REFER TO GREY: Contemplations by Robert Greigos © 2007-2024

Mexico recently elected a new President. The candidate who won, Pena Nieto, represents a political party much hated for long years of corruption and dysfunction while in power, the PRI. But the outgoing administration, headed by Felipe Calderon, has bred much dissatisfaction of its own for their inability to stem violence and intimidation by drug cartels. Per the BBC, Mexico has seen more than 47,000 deaths during the past 5 years of Calderon's crackdown on drug cartels, many in the form of mass shootings and decapitations. Thousands of families have experienced immeasurable fear in seeing loved ones kidnapped and then held for ransom at threat of death by gang members scrounging for monetary resources. And many news outlets have shuttered or ceased publishing because reporters, editors, and offices have come under murderous attack. Largely out of frustration and fear, the Mexican electorate has now decided to give the older party of corruption another chance. There have been hints the new administration intends to reallocate resources in an effort to diminish kidnapping, thereby attempting to end the personalized culture of fear that has taken hold of entrepreneurs upon which the national economy depends. (See Reuters)

Mexicans are largely a humble, hard-working people whose sense of reality includes not only the usual understandings of physics, chemistry, biology, and social dynamics, but is also animated by a sense and belief that spirits of the dead are all around and with us constantly. Do nothing to dishonor their memory and they, the spirits, will protect us. It's a system that has worked admirably for centuries to help keep families and communities together and functioning in effective cooperation. But somewhere along the line, a certain minority within Mexico's population has decided it is "OK" to exploit "gringo's" desire for drugs and marijuana and, in doing so, kill and exploit members of their own community. But where did that notion come from? Who dared discard and trample on centuries of socially effective belief? And why has there been no effective counter to such heresy? Would not a soul shaking visitation from all those dishonored spirits of the dead be in order?? Or, at least, would not a mass uprising from humble hard-working living souls be in order?

One hopes, from afar, that one or the other such confrontation does occur, and soon. Loss of inspiration from the core values of traditional Mexican culture is not something struggling populations across the rest of the globe can afford to endure.