2011 06 15

I rather hesitate to relate this story, but I think you are all adults and can handle it.  And I don't think I shall suffer any repercussions.  Astute readers will remember that three local hoodlums came calling when I lived on the Ranch, and that I thwarted an effort to break into the main house.  I think they were responsible for poisoning the last three dogs, which in my books is a cardinal sin, too.  Well, what goes around...

During about a year after I left,  houses were broken into and things went missing.  One of the pendejos responsible  - for the break-ins after I left and the attempted break-in at the Ranch - was found dead, but the other two carried on.  Until about a year later, when, stark naked,  they were whipped many times around the zocalo by men wielding boards with nails in.  They were refused treatment at the local clinic, and have not been seen around since.  I think they got off lightly, but here's the rub:  it was not the police who administered punishment, it was the state-wide narco-familia, La Familia.

This group, whose name I don't want to use to often during this tale, is an interesting mix of contradictions: they present themselves as being devout members of the Church;  they act as the police force in the small towns in the state; they dumped 25 dead people into an abandoned mine; they sell hard drugs to 10-year-olds; they probably have more money than the national government; they kill and/or assassinate police officers and federal agents.  So you see the dilemma:  I applaud the result but abhor the method.  People in Quiringuicharo generally have very little. They are inter-related in the extreme, they help one another with everything and they mainly focus on getting through life as best they can.  Family members, often in the US 'under the radar', send home what they can, which is often not a lot but is more than they could earn here.  To have these evil little bastards breaking into homes and stealing what little the residents - probably their relatives - have, is more offensive to me than the more anonymous crime in places like LA.  Some crime should be punished and the situation causing the rest of them should be remedied.  There is more of a social network here than in the US, so people can get some subsistence money, and are entitled to medical care because they were born here.  Families will pull together - which is probably where the name of the narcos comes from.

The situation reeks of vigilante justice, but the fact that these three tried to break into the house I was calling home deeply offended me, and I can't whole-heartedly condemn the instrument of retribution.  What do you think?

2009 02 18

I'm a little worried about my reaction to this. On Saturday, three young men, one about 10, the other two more than 15 but less than 20, stood in the field next door and nattered at me in Spanish that I didn't understand. One of them finally said "fucking money give" and I told them to go away. I continued to work at the other side of the house. A little later, I caught them in the bodega, and they ran away. Once I realised that they were in the yard, I called the police, and the operator hung up on me without saying a further thing once I had explained my situation. Very reassuring. A little while after that, they came to the street side of the house and asked for water, which I declined to give them because I was getting more than a little fed up with their antics, and then they sat across the road and watched me water the plants. Monday, mid-morning, I was in the flat quietly working on my spreadsheet after I'd finished watering, and I saw two of them sneak across the pasillo towards the front door. I went downstairs and scared them as they were trying to jimmy the lock. I was pretty pissed off at this point. I had to go to town to shop, so I had a friend come and babysit the house while I was gone. When I got home, Enrique was here, and we talked about the situation, and he went to Ecuandureo and spoke to the police. Two officers came by later in the day and gave me a direct telephone number to the dispatcher in Ecuandureo, and have promised to add our street to their rounds.

I am not a believer in violence as an answer to problems. I don't think the first action of diplomacy/resolution should be to reach for a gun/nuclear warhead/army. I don't think that bored almost-adults should break into apparently empty houses for the hell of it. While shopping, I seriously considered buying a firearm.

I'm old-ish, fat, can't breathe and can't run. I'm not a muscle queen. I can't handle two Mexican farm-boys on my own, if they decided to get physical in response to my getting physical. Because they didn't know I was here, they ran away when I startled them, but who knows what will happen next time? From what Enrique found out through the grapevine (his innumerable relatives), these kids are supposedly known to the local gendarmes, but they can't do much, as the law prohibits holding minors in custody. So they arrest the little bastards and book 'em, Dan'o - and then have to release them. At this point, I don't give a damn about the sociological pressures or any of the other supposedly mitigating circumstances that led them to a 'life of crime'. What I care about is that I can't afford to replace anything that they might steal, I don't want to have to clean up the mess they are sure to leave, I don't want to have to live in an armoured enclosure and wonder what nasty surprise is waiting for me on the other side of my twelve-foot -high walls. After five years there, I won't live in the US again because of the official 'culture of fear' that permeates everything from airports to McD's, and I sure as hell don't want to live in a gated complex of terrified North-American expats here in Mexico. But I also resent this violation of the rules of good behaviour.

I fired a rifle once, from the back of a bouncing truck, on my uncle's farm, when I was short, which is sometime before I turned 13. I didn't hit the vermin we were trying to eliminate, my father took the gun away after I'd fired one shot, and that was the end of it. I think that the US National Rifle Association is a collection of nuts. I think that the ease with which people, especially in the US, reach for a firearm to settle disputes is disgraceful. Canada has more guns per capita than the US, and less annual firearm-related crime than Los Angeles on a bad day. (Yes, the entire country has fewer gun crimes in a year than LA on a bad day. Think about it.)

I'm appalled that I actually considered purchasing a firearm. I would probably shoot myself rather than the thieves. But the thought of blowing their knees away as a service to mankind was pretty tempting for awhile - it would be really trying to attempt to sneak over a fence in a wheelchair.