Texas Abuzz

Two things have the news wires in Texas buzzing today: a bunch of people that didn't go to Mexico and one man that did - and never came home.

Galveston and the Padre Island areas are both reporting huge numbers of visitors for spring break. Though college students + booze still equaled a stabbing. More here. As a side note, I was at the beach in Sabine pass this week and I could run from Louisiana to Galveston without seeing soul. Don't ever tell me Spring Break is just about a trip to the beach. As the Chicago Sun-Times puts it, this is more about sex and suds than sun and surf. Of course one look at Gulf water at any beach will tell you that. The baby dolphins washed up on the beach were particularly scenic.

The other thing that has garnered far more attention is the death of prosecutor in Cameron County that was found dead in Matamoros. Though no foul play is suspected, every paper in Texas seems to be running the story with the statement that the investigation is ongoing (and without the statement from the DA that says no foul play is suspected). Nevertheless, a 26-year-old guy goes to Matamoros and he happens to be the prosecutor in Texas, one might be excused for thinking that more is up than a hit and run or a sudden heart attack.

Mexican Drug Commandos in Florida and Illinois

Narco-terrorist-illegal-immigrants penetrated US Territory over the last three weeks, killing two spring break students in drunken balcony falls and running over another out for a jog. Reports are still coming in about a Chicago teen on break struck and killed by 86 yr-old John Hillyard in Southern Illinois this week. Hillyard illegally arrived in this country from Oaxaca two years ago carrying forty pounds of marijuana and three kilos of powdered pseudoephedrine pills - all of which would have been consumed by OTHER illegal immigrants in the nation. If only all those spring breakers were armed.

I'm not sure that Iturbide or Morelos had in mind creating Mexico for the purpose of helping US Americans feel better about their own national problems, but that seems to be Mexico's most enduring hemispheric role in the minds of some US Americans. At any rate, the killing of an Arizona rancher seems to be the latest cause celebre of the anti-Mexican crowd, and the rhetoric surrounding it seems to be going nowhere pretty. Somehow I don't think the chant we'll hear at Arizona anti-immigration rallies will be something like "We'll kill our own, Mex go home."

Violence and Drug Crime to Fall in Mexico: Texans to Stay Home

The student paper at UT Austin announced today to all their fine young scholars that the Texas department of safety has decided Mexico should not be on the destination list for Texas students. Mexico breathed a collective sigh of relief as both narcotic crime and sexual assaults will all drop off with the absence of the fine young scholars. Meanwhile, back in safe-n-sane Texas, a man walked into Wal-Mart this weekend with two guns (I heard AK-47 on the local news) and started a shoot out. This follows months of church burnings south of Dallas and a tax protester smashing a plane into an IRS building in Austin. Besides, fine young scholars will be safer here, in Texas, from all that Mexican debauchery.

Latin Americans, on the other hand, are perfectly safe when they come to Texas. Just ask Jaqueline Saburido (below) who had a great time in Austin, TX.

Mexico: U.S. Totem

The United States desperately needs Mexico, and I'm NOT talking about trade and labor.

This week two things happened to get me thinking about this idea of Mexico as a sort of totem for the modern U.S.

1) My son came home with an Enrique Camarena Memorial Red Ribbon from the Texas Combined Armed Forces. My son has no idea who Camarena is/was or who the men are that tortured him. Yet there was my five-year-old with Camarena's ensign pinned to his chest and it came as a device for a discussion on drugs (putting aside that I have to talk to my kindergartener about drugs!!!). I decided that the United States needs a hyped-up sense of violence and narcotics in Mexico to simultaneously avoid the painful cultural upheaval that would happen if we truly addressed our narcotics problem as a health issue BUT STILL talk about an issue we might otherwise sweep under the collective carpet. With Mexico, we have some outlet for discussion.

2) Day of the Dead. Texas is far crazier about Day of the Dead than California was. Again, the hyped-up sense of openess about that "last step in life" in Mexico gives Americans that moment to think about death in a way that we don't usually do - and to confront our own fears about death.

And while it didn't happen to me this week, I consider the general U.S. obsession with Mexico as a place to get cheap and easy sex and booze as serving as something of the same function as Carnival serves in Latin America. Americans take a few days to blow off some steam before returning to the norms of society - at least in their minds. Once more, the pressence of an "outside" entity allows U.S. citizens to consider themselves more saintly at home than they really are, letting them address issues of consumption and sexuality they would otherwise be unwilling to address.

Of course there are exceptions (probably for most people) and just because I say "totem" it doesn't mean that it truly serves the long-term good of the society. It also doesn't mean that there aren't some deeply flawed notions of nationalism and racism involved. And finally, I haven't even started to address what sort of totem the U.S. is for Mexico... .