Mexican Drug Murders Get Less Attention in US Than Middle East Violence Vincent T. Gawronski - GlobalPost
go to original December 9, 2014

This stunning map shows tens of thousands of people have disappeared in Mexico since 2007 (Telegraph)

Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, whose son and six others were killed by paid assassins, famously stated: “I don’t know where the state ends and organized crime begins.”

The disappearance and presumed murder of 43 college students in the town of Iguala, Guerrero on Sept. 26 – and the subsequent discovery of multiple mass graves – confirm Sicilia’s observation.

This massacre is one of more than two dozen reported in Mexico since the 1960s. There was the infamous Tlatelolco Massacre in 1968; the disappearance of approximately 1,200 during the Dirty War in the 1970s; and the deaths and disappearances of more than 100,00 people since the Narco-War began in 2006.

How do these atrocities continue to go largely ignored in the United States while overall the Mexican economy continues to thrive? Why are Americans so uninformed and unconcerned about the horrors occurring just across our border?

There is much more empathy for victims of Islamic radicals halfway around the world than there is for victims right next door, many of whom were also tortured, beheaded and dismembered. We should, of course, be empathetic toward the victims in Syria, but why are victims of the Narco-War not equally deserving?

The U.S. media is obsessed with the war on terrorism and Islamic radicals. It’s a storyline that’s easily understood. But the more existential and complex national security threats from Mexican violence are largely unreported.

In recent years, some pundits have declared Mexico a failed state. By all significant measures, however, Mexico is a fully functioning corrupt state.

Read the rest at GlobalPost

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