U.S. To American Tourists: Take a Trip to Mexico!

One of our favorite topics when it comes to the Drug War is the conflicting narrative coming out of the border country to the south. It was officially “good news day” in El Paso not long ago, when the bloody border war now ravaging the U.S. and Mexico was made to seem a good deal less bloody as Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano described it. In a ceremony at El Paso’s "Bridge of the Americas" border crossing, Napolitan encouragingly announced that the border with Mexico was open for tourists: “There is a perception that the border is worse now than it ever has been,” she said, encouraging Americans to visit the battle scarred nation, while overlooking the constant spate of kidnappings in Mexico City or the recent executions of two young Americans in Tijuauana. “That is wrong. The border is better now than it ever has been.” Well okay then. She also said that the public’s perception of Mexican drug crime spilling over the border into the U.S. was just plain false--which was a thought-provoking assertion in El Paso, where you can still see the stray bullet holes in El Paso’s City Hall that sprayed the city during last year’s shootout across the border in the romantic getaway of Ciudad Juarez.