Posted on 11/13/2011 8:21:17 AM PST by Pelham
Grace Castro should have joined her friends in August for her first year at Newport Beach's prestigious Sage Hill School. Instead, she's mourning the death of a schoolmate abducted from her Mexican private school by kidnappers who gouged out the teenager's eyes before killing him. Grace's life in her newly adopted home in drug-war-plagued Acapulco is a far cry from her childhood about 2,200 miles away in a yellow Craftsman house in the heart of Santa Ana. After 15 years in the United States, a family illness, unemployment and growing hostility toward illegal immigration compelled her family to make a change. Like many immigrant families in the United States, Alejandro and Berenice Castro and their eldest daughter, Michelle, lived in the country illegally; Grace, 14, and her younger sister, Alexis, 13, are U.S.-born citizens. The Castros thought a move to Acapulco would provide them with a new start, a reunion with family and was the right decision based on their circumstances. They were wrong. "This is not the Mexico I left 15 years ago," Alejandro Castro said, his eyes growing distant and misty. "It was beautiful, folkloric ... peaceful, cordial. The community was friendly. The faith was strong. It's no longer like this." They found that violence and suspicion infest the streets. Neighbors are wary of one another. And almost daily, local newspapers splash grisly photos on the front page of dismembered bodies of kidnapping victims – mirroring the family's worst fears.
LIFE IN SANTA ANA
In the damp basement they now call home, the Castro family huddled together on a couch, illuminated overhead by a single, purple-tinged fluorescent bulb, to reflect on the changes in their lives. In 1995, Alejandro and Berenice and their then-1-year-old daughter, Michelle, set up roots in Orange County after crossing the border illegally.
Alejandro...
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
The are Mexican citizens not USC's.
It’s their country, they need to rise up and do something about it. That’s what we did back in 1776.
Well put. Most Americans can't understand the intensity of conviction that underpins Mexican culture. And assimilation is viewed as selling out, where the individual is termed a vendido, which is synonymous with "traitor".
It's one big gang, held together by intimidation and extortion.
And the gang has a juicy target, just to the North.
I’m supposed to feel badly? Why don’t the mexicans stay in their own country and fix it? Many years ago we spent several weeks-long trips driving all over Mexico from the border to Yucatan to Acapulco. I wouldn’t do that today. If the mexicans hadn’t irresponsibly abandoned their communities and country to the drug cartels and the corrupt politicians by illegally coming to the USA, maybe Mexico would be a better place now.
I agree. They have lots of natural resources, just like the U.S., as well as practically no “enemies” of the traditional sort. The current establishment isn’t going to do anything because they’re the problem. It will require a revolution. But a revolution requires planning and organizing. The attention garnered in the process will give the cartels (and corrupt govt officials) the ability to destroy them.
increasing hostility to illegal immigrants?
meanwhile the press will NEVER compare our draconian laws to the ones in, say, Mexico
Even if you factor out the drugs and the drug cartels, your still left with a culture that embraces mass murder, kidnappings, bribery, extortion, child sex slavery, human trafficking, and terrorism.
If Mexico was an African or Middle Eastern nation, the rest of the world would be screaming for something to be done about it. As it is, Mexico seems to be immune from having to answer for any kind of crime, no matter how heinous. If Iran was guilty of half the stuff that is going on in Mexico RIGHT NOW, the U.S., Israel, and possibly even the French would have went in there years ago.
So, what do we do? We leave our borders wide open so that all the violence can spill over into the U.S. and since Phoenix is now the kidnapping capitol of North America, it's hard to say that the problems down south of the border aren't having an adverse impact on American lives and Phoenix is just one example of many.
Unfortunately political correctness and fear being labeled a racist trumps even the most vile human rights violation. Maybe one day after someone sneaks across the southern border and hits and American city with some kind of WMD will our politicians stop lying to us about the situation and do something about it, but I doubt even that will give Democrats or Republicans the slightest courage to deal with the issues south of the border. As an American General once said: "There are three nations that have the ability to take down America and they are Russia, China, and Mexico."
Even if you factor out the drugs and the drug cartels, your still left with a culture that embraces mass murder, kidnappings, bribery, extortion, child sex slavery, human trafficking, and terrorism.
If Mexico was an African or Middle Eastern nation, the rest of the world would be screaming for something to be done about it. As it is, Mexico seems to be immune from having to answer for any kind of crime, no matter how heinous. If Iran was guilty of half the stuff that is going on in Mexico RIGHT NOW, the U.S., Israel, and possibly even the French would have went in there years ago.
So, what do we do? We leave our borders wide open so that all the violence can spill over into the U.S. and since Phoenix is now the kidnapping capitol of North America, it's hard to say that the problems down south of the border aren't having an adverse impact on American lives and Phoenix is just one example of many.
Unfortunately political correctness and fear being labeled a racist trumps even the most vile human rights violation. Maybe one day after someone sneaks across the southern border and hits and American city with some kind of WMD will our politicians stop lying to us about the situation and do something about it, but I doubt even that will give Democrats or Republicans the slightest courage to deal with the issues south of the border. As an American General once said: "There are three nations that have the ability to take down America and they are Russia, China, and Mexico."
So why did you leave, Alejandro? If you wanted to emigrate, why not do so legally?
After 15 years in the United States ...
growing hostility toward illegal immigration ...
like many [illegal] immigrant families in the United States, ...
reunion with family was the right decision ...
He was wrong. [to invade the USA in the first place]
"This is not the Mexico I left 15 years ago,"
Cry me a flippin' river. Instead of invading a superior nation, and turning it into a third-world cesspool like their homeland, these commies could have stayed in their own country and voted in their own form of a constitutional government, and shaped their own nation into one that is habitable.
Like every other former Spanish or Portuguese colony, most being very rich in natural resources, the incestuous combination of corruption, communism, and Catholicism has been an ongoing disaster.
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