I was walking down a sidewalk yesterday when some haggard-looking white man ran up to me and asked me if I had any “cream.” I indignantly demanded to know why he thought I would know of such things. I have been asked this many times before by complete strangers who otherwise wouldn’t give me the time of day. I remember the first time someone asked me this: I was on bus and a black man asked me if I had any “cream.” I told him that there was a drug store over at such and such a street. He looked at a companion and rolled his eyes.
I suspected that the “cream” he was talking about was something other than what I was thinking about in all innocence. Of course I had heard of something called “the cream” as an illegal PED used by former baseball player Barry Bonds; but a bit of googling revealed that “cream” was also a form of “meth” with the “texture” of cream and often flavored with sweeteners. Like “pot brownies” and crack cocaine, “cream” is one of those American variations.
Now why would so many people (it must have been dozens over the past few years) ask me if I had any “cream”? Well, because I look like a “Mexican” to them, all Mexicans must be into meth or some illegal drug, because, after all, that is what “everyone” says, especially the police, right-wing media and politicians. I wouldn’t doubt that this is the “assumption” of many “liberals” as well. Being ignorant isn’t a defense, but it is the only “explanation” for such "ethnic" stereotypes. I don’t “hang out” with the drug using crowd; frankly I don’t “hang out” with anyone, and my personal “drug of choice” is my large DVD and Blu-ray collection, which grows by the dozen (or more) every week.
I think the point being missed here is not who the “suppliers” allegedly all are, but who the “buyers” are, and my personal experience is that they are all “real Americans,” white and black. Let’s face the facts, why don’t we? Americans have had a long time fetish for illegal drugs. If they couldn’t afford the “hard stuff,” they’d sniff glue, drink cough medicine or just drink alcohol to get “high,” except that those methods were slower or less mind-blowing. One way or another, they are going to “get it”—to the tune of $150 billion a year of it.
That story, interestingly enough, isn’t mentioned in the Washington Post story the other day, “The War Next Door," described as such:
María Jesús was grilling tortillas. Patricia was frying pork ribs. Adriana was sipping a cup of tea to calm her nerves. For the Martínez sisters, that Friday was shaping up like most Fridays in their mountain village, the women preparing lunch in their simple homes as their husbands tended the fields. Then the women’s father, Javier, sent an urgent warning: The Jalisco cartel had arrived. “Our lives changed in a minute,” said María Jesús, 31. Gunmen in four armor-plated “monster” trucks had been spotted just across the valley, Javier told his children. They grabbed their kids and ran. Three months later, 17 family members are crammed into an abandoned restaurant here in Coahuayana, a banana-growing town on the Pacific Coast, home to an estimated 1,000 Mexicans uprooted from their communities.
All over the world, refugees are fleeing their war-torn homes, and the U.S. doesn’t even realize they have such a place right on their border, except to ignore the reality and liken these human beings who when they seek asylum as just “vermin,” “pests” and “criminals.” The Post goes on to note that “As criminal groups battle for control over Mexican territory, the displaced are becoming increasingly visible, in towns such as Coahuayana and at the U.S. border. An estimated 20,000 people have fled violence in the past year in Michoacán state, roughly the size of West Virginia. Thousands more have abandoned their homes in other states like Zacatecas and Guerrero.”
Where have we heard that kind of talk before? Afghanistan? Ukraine? Mexican Congresswoman Alma Griselda Valencia says “We are at war,” a definition the government is loath to accept even as the national legislature considers humanitarian assistance for the displaced. What are people running from? “Homes are peppered with bullet holes. Drones launch bombs that gash holes in roofs. The Jalisco cartel has planted land mines” as a “battle between Jalisco and a rival cartel network” rages on for control.
Of course, it isn’t just cartels battling for control over Mexico; the police, local governments and even “legitimate” businesses sometimes employ “extralegal” security forces to defend their “turf”—and sometimes in concert with cartels for their own protection. “That free-for-all reflects what may be Mexico’s most critical problem,” notes the Post. “While the country has replaced its long-running authoritarian system with democracy, it has failed to build a justice system that prosecutes crime effectively.”
While marijuana growing has a long history in Mexico, the drug war on the Colombian cartels merely transferred much of the cocaine traffic through Mexico instead of the usual routes by air or sea, while methamphetamines—an American “creation”—found new “labs” as Americans became more and more “addicted” to “meth.” WebMD notes that methamphetamines were first developed in the early 20th century as a “nasal decongestant and bronchial inhaler.” However, “Its stimulative properties resulted in increased activity, decreased appetite, and a general sense of pleasure,” eventually leading to it being listed as a controlled substance.
Cartels helping to feed the insatiable American appetite for illegal drugs has costs that few Americans know or care about. “War” is raging between law-abiding people and the likes of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which is “’One of the five most dangerous transnational criminal organizations in the world,’ says the U.S. government.” And not just that: they are “a bunch of gunmen determined to snatch control of this region’s timber supplies, iron ore mines and banana plantations.” But even local self-defense is disrupted when family members and neighbor are recruited by cartels—leading to “social cleansing” within local communities, usually meaning murder.
In some communities there is the like of “Comandante Teto” in the town Coahuayana, whose armed band displaced the Knights Templar cartel and their reign of terror and murder, and who now “leads 120 men in military-grade body armor, equipped with assault rifles” according to the Post. Teto claims he doesn’t like carrying a weapon, “But we have to fight every day, to survive.” The townspeople, refugees from other towns and local businesses—distrustful of local police who they say are in the pockets of criminals—appreciate the protection they receive from the “Comandante,” particularly since the Jalisco cartel appears to be closing in. Support for the unsanctioned by the state defense force is such that they have been provided police uniforms and put on the town’s payroll.
That leads to the question about those who have been unable to find such (perhaps temporary) safe sanctuary in Mexico, when not being forced to pay blood money just to remain in their own homes, the alternative being caught-up in the “wars” with their homes and livelihoods destroyed and family members and neighbors murdered. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador—who recently won a recall election—has as usual been less than forthcoming about the country’s problems, and has denied that there are “many” displaced persons, trying to avoid the appearance of being helpless in the face of de facto cartel control of much of the country. One government minister, however, puts the number of displaced persons at near a half-million.
To “regain control” of regions dominated by cartels, government security forces have attacked centers of cartel activity, but, the Post notes, “the Mexican government has launched military operations in Michoacán before, only to see violence resurge after troops withdraw. (Political scientist Romain) Le Cour Grandmaison said such war-on-drugs policies didn’t address crime groups’ expansion into extortion and protection rackets..,Police remain poorly trained, and the justice system is underfunded, politicized and veined with corruption.”
This isn’t just happening in Mexico, either, but in Central America—where once the people had to endure right-wing murder regimes bankrolled by the U.S. government to fend off alleged “communist insurgencies,” but now the people must deal with U.S-bred prison gangs like the M-13, many of whose members have been “deported” to Central America to bring new terror to the populace. And people in this country have the nerve to question why many of these people are seeking a “safe” haven.
Again, after reading the Post report, one wonders why it left out mentioning these and other issues that are equally—and perhaps even more so—at fault for the violence that is going on in Mexico today. Illegal drugs are a $150 billion a year industry in the U.S. A PBS Frontline report on the “War on Drugs” attempted to illuminate those living in darkness, such as the right-wing media and politicians:
While the U.S. drug user may not intend to invest in this international drug economy, every dollar spent purchasing those weekend escapes is ultimately fueling a mammoth and destructive system that depends on our drug dollars to survive. "That population of hard core users generates the funds," says former IRS agent Mike McDonald. "They generate the dollars that go back to Mexico and go back to Colombia. They generate those dollars that in Colombia and in Mexico are turned into power, turned into extortion, turned into homicides, turned into corrupting foreign governments, arms dealing, and expanding criminal enterprises around the world."
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