Kidnapping Americans in Mexico
The wife and I ran into an expatriate friend from Arkansas that had just learned his brothers, a doctor and lawyer, turned his name over to the American Embassy in Mexico City as missing and possibly kidnapped. Through a series of bizarre events, his brothers, both highly educated men, believed the American news media hype in reporting on the currently out-of-control crime situation in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. They jumped to the irrational conclusion that their brother, our friend, just had to be one of the Americans who had been reported missing or killed simply because he had not written them in a while.
So, rather than thinking through this problem and coming up with a rational way to test their assumptions, they assumed the worse and called the troops into action. They had even purchased airline tickers to come searching for him. They engaged in the “spotlight fallacy”[1] and believed the worst. Their brother is 50 years old and lives more than 12 hours away from Nuevo Laredo.
The way our friend told us of the event was funny and we got a belly laugh out of it. But, being who I am, it began to bother me to think how time after time, Americans will allow themselves to become so manipulated by the American press, which reinforces the already deeply-bred Xenophobia that is ingrained into the hearts and minds of Americans.
This vexes me to no end!
Why is America so willing to “âÂ?¦uncritically assume that all members or cases of a certain class or type are like those that receive the most attention or coverage in the media”?[2]
I am convinced this is why so many Americans are afraid of Mexico and her citizens. They are willing to swallow what someone else tells them without once engaging in critical thinking about what they hear or read in the American press. I do not know what to think. Is it that Americans cannot or will not think critically? I really do not know.
Let’s take a look at the crime that is occurring in the border town of Nuevo Laredo. The American press is reporting this in such a way as to give the American people the impression that there is random crime against Americans in the city of Nuevo Laredo. You would think, from how the American press is slanting things, that no American is safe in Mexico. Some Americans think that we expats have to dodge bullets each time we walk out our front doors. However, I really shouldn’t fault Americans for believing this since this is how the press is reporting it.
Or, on the other hand, perhaps I should fault Americans and here is why.
The “Spotlight Fallacy” is simply this: “This line of reasoning is fallacious since the mere fact that someone or something attracts the most attention or coverage in the media does not mean that it automatically represents the whole population. For example, suppose a mass murderer from Old Town, Maine received a great deal of attention in the media. It would hardly follow that everyone from the town is a mass murderer. The Spotlight fallacy derives its name from the fact that receiving a great deal of attention or coverage is often referred to as being in the spotlight.”[3]
The first thing I would pound (gently, of course) into the heads of Americans is that what the American media is “spotlighting” in Nuevo Laredo is not indicative of all of Mexico and her people. It is the criminal element-the drug lords-who are the ones engineering the crime spree in Nuevo Laredo. I would also make the point that just because the Mexican government does not seem to be dealing with the problem in the time frame and manner in which Washington deems appropriate, that President Fox’s government is “in on the drug dealing”. Many Americans who refuse to think critically believe this very thing!
The second thing I would pound into the heads of Americans is that drugs come through Mexico and not from Mexico. It is a mere conduit.
The third thing (maybe this should have been the first thing) I would pound into the heads of Americans is that the current levels of violence in Nuevo Laredo, between the rival drug kings, is so that they can win the turf war to supply Americans with cocaine and other illegal substances they snort up their noses, smoke into their lungs, or shoot into their veins.
DO NOT MISS THIS POINT.
If there weren’t a gigantic American market for the products the drug lords deal, would there be the violence in Nuevo Laredo right now? Would they be fighting for the highly lucrative American market for the poison they peddle if the market didn’t exist?
NO ONE EVER SEEMS TO MAKE THIS POINT.
The fourth thing I would pound into the heads of Americans is most of those Americans who have been killed or turn up missing are involved somehow, someway, in the drug trade (And yes there have been some innocents-a figure no one knows-who undoubtedly are caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. This, however, is an assumption. There may be NO innocents and all the murders could be associated with the drug trade-a very dangerous business in which to involve oneself!).
“”In my experience, most of the missing and murder victims are involved in organized crime,” said Daniel Hernandez, Mexico’s consul general in Laredo. “Sometimes, it’s involuntary; it can be a cousin of a cousin and they’re at the wrong place at the wrong time.””[4]
Of course, there are those Americans who would dispute this Mexican consulate officer’s word simply because he is Mexican.
I have contact with a reporter at the Dallas Morning News. She told me, regarding a story she did on this same issue some months ago, that Americans need a great deal of perspective when evaluating these American media reports of crime in Mexico. From her investigative reporting, she believes most of the American victims are associated, in one way or another, with the drug trade.
Not all but most.
After pounding those four points into the heads of the American public, I would go after the American press for their turn.
I would pound into the heads of the American press that good journalism is not just “making up” arbitrary figures. You don’t get to do that and expect to get by with it! And that is apparently what they are doing.
I’ve read American media reports which report that anywhere from 30 to 42 Americans have ended up either kidnapped or murdered (or both) in Nuevo Laredo this year. Just where do those figures come from?
Regarding the kidnappings, they do not come from the State Department because, according to Narco News, the U.S. State Department is “unaware of any report that systematically tracks kidnappings of U.S. citizens in Mexico”.[5]
The original “travel warning” regarding American murders in Nuevo Laredo, issued by the State Department, began January 2005 and has been reissued two additional times. By June 30, 2005, here is what The State Department itself released in a report[6]:
Total number of American citizens murdered in Mexico-21.
Total number of American citizen murdered in Nuevo Laredo-3
Area with highest number of murdered American citizens-Baja with 7 and Tijuana with 4.
Do not miss this either: three, count them, three Americans were murdered in Nuevo Laredo so far this year according to the U.S. State Department’s own report. The highest number of American murders did not occur in Nuevo Laredo but below the California-Mexico border. Where is the American press getting its 30-42 American kidnapped or murdered in Nuevo Laredo from?
Of those American citizens who were murdered in Mexico, the reasons for their deaths are not known. It could have been for any reason.
So what we have is the American press apparently “making it up as they go along”. If the State Department’s own figures do not mesh with what the American Press is scaring the “you-know-what” out of the American people with, then where on earth are they getting the figures they are reporting-a crystal ball?
The whole time the American Press has been playing the “let’s-make-something-up” game, American citizens have not been the ones dying in Nuevo Laredo. It has been the Mexican nationals. And yet, from what I am being told by friends back in the States, the opposite is what is being reported almost nightly with the mainstream elite media.
Here is how this influences Mexico. This year, a mere 20 million Americans will visit Mexico to pour money into its economy through the tourist trade. This will be considerably lessoned by the insane reporting by the American press and the hysteria-motivated U.S. State Department’s travel warnings.
Based on false figures and inappropriate travel warnings, fewer Americans will visit Mexico. The dollars they would have spent could have been used to improve this country’s economy and to provide more jobs in the tourist industry, which in turn, would reduce the number of attempts by Mexican nationals to jump the border. Americans would rather whine and complain about the illegal Mexican migrant worker than contribute to a beginning solution to the problem of immigration.
More American tourism would mean more jobs for Mexicans and fewer attempts at illegal entry into America! Americans, already full of fear and trepidation from centuries-old culturally bred Mexican xenophobia, is having its xenophobia reinforced by a dishonest and inaccurate American press.
Did I mention that this vexes me to no end?
[1] http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/spotlight.html
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Americans caught in drug-related disappearances in Mexico; By Susana Hayward, Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/20050804/
ts_krwashbureau/_bc_mexico_kidnap_wa
[5] http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/7/26/203741/897
[6] http://travel.state.gov/family/family_issues/death/death_594.html
