Ruben Martinez: 'Mexico Is on the Brink, and America Is Largely Oblivious' Jared Keller - World.Mic
go to original November 17, 2014

Anger and outrage has been building across Mexico for weeks. Earlier in November, authorities arrested Iguala Mayor José Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, who are believed to be the masterminds of the disappearance. Authorities claim Abarca ordered the attacks because the mayor presumed the students were planning to interrupt one of his wife's upcoming speeches.

Last week, gang members confessed to torching the remains of the students in a massive inferno near the city of Iguala before stuffing the remains into bags and disposing of them in a river. Authorities have also arrested 70 suspects, among them dozens of police held in connection with the crime.

The scale and brutality of the atrocities committed against those 43 students "makes it all the more baffling how little attention most people in the U.S. have paid to the unfolding tragedy," writes Loyola Marymount University literature professor Rubén Martínez. "To understand the historical significance — and the moral and political gravity — of what is occurring, think of 9/11, of Sandy Hook, of the day JFK was assassinated. Mexico is a nation in shock — horrified, pained, bewildered."

But despite America's political fixation with Mexico in the context of immigration — "securing our border" being a favorite slogan for politicians on the campaign trail — very few elected officials or media outlets seem invested in what could grow into a "Mexican moment."

So why doesn't the U.S. care? Part of the problem is that our attention — by politicians, by media outlets and by sheer apathy — is often focused on more distant but existentially frightening problems like the Islamic State, which, by most measures, is a far less dangerous and imminent threat than the cartels, corruption and violence brewing just south of our border.

"But beheadings, massacres and wholesale killings are not limited to IS brutality, and these militants have overshadowed a crisis taking place in a country that can be seen from U.S. backyards," explains Mic's Coleen Jose. "Americans remain largely unaware of the thousands killed by cartels every year in Mexico, and the violence doesn't end at the border: According to Narcosphere, a website tracking drug-war violence in the U.S., as many as 5,700 Americans were killed on U.S. soil from 2006 to 2010."

"Mexico is on the brink," signs Martínez, "and America is largely oblivious."

Read the whole story at World.Mic

Photo: Associated Press

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