I would recommend that you read a commentary published Sunday in the New York Times that offers up a (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28bellatin.html) view about how Mexican citizens can stand for all the drug-related 
violence taking place in spots along the U.S./Mexico border – but which the nativists of our nation would like to think is taking place across the whole country.
Author Mario Bellatin makes mention of the “art of renting,” which he describes as an off-beat Mexican practice by which people with some wealth can get out of some of the unpleasantries of life by paying someone else to do it for them.
THOSE UNPLEASANTRIES CAN even go so far as paying someone to serve a short jail sentence, if you happen to get convicted for something such as driving while under the influence.
His point is that Mexican society has developed almost into two types of people – the ones who rent other human beings and the others who allow themselves to be rented, even though it means putting up with the indignities that certain others are using their money to avoid.
The end result, Bellatin writes, is that while all people in Mexico are aware of how the drug-related violence in places like Ciudad Juarez has become in a theoretical sense, “ordinary citizens feel that this situation barely affects them. Bad things happen to other people … over there.”
Sound inhuman?
ANYBODY IN OUR nation who says “yes” is turning a blind eye to the realities of life.
Because we have some inner-city neighborhoods where the same drug trafficking that causes violence in Mexico creates living environments that only people who feel that life has given them no alternative would possibly endure.
Any of us with money can usually afford to isolate ourselves in communities where we just don’t come into contact with such violence.
Heck, it’s not even a matter of avoiding urban areas – since those great cities in our country usually have elite neighborhoods where a single homicide in any given year is considered a significant act. That is true even if just a few blocks away, you can find neighborhoods where a single murder in a month would be considered “slow” by the local cops.
THOSE OF YOU who deliberately live in rural communities, I’d say your very choice puts you so far out of the loop on this issue that I’m not interested in hearing your criticisms of anything relating to Latin American nations.
As for those of you who want to mock Mexicans for thinking they can “rent” other human beings, is it any different than the old practices of our nation in which people who were drafted into the military could get out of such service if they could find a replacement willing to go in their place? It sounds to me like the exact same concept. It’s not alien to our nation. Perhaps the day will come about when it will be a thing of Mexico’s past as well.
But for now, Bellatin writes that Mexicans feel the need to “distance” themselves so they can “function in a country” where the drug dealers use their wealth generated from the demand for their product in the United States.
In many ways, we distance ourselves just as much so we can function in our society where the consumer demand for those deadly narcotics creates unstable places. Anybody who thinks that the drug problem is a Mexican one, or that Mexicans are too different from those of us in the United States is showing just how isolated their mindset truly is.
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violence taking place in spots along the U.S./Mexico border – but which the nativists of our nation would like to think is taking place across the whole country.Author Mario Bellatin makes mention of the “art of renting,” which he describes as an off-beat Mexican practice by which people with some wealth can get out of some of the unpleasantries of life by paying someone else to do it for them.
THOSE UNPLEASANTRIES CAN even go so far as paying someone to serve a short jail sentence, if you happen to get convicted for something such as driving while under the influence.
His point is that Mexican society has developed almost into two types of people – the ones who rent other human beings and the others who allow themselves to be rented, even though it means putting up with the indignities that certain others are using their money to avoid.
The end result, Bellatin writes, is that while all people in Mexico are aware of how the drug-related violence in places like Ciudad Juarez has become in a theoretical sense, “ordinary citizens feel that this situation barely affects them. Bad things happen to other people … over there.”
Sound inhuman?
ANYBODY IN OUR nation who says “yes” is turning a blind eye to the realities of life.
Because we have some inner-city neighborhoods where the same drug trafficking that causes violence in Mexico creates living environments that only people who feel that life has given them no alternative would possibly endure.
Any of us with money can usually afford to isolate ourselves in communities where we just don’t come into contact with such violence.
Heck, it’s not even a matter of avoiding urban areas – since those great cities in our country usually have elite neighborhoods where a single homicide in any given year is considered a significant act. That is true even if just a few blocks away, you can find neighborhoods where a single murder in a month would be considered “slow” by the local cops.
THOSE OF YOU who deliberately live in rural communities, I’d say your very choice puts you so far out of the loop on this issue that I’m not interested in hearing your criticisms of anything relating to Latin American nations.
As for those of you who want to mock Mexicans for thinking they can “rent” other human beings, is it any different than the old practices of our nation in which people who were drafted into the military could get out of such service if they could find a replacement willing to go in their place? It sounds to me like the exact same concept. It’s not alien to our nation. Perhaps the day will come about when it will be a thing of Mexico’s past as well.
But for now, Bellatin writes that Mexicans feel the need to “distance” themselves so they can “function in a country” where the drug dealers use their wealth generated from the demand for their product in the United States.
In many ways, we distance ourselves just as much so we can function in our society where the consumer demand for those deadly narcotics creates unstable places. Anybody who thinks that the drug problem is a Mexican one, or that Mexicans are too different from those of us in the United States is showing just how isolated their mindset truly is.
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