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Contributors
Patrick
Mallon -
Columnist
 Mexico’s
Fox Goes After Cop Killers?
A tragic double standard...
[Patrick Mallon] 12/3/04
"Men become accustomed to poison by degrees," said
Victor Hugo. In the case of Mexican President Vincente Fox,
the venom
of hypocrisy and corruption has reached such an intolerable
level that his constituents are now brutally taking the law
into their own hands.
Mr. Fox doesn’t
like that one bit, and that's unfortunate, because citizens
in Mexico City have had it up to here as well.
Since June of this year, hundreds of thousands have marched to
protest against kidnappings and violent crime.
According to the BBC, Mexico has the second-highest number of
kidnappings in the world, with some 3,000 reported cases last
year. Kidnapping, especially that of innocent children, is a
huge problem, and many of the abductions go unreported due to
a complete lack of trust in law enforcement.
Then came Tuesday November 23, and an event so horrible in a
supposedly civilized society, as to be unimaginable. Three police
officers (or agents) were investigating the disappearance of
two children in the San Juan Ixtlayopan neighborhood. As part
of their duties, they were documenting the crime scene, taking
photos both of the site, as well as of schoolchildren before
they filed their report. Suddenly, the situation turned for the
worse.
An angry mob, some thinking that the officers themselves were
kidnappers, some incensed about repeated indifference to apprehending
and prosecuting criminals, attacked the officers.
On live TV, the mob held the three men for hours, eventually
dousing them with gasoline and setting them on fire as they pleaded
for their lives. One of the men survived and is now recovering.
While the BBC considered this big news, the elite American media
didn't.
A week later, buried
in section A-18 of the Orange County Register (November 30)
is a three paragraph article titled "Fox vows
to punish killers of officer," that describes how President
Fox met with the family members of the victims, pledging punishment
of those responsible.
Sound familiar? It should to those who have followed the news
about the murder of California Deputy David March on April 29,
2002.
While Mr. Fox is vocal and visibly angered by the brutal murders
of Mexican police officers by Mexican citizens, he is starkly
silent about the brutal murder of an American police officer
by a Mexican national, Armando Garcia: a lifetime criminal thug,
thrice deported, a suspect in two attempted murders, with a history
of narcotics and weapons violations.
Garcia has since fled to Mexico, but Mexico will not extradite
him back to the U.S. for prosecution (even though authorities
say they know where he's holed up). So Garcia is a safe cop killer,
free from the law, and subject to the same quality of justice
that drove an angry mob to kill two federal agents in broad daylight
on national TV.
In the struggle for legitimacy, both within its borders, and
in the opinion of Americans and the world, Mexico continues to
confound imagination, and is now virtually immune to any antidote
for its own diseased double standards. The opinion among Mexican-Americans
I know is one of abject disgust. While it's predictable that
these distinct stories have been buried in the U.S. media, one
should not miss the connection. Mr. Fox, and our own President
Bush, both are obscuring a ticking time bomb, and the growing
angst is widely shared among the increasing millions who are
spurning unreliable mainstream TV news sources and empty newspapers
for information.
The truth, as usual, is finding an outlet on the Internet and
talk radio.
Who was David
March?
These are
the words of Teri March, David's widow: "April
29th, 2002, was the worst day of my life. I found out that my
soul-mate, David March, was shot and killed on duty while doing
a routine traffic stop at 10:30 in the morning. He was shot in
the side of his chest, where the vest did not cover, then executed
in the head. I also learned that his killer fled the scene.
"Instantly the news media was at the hospital, and at my
home to catch the drama as it unfolded. I didn’t want to
be on camera, but needed the world's help finding the person(s)
that fled from the scene in a black Maxima. Within two days,
the face of the expected killer was all over the news. I wanted
to see the eyes of a killer who took my dreams away.
"As I sat there, ill in despair, two Hispanic men told
the media, they had told Armando Garcia, "Chato" to
flee to the border (Mexico). I thought this was a place to run
and hide. Not a place to seek a safe haven. I was soon to find
out how broken our justice system really was."
Why Should
Everyone be Concerned?
Think this
growing problem with lawlessness across both borders doesn't
affect you? If you've ever traveled
to Cancun, as a
million tourists do a year, consider a very recent incident,
one again naturally buried by the commerce-driven media.
On Wednesday, November
25, "Suspected drug gangsters murdered
eight people execution-style in and around the Caribbean beach
town of Cancun this week as a wave of brutal killings hit Mexico," said
a Reuters report. The bodies were found the following day.
According to police
official Joaquin Hernandez who described some of the killings, "They were blindfolded with their
hands tied behind their backs and one of them hand-cuffed, all
five of them facing the floor." The eight murdered people
have not yet been publicly identified.
So, as Americans travel to one of the world's most beautiful
places, be conscious that among you, desperate people are circulating,
people who have no respect for life or the law. And should something
happen, don't count on justice being done.
We Californian's recognize the extent of the problem. As well,
we readily acknowledge that most people from Mexico are good,
law-abiding individuals. How does one fully understand another:
By walking a mile in their shoes. If it was me living in Mexico
with the wealth and opportunity of the United States, and all
its temptations, would I enter illegally if there were no other
options? Easy question: in a heartbeat. But that's not the issue.
Both Mexico and the U.S. tremble with fear over enforcing many
of their own laws, and are dangerously resistant to the implications
of evading the will of their people. That fact alone should be
alarming to the entire populations of either country.
No one can know the pain of Mexican citizens who have had a
child kidnapped, gone forever, nor the anger over government
indifference. And it's impossible to fathom the loss of the families
of the officers hideously burned alive. Teri March will never
see her husband David again. While none of these crimes are the
fault of the Mexican president, it's his response that the world
holds in question.
Respect for a human life is universal, and effective justice
should extend across borders. I'm certain Vincente Fox (long
a stalwart backer of human rights for Mexican nationals living
in the U.S.), should he be called upon to issue a public statement
about this basic standard, would agree in principle, but not
in fact. CRO
Patrick
Mallon is a political journalist and author of California
Dictatorship: How Liberal Extremism Destroyed Gray Davis. [read
an excerpt]. Patrick
is a regular guest on talk radio programs throughout the
state and nationally. He can be contacted at patrick@patrickmallon.com
copyright
2004 Patrick Mallon
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