drug traffickers deterred by severe sentences for smuggling marijuana, now switched to importing / selling 1000x more harmful but more profitable substance – CHECK

Lauren the Ghoti says:

Your statements are, I’m sure, quite sincere. But nevertheless, the Mexican government, and particularly law enforcement, at all levels, are remarkably corrupt. Persons highly sympathetic to the plight of the Mexican people will invariably cite their poverty as an exculpatory factor and the root cause of the corruption. But more objective observers have demonstrated long ago that it’s a lot more complex than that. The corruption certainly contributes to the impoverishment of the citizens, but those same citizens, as a matter of national character and long-accepted tradition, feed that corruption with a combination of rationalization of dishonesty as being made necessary by poverty, a collective fatalism that promotes the universal sentiment of “why bother,” and a range of -centric behaviors and attitudes, particularly egocentrism and ethnocentrism. I have lived for over 15 years in a city over 35% Mexican and have observed the collective and individual behaviors and am under no delusions regarding the Mexican people.

I would further delineate the individual and collective psychological traits that are behind the situation of Mexicans in both Mexico and the US.

Suffice it to say, Attorney General Gonzales is an excellent example of the stereotypical Mexican politico. He is more than willing to apply his efforts and successes in his profession (i.e. being one of those paragons of moral, ethical behavior, a lawyer), not to help his less fortunate Mexican brethren, but to instead cozy up to his own people’s enemies, to sell out his own brothers and sisters for personal riches and influence. He was, in notoriously corrupt Texas politics, a liar and a hypocrite, and with the help of fellow corrupt Texans, has brought his turncoat mentality to a national audience, doing his part to help renodel the US Justice Department along the lines of its Mexican counterpart . And the Mexican government – and therefore, the Mexican gen pop – features no shortage of individuals struck from the same mold.

When many Mexicans succeed here, as there, they immediately shed any connection with their peasant roots and seek to emulate, flatter and thereby join, the ruling class. This, despite all the rationalizations, is time-honored Mexican tradition.

I would hasten to note that this is not universally applicable across the board. There certainly are noble, dedicated, caring Mexicans who want very much to do what they can to help elevate the situation of their people, and work hard for that goal. They almost certainly outnumber the out-and-out corrupt, but in the end it doesn’t matter, since the sellouts, given their willingness to join their oppressors’ side against their own, are repaid by those same oppressors with power and influence the reformers are denied, so their influence is magnified and out of proportion to their numbers. They wind up calling the shots and leaving their countymen to struggle on their own.

All of Mexico’s failings are someone else’s fault. Always have been.
Ya.