Book and soapbox

I just finished off a book about the Sierra Madre mountains located in northern Mexico. The book was "Into the lawless heart of the Sierra Madre, God's middle finger." The writter travels through this area which is known for its violence and lack of police, or at least a non corrupt police. The military is there patrolling, supposedly trying to rid the area of the main crop, drugs, but along with the police, turn out to be just as involved in the trade as the "farmers." It's really interesting and the troubles often parallel the troubles in Juarez. The author had this to say about the not so long ago release of hundreds of corrupt police officers in Juarez.

"Shorn of their badges and released from their web of patronage that kept them answerable for their actions, the corrupt, predatory cops were not enrolling in architecture schools or starting up Internet cafes. They were plying the only trades they knew-extortion, theft, assassination, kidnapping, drug trafficking-with an even greater ferocity and ruthlessness than before."

This seems to be the story all over Mexico and it's sad that, for the most part, most of these problems are actually our fault (America that is). I hate when people blame America for everything that is wrong in the world and I by no means think that we are ALL to blame for the mess in Mexico, but if we didn't have such an appetite for drugs, there wouldn't be a need for the drugs to move through the border towns that are now overwhelmed with violence. The main spots for the violence are in cities just across the US/Mexico border, places like Juarez, Tijuana, Nogales and others. If we could get ourselves under control, the demand would dry up and the maybe the violence would lessen. I know, it ain't going to happen and that it is much more complicated than that, so that means we need to realize that we have some responsibility for it. If you are going to be part of the problem, be part of the solution. I know our government is giving money to the Mexican government, not sure that is the answer, but training people to fight the battles in their own land hasn't really work for us in the past either. There are so many cases where we trained a country's army to fight an aggressor, only to then have then turn that knowledge against us or the very people we trained them to protect. That has happened in the middle east and there was actually an elite force in Mexico that the US trained, that now works for the drug cartels, nice. I have no idea what the answer is, I just know it's sad to see innocent people suffer, in a country where it was all ready hard to just get by. Even when we have hardships here in the US, there are places to get help. Not always enough, but better than nothing like so many other parts of the world. As I do research for my Africa trip and dive into the whole AIDs thing, I'm amazed at how little help people got from their governments, especially at the beginning of the outbreak. Of course, most of these countries have nothing to give their people, so it wasn't like they were holding back, but there are also a lot of cases of corrupt governments that keep the wealth within the government and never let it filter down to the people. There are countries with great wealth, in diamonds or other natural resources, that just doesn't seem to be used to help its people. The world has been woken up to the tragedy in Africa, mostly from celebrities who go there and come back with their public service announcements, but there is still work to be done. I'm excited to be part of the solution, as small as it may be. I'll now step off of my soapbox and tell you, the book I mentioned at the beginning of this post, really good if you have a heart for the area, it's people or strange travel stories. I have several more books on the way, I love Amazon.com. One is on Africa, one on Juarez and one by Bill Bryson, one of my favorite authors. Doesn't hurt that he is an Iowa boy:) I almost always buy my books, which may seem like a waste to some, but it is so hard for me to read a book from the library. One, I can't dog ear the pages and highlight parts I like. Two, I can't read it in the alotted time period. I have to renew it 2 times on line and then take the book in to renew it again. I'm a little embarrased at the amount of time it takes me to read a book, but I try to cram it in over lunch at work, which gets interuppted everyday. Third, since I read while I eat, my books usually end up with food stains. The WDM Public library doesn't want to know that I had soup on page 43 and a ham sandwich on page 213.