THE CONTRABANDISTAS

In my more than 40 years of journalism in Brownsville, I have avoided commenting on the drug world. Nobody has to convince me about the vicious and sadistic nature of these killers. When I broach the subject of drugs, I have terrible visions regarding retribution against my children.

I am limiting my observations to a general commentary. I told a friend I was afraid that my writing was taking me down a dark path that I preferred avoiding. But how can I be quiet when this violence has enveloped Tamaulipas, making a once peaceful state as dangerous as Iraq or Afghanistan?

"If we don't say anything, they will leave us alone," says a Matamoros resident whose boss's son is kidnapped and whose neighbor's daughter is raped. They didn't say anything either. One day the Zetas or the Gulf Cartel or the Federal Police came knocking. There is no placating a monster, the more blood it tastes, the more blood it desires.

In the United States we don't say anything as long as our government fights its wars with trailer trash, barrio basura and and ghetto garbage. Leave the privileged classes alone and Uncle Sam can do whatever he pleases. Do we think this same attitude will work with the fiends from south of the border who infiltrated Brownsville years ago and add to their numbers on a daily basis?

They can safely wash their millions on the border because our bankers are more than happy to serve as their financial laundromat. It makes you wonder how much unreported cash our greedy politicians have taken from the contrabandistas. Isn't our corrupt city a fertile field for the Mexican mafiosos to sow their black seeds?

Fear is beginning to consume our community. This is the United States of America? Think again! The decades-long War on Drugs? The enemy has arrived at our door step. I AM AFRAID! I feel like I'm living in a dictatorial country where the impotent individual waits for that ominous knock in the night before he disappears forever.