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Old 07-05-2009, 12:54 AM
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Webstral Webstral is offline
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I have some rather belated feedback on Turboswede’s very thoughtful work. I like almost all of it. The underlying tensions between the US and Mexico feel real. I especially like the vindictive act of putting Mexican currency securities on the market as a means of punishing Mexico City.

Some of the border incidents feel a bit less real to me. I have a hard time seeing the Mexican government making more than a token effort to control the flow of emigrants out of Mexico and into the United States. In the eyes of the ruling elites of Mexico, emigrants are far more valuable in the United States than they are in Mexico. The kind of people who have the combination of gumption and desperation to make a major change in their lives are the kinds of people who could cause real problems at home. Although we have forgotten about the Mexican Civil War (1910-1920), Mexico remembers. The ruling elites don’t want a repeat, but neither are they prepared to surrender their hold on power to prevent the civil war that is forty years overdue. The United States provides a first-rate pressure valve. Better yet, the Mexican economy is bolstered by remittances from the US. Mexico exports its troublesome people and gets hard cash in return. It’s easy to see why Mexican officials act like the world is coming to an end when the US does anything that might make Mexican immigration less desirable, much less impossible. Keep the motivated malcontents at home, and the sky may very well fall on Mexico’s wealthy and powerful.

Given this, I can’t see that Mexico is going to make any serious effort to control emigration in 1997. They’ll make plenty of noise. That has to be done. But I can’t see them actually keeping desperate Mexicans at home where they could cause even more trouble. Thirty dead Mexicans in the Arizona desert serves to focus popular Mexican sentiment against the Americans. That’s no reason to keep 100,000 Mexicans from crossing the border and becoming the Americans’ problem.

I find the idea of American militia groups crossing into Mexico to fight a bit iffy. I suppose it’s possible. I’m not sure I buy it, though. Still, under the philosophy that hatred of the outsiders serves to unify the group, it’s possible that a charismatic leader of a militia group might be able to convince his people to conduct violence on the Mexican side of the border. Certainly, that would result in the dispatch of Mexican Army units to the area. I can’t see the relevant state governments or the federal government sitting on their hands for that one, though. Private citizens can’t be allowed to create international incidents like that—at least not without the consent of the right people in the right places.

I do like the idea of equipping various official armed bodies in the border states with Vietnam-era weapons. If one sees the militias as state guard units, the whole idea becomes quite plausible—even without perceiving a budding war with Mexico.


Webstral
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