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Opinion

Teamwork needed to curb cartels

Zach Lee
Opinion Columnist

The Middle East isn't the only place where kids who should be figuring out how to get a girl's attention are being trained in explosives and other forms of terrorism. It's also happening right across the much-maligned U.S.-Mexican border.

There is at least one "camp" in Mexico that is being used to train men as young as 17 to be assassins for the cartels, the Houston Chronicle reported Sunday.

The cartels aren't only training Mexican men; they're often targeting Texans to train as their soldiers. They're not content with border-town kids either. At least one of the teens trained to be an enforcer for the cartel is a native Houstonian.

To think, problems like this would just disappear if we built a 700-mile long fence along the border.

Of course, that would be very wishful thinking.

The United States needs as much help in the war on drugs as it does in the war on illegal immigration, and in many ways, Mexico is a compulsory comrade on both fronts. Instead of focusing on comprehensive plans between both countries to fight patterns that damage the infrastructures on both sides of the border however, many U.S. leaders have resorted to thinly veiled racism and bald-faced ethnocentricity that widens the gap between an outraged American public and the practical steps that must be taken to end the stalemate the United States faces in both wars.

Houston is a long way from the border, and when Houstonians are being recruited into the cartels' border armies, it's a testament to how far anyone is to ending the drug war. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's comments on March 31 that Spanish was "the language of living in the ghetto" and his subsequent semi-apology that appeared on YouTube did nothing to help maintain a dialog (bilingual as it may be) between the two countries. Instead, his comments were particularly divisive at a time when drug cartel recruitment procedures are strong evidence that the United States and Mexico are stuck in a couple things together.

Drug violence in the United States pales in comparison to what it is in Mexico, especially as rival gangs compete to terrorize citizens and police in hopes of cowing Mexican President Felipe Calderon and forcing him to withdraw the increased military pressure he has put on drug smugglers. Heads of policemen have been stuck on poles in downtown Acapulco with warnings attached, and gangs have even gone so far as to post video of a beheading on YouTube. Mexico didn't ask for this gore, however; it came with the United States' drug consumption.

Sixteen million Americans -- seven percent of the population over the age of 12 -- make the drug trade a $60 billion industry, and Mexico just happens to be the only land route between Latin American growers and American consumers.

It would be unfair to blame Americans entirely for the problems associated with the spread of the drug trade; corruption and a lack of transparency make Mexican law enforcement easy to criticize. At the same time, the fact that Americans are being recruited as assassins to help the cartels is enough to stop the United States from saying drug violence is just Mexico's problem.

Maybe it's time to work together on something.

Lee, an English/Spanish senior, 
can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu