Monday, June 01, 2009
(photo: Beau Bo D'Or)
Just how dangerous is the situation along the U.S.-Mexico border? In recent months numerous media outlets have run stories warning of growing violence in American communities in the Southwest, a result of the so-called “spillover” from Mexico’s battle against drug cartels. There even have been tales of severed heads appearing in ice chests, being rolled onto disco floors, or shown on YouTube. But these anecdotes fly in the face of statistics that tell another story.
According to The Nation, violent crimes in the first part of 2009 along the border and in major U.S. cities in the region have either remained the same or decreased. The drug war in Mexico may very well be impacting the U.S. to some degree, but The Nation wonders if the competitive nature of American publications hasn’t distorted the reality in the drive not to get “scooped.”
Media reports in January were calm for the most part, telling of contingency plans prepared by the Department of Homeland Security to address a “spillover” in violence from south of the border if that indeed really happened. But for some reason, in February publications ranging from Fox News to The New York Times went on a kind of alert status in their accounts of drug-related crimes in Arizona, Texas and other states, without any empirical signs that something really had changed.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
The Border Violence Myth (by Gabriel Arana, The Nation)
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