This weekend El Jefe and I were in San Antonio for a family birthday celebration. There was a lot of talk from family and friends there about the dangerous situation created by the marauding drug gangs along the Mexican border and even into the interior.
We heard several stories about Mexican families who have moved to San Antonio for better security. They continue to have land, businesses and a financial stake in Mexico but the wives and children stay in San Antonio while the fathers go back and forth frequently to tend to their holdings. This has become more common in the past couple of years.
One of our high school friends married a man who is a dual US/Mexican citizen and lives in Tampico. She reports the town is now like an armed camp and she hears gunfire every night. Middle class families hire security guards (and wonder if they can trust them) and live with iron bars on gates and windows. Fear of kidnappings for ransom makes them prisoners in their own homes or refugees in the US.
My brother who is a pediatrician says he recently gained several families in his practice who are in this situation. I have no idea if they are here legally or not--but the people who fit this profile are upper middle or upper class economically and are not working in the US but are continuing to run their businesses in Mexico while buying homes for their families in the San Antonio area.
Several people at the party speculated that the US may be forced to intervene in the next couple of years if the chaos caused by the drug cartels is not controlled better by the Mexican government because it will directly affect not only American border towns but cities like San Antonio which are close, but not on, the border.
And that is a truly scary prospect.
We heard several stories about Mexican families who have moved to San Antonio for better security. They continue to have land, businesses and a financial stake in Mexico but the wives and children stay in San Antonio while the fathers go back and forth frequently to tend to their holdings. This has become more common in the past couple of years.
One of our high school friends married a man who is a dual US/Mexican citizen and lives in Tampico. She reports the town is now like an armed camp and she hears gunfire every night. Middle class families hire security guards (and wonder if they can trust them) and live with iron bars on gates and windows. Fear of kidnappings for ransom makes them prisoners in their own homes or refugees in the US.
My brother who is a pediatrician says he recently gained several families in his practice who are in this situation. I have no idea if they are here legally or not--but the people who fit this profile are upper middle or upper class economically and are not working in the US but are continuing to run their businesses in Mexico while buying homes for their families in the San Antonio area.
Several people at the party speculated that the US may be forced to intervene in the next couple of years if the chaos caused by the drug cartels is not controlled better by the Mexican government because it will directly affect not only American border towns but cities like San Antonio which are close, but not on, the border.
And that is a truly scary prospect.
Yes Ma'am it really is.
ReplyDeleteHow sad for those families that are good people.