My wife's family mostly resides in or near the Mexican Gulf Coast port town of Tampico, the site of the original oil discovery in Mexico in the 1920's and where conservative icon William F. Buckley's father made his fortune in the oil business prior to nationalization in the 1930's.
Over the succeeding years it's position as a major oil center and port of entry for shipments from Europe has been offset by first being held hostage by the national oil worker's union headquartered in the adjacent city of Ciudad Madero until it's leader, Joaquin Hernandez Galicia (commonly known as "La Quina") was arrested and jailed in 1989. Tampico is also famous as the hometown of Zapatista revolutionary Subcommandante Marcos, who came from a middle-class background and attended the local Jesuit high school before going off to start revolutions.
In the last couple of years the drug wars have hit Tampico in a big way, and has directly impacted my wife's family. One of my brother-in-law's relatives reported being caught in a crossfire in a major intersection in Ciudad Madero; another feared (nothing happened, thank God) that her 10-year old son may have rode his bicycle right into the middle of a drug shootout in broad daylight and as a result her husband took a job transfer to Houston (he works in the oil business); and another yet reported that they received phone calls demanding money for their safety and as a result his Canadian-based company agreed to move him and his family to Calgary and sponsor them for permanent residency in Canada. As a result of the drug wars, colonies of professional-class, dual-citizen or legal resident Mexican expatriates have popped up in nice suburbs such as The Woodlands outside of Houston and Eastlake just north of the California border.
It's so bad that if you drive your car after 5PM without your interior lights on you are assumed to be involved in the drug wars and risk being shot, killed and decapitated!
When you hear stories like these it makes it even more galling that our Dear Leader has not been willing to do what is necessary to protect American citizens from this type of activity taking place in our country-in particular in Arixona, which is now the kidnapping capital of the USA due to drug cartel activities. In fact, he has gone out of his way to prohibit the state of Arizona from enforcing laws on the books. Our unwillingness to enforce our laws and to build the fence puts all of us in jeopardy, and his failure on this issue is one of many issue where our president has proven himself to be a small, petty and ideologically-driven man.
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