Of Mormons and Mexico

Mexican drug cartels, that is. And yes, the stereotypical polygamist American Mormons of which everyone automatically thinks--except they've moved to Mexico to live peacefully in the countryside and are now being targeted by the drug cartels in their Mexican state of Chihuahua.

According to a front-page feature in the Washington Post this morning (no, I don't have any special news sources, I read it in the paper just like everyone else), the LeBaron Mormon clan broke away from their original sect and moved to Mexico in the 1880s. Now, one of the brothers has been assassinated by the drug cartels while trying to fight crime and according to the article, 1,000 people have been killed in the drug wars in Ciudad Juarez (in Chihuahua) this year alone.

Foreign Staff Writer William Booth no doubt chose this article in part becuase of its unique angle: American Mormons in Mexico pulled into the drug war. And this definitely caught my attention, but after the initial impact, my reaction was drawn in another direction. Yet again, we are faced with conflict in a Latin American country that the U.S. is trying to help...but is not really helping. The situation in Mexico seems incredibly complicated, becuase these cartels are more powerful than the government, and the tens of thousands of troops the U.S. has contributed do not seem to be preventing the violence. I don't know what the U.S. should be doing...I don't know what the Mexican government should be doing...I don't know what we as U.S. citizens could be doing...but something has to be done. The U.S. at least kind of seems to be supporting the correct side in Mexico, but we are overextended. We can't go in to every Latin American country saying we are "helping" and then continue sending more and more troops (or not) without actually adjusting to the situation. We might as well be machines that calculate the same number of troops each month and deploy them. We need to be adaptable, to have the courage to change, or there is no advantage to being human in this situation.

The article, entitled "Ambushed by a Drug War," can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/22/AR2009072203738.html