The US Has Neglected Our Own Hemisphere

[Annie]

and there may well be a high price to pay for it. There seems little doubt to me that most Americans, myself included find our borders a problem, but truly have little interest in the countries to our South, unless we're planning a warm weather vacation.

The repercussions from the neglect are found in those countries, by both those that are in control and those that are their civilians. Many of the latter are trying to get into the US-which DOES get our attention, if NOT our government's.

I thought the following of related interest, though it's only a 'preview', I think I'll look for the journal at the library this afternoon:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050...ow-the-street-gangs-took-central-america.html

Summary: For a decade, the United States has exported its gang problem, sending Central American-born criminals back to their homelands -- without warning local governments. The result has been an explosive rise of vicious, transnational gangs that now threaten the stability of the region's fragile democracies. As Washington fiddles, the gangs are growing, spreading north into Mexico and back to the United States.

Ana Arana is an investigative journalist who has reported extensively on Latin America.


WHILE WASHINGTON SLEPT
Last December, a bus driving through the northern city of Chamalecon in Honduras was stopped by gunmen. The assailants quickly surrounded the bus and opened fire with their AK-47s, killing 28 passengers. The attackers, police later revealed, had been members of a notorious street gang known as Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) and had chosen their victims at random. The slaughter had nothing to do with the identities of the people onboard; it was meant as a protest and a warning against the government's crackdown on gang activities in the country. (U.S. officials subsequently arrested Ebner Anibal Rivera-Paz, thought to be the mastermind of the attack, in February in the Texas town of Falfurrias.)

The attack and the subsequent arrest were only the latest sign of the growing power of Central America's gangs and their ability to shuttle between their home countries and the United States. In the past few years, as Washington has focused its attention on the Middle East, it has virtually ignored a dangerous phenomenon close to home. Ultraviolent youth gangs, spawned in the ghettos of Los Angeles and other U.S. cities, have slowly migrated south to Central America, where they have transformed themselves into powerful, cross-border crime networks. With the United States preoccupied elsewhere, the gangs have grown in power and numbers; today, local officials estimate their size at 70,000-100,000 members. The marabuntas, or maras, as they are known (after a deadly species of local ants), now pose the most serious challenge to peace in the region since the end of Central America's civil wars.

Nor is the danger limited to the region. Fed by an explosive growth in the area's youth population and by a host of social problems such as poverty and unemployment, the gangs are spreading, spilling into Mexico and beyond -- even back into the United States itself. With them, the maras are bringing rampant crime, committing thousands of murders, and contributing to a flourishing drug trade. Central America's governments, meanwhile, seem utterly unable to meet the challenge, lacking the skills, know-how, and money necessary to fight these supergangs. The solutions attempted so far -- largely confined to military and police operations -- have only aggravated the problem; prisons act as gangland finishing schools, and military operations have only dispersed the gangs' leadership, making bosses harder than ever to track and capture.

If Central America is going to make a stand, it must do so quickly. And it must take a new approach, one that is multilateral, combines police work with prevention, and attacks the region's underlying ills. Only such a multipronged approach has a chance of stemming the growth of the maras. Fortunately, the necessary expertise already exists: in the United States, cities such as Boston and San Jose have managed highly successful antigang campaigns that could be emulated south of the border. The problem for Central America is one of political will, funding, and timing. Washington can help with all three, and should do so. Not only does the problem threaten the ...

End of preview: first 500 of 4,222 words total.

 

[Bullypulpit]

Well, golly, if we didn't have resources tied up in an illegal and unjust war in Iraq, and Dubbyuh really had made our borders safer and more secure, it wouldn;t be an issue now...would it?

 

[Annie]

Well, golly, if we didn't have resources tied up in an illegal and unjust war in Iraq, and Dubbyuh really had made our borders safer and more secure, it wouldn;t be an issue now...would it?

You know I disagree with your opening premise. Now on the borders, we may well have common ground. Even if we were enforcing, which we are not, it wouldn't stop the legals from returning home and back again.