Drug War Fears Shake the Border

A real climate of fear exists on the Texas border, and it can't be kept at bay just by putting up a border wall.

David Frum has written about how things could get even worse in Mexico's drug war, with possible spillover into the United States. It's a topic I've written about at FrumForum as well.  I grew up in South Texas near the Mexican border and my family has some ranch land in that area that's been in the family for generations. So I'm pretty familiar with that part of the world. The Mexican border has always been a rough and tumble place. Anyone who claims otherwise is engaging in wishful nostalgia. To a certain degree, that's been part of the charm of that area, and if nothing else has provided a lot of stories for writers over the years.

That having been said, the violence going on in northern Mexico is much worse than it has been for generations and it already has had a major effect on daily life on the border. The towns and cities on the Texas - Mexico border have historically had a very close relationship. The border has always mattered, so it isn't accurate to say (as some do) that going from one side of the Rio Grande to the other has been like going from one part of town to another. But it is accurate to say that one couldn't easily separate life in, for example, Brownsville, Texas from that in Matamoros, Mexico. People crossed the border in their daily lives frequently, and it wasn't uncommon for Americans to visit friends, conduct business, go to parties and restaurants or just hang out in Mexico, and vice-versa. There was a certain relaxed and humane atmosphere on the border that might annoy or perplex more nationalistic types in the capitals of either country. Maybe that was all rather naive, but that was the way things were.

A lot of that has been lost in recent years. Americans don't cross the border unless it's absolutely necessary, and many affluent Mexicans have been buying property and doing what they can to emigrate or at least temporarily reside in the United States. Many of the businesses on the Mexican side of the border that Americans flocked to have shut down, and the culture of carefree border crossings is gone and may not come back for years. One hears rumors about how certain businesses in Mexico have been taken over by gangsters who harass and accost (or worse) patrons of such businesses, or how U.S. schools that have Mexican students have had to increase security because of real or perceived threats to the student body. The whole climate has become tense, with people regularly talking about not if, but when there will be some atrocity on the U.S. side that will make it clear that Mexico's drug war is now America's direct problem.

Admittedly, there can be overreactions to threats. Still, the concerns cited in Frum's article are already part of the tenor of life on the border today, and once a culture has changed, it's hard for things to return to the status quo ante. Obviously, such cultural losses pale in comparison to the costs in human life caused by the violence in Mexico, but they are real losses. All wars come to an end. Mexico's drug war will end someday and hopefully the more relaxed culture of the past will return. But for now, a real climate of fear exists on the Texas - Mexico border, and it can't be kept at bay just by putting up a border wall.

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