Mexicans Complain About Illegal-Alien Crime
The residents of Ciudad Madero on Mexico’s Gulf coast must be xenophobic bigots! They’re upset that illegal-alien criminals from Central America and the rest of the world have moved into town en route to El Norte:
Migrants bring a streak of assaults in Ciudad Madero, so the local authorities ask the federal government to take care of it, as more and more persons from other countries stay to commit crimes during their passage to the United States.
Ciudadanos acusan a migrantes de delinquir en Ciudad Madero (“Citizens accuse migrants of committing crimes in Ciudad Madero”), by Pablo Reyes, Milenio, January 19, 2024
Councilwoman Mayra Ojeda described the crimes:
I alone have seven reports of persons who have been victims of the thieves, outside of bank ATM machines. We have to see what gangs they are in, because the persons agree that their attackers have features of other countries, they are migrants. That’s why it’s important to see the policy that is allowing that everybody passes through, but this is affecting Mexican citizens.
Councilwoman Ojeda said that someone with “another accent” and who “didn’t look Mexican,” very likely an illegal, robbed her last month.
Sounds xenophobic, doesn’t it? It would be if an American said it.
But not to worry! Those “migrants” will move on to commit crimes in the U.S. very soon.
AMLO’s Reaction to Trump’s Iowa Win—You Can’t Close the Border
After POTUS 45 Donald Trump won the Iowa Republican Primary on January 15, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) had some news for the probable GOP nominee the next morning: You can’t close the border.
Or so he said to answer a reporter’s question about Trump’s claim that he would “seal up the border” and stop Traitor Joe Biden’s Great Replacement invasion of illegal aliens [In victory speech, Donald Trump calls for unity, then calls Biden ‘worst president ever,’ by Galen Bacharier, Des Moines Register, January 15, 2024].
AMLO’s reply:
Well, that’s part of the campaigns in the United States. They say many things in the campaigns to try to win votes. Nevertheless, the borders between Mexico and the United States cannot be sealed. You cannot close the border because the economic-social integration is fundamental. It is indispensable to the good neighborhood.
Imagine closing the border one day. It would mean the loss for American and Mexican businesses, for both nations, one day. But, well, all this has to do with the campaigns. …
I have seen results in the Republican party primaries and President Trump is winning, he has beaten DeSantis, who also has an anti-immigrant discourse, because he thinks he can win votes that way.
Versión estenográfica. Conferencia de prensa del presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador del 16 de enero de 2024 (“Stenographic Version. Press Conference of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of January 16, 2024”), Gob.Mex, January 16, 2024
Bunk. We can secure the border and maintain normal trade. What we have now, though, is totally unacceptable.
Ironically, AMLO reminisced about the heady days of the Trump presidency, during which the two presidents (as I predicted) shared warm relations.
With President Trump we only had a difference about the management of the border to establish or attempt to establish tariffs unilaterally, taxes on Mexican merchandise that is introduced to the United States and nevertheless, an agreement was made, that was the only thing. But we are talking about tariffs, about taxes, you can’t close it, that cannot be done.
But recall that Trump really did force AMLO to cooperate and reduce the number of illegals crossing Mexico by threatening tariffs.
What a difference American leadership makes. The right kind of leadership, that is.
African Boy Falls Off Train in Mexico and Dies
Illegal-alien Africans continue to travel through Mexico to jump our southwest border and so the invariable but avoidable tragedies continue. Artur Pedro, a 9-year-old Angolan, was traveling atop a train with his mother and other family members.
Niño migrante africano de 9 años muere tras caer de un tren en #Sonorahttps://t.co/wj8GPiUIF7 pic.twitter.com/AyQTlrOxca
— Milenio (@Milenio) January 19, 2024
When the train was about to leave the station in Sinaloa state, he fell and died. After Artur was buried in Sonora, his mother and the other family members continued on their way to the United States.
[Migrante africano de 9 años muere tras caer de un tren en Sonora (“9-Year-Old African Migrant Dies After Falling from a Train in Sonora”), by Carlos Raeb Morales, Milenio, January 18, 2024].
Mexican Presidential Candidate Considers Adopting ”The Bukele Model”
Mexico has presidential elections every six years, which means that every 12 years, as in 2024, the U.S. and Mexico have presidential elections the same year.
The frontrunner is Claudia Sheinbaum, from incumbent president Lopez Obrador’s MORENA party. In second place: opposition coalition candidate Xochitl Galvez.
Most likely, the next president of Mexico will be a woman.
There is, however, Jorge Alvarez Maynez of the small, center-left Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizen’s Movement), who is running at single digits in the polls.
Interestingly. Alvarez Maynez recently floated the “Bukele model” for Mexico. The Bukele Model is the way Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele brought down the murder rate in El Salvador—he locked up 65,000 gang members:
Jorge Alvarez Maynez insinuated that, upon arriving to the presidency of Mexico, he could implement “the Bukele model” to reduce violence in Mexico.
Alvarez said that “I am deeply embarrassed that the civilian government in Mexican has given up on its responsibility in the past three presidential terms. We have left in the hands of the soldiers the most important thing: guaranteeing the life and peace of Mexicans.”
“This is not a topic that is resolved by appointing this or that public official. It is a topic that should be assumed with all strictness by the presidency of the Republic, with will. That’s why I have said that, if El Salvador, which has fewer resources than Mexico, can tackle this issue head on, Mexico can do it and can do it with a civilian strategy and can have peace as its objective.”
Álvarez Máynez coquetea con implementar en México “el modelo Bukele” de seguridad (“Alvarez Maynez flirts with implementing “the Bukele model” of security in Mexico”), by Alelhi Salgado, El Universal, January 17, 2024
Alvarez has little chance of winning, but he’s floating a solid proposal that other Mexican politicians should steal to make their own.
And maybe U.S. politicians too?
Javier Milei’s Speech at Davos
Libertarian Javier Milei recently began his presidency of Argentina and the tough job of putting this formerly rich but long mismanaged country back on track. As a friend of the Hispanosphere, I wish him well.
He recently attended the annual World Economic Forum confab in Davos, Switzerland, where he delivered a spirited defense of free-market capitalism [Davos 2024: Special address by Javier Milei, President of Argentina, WEForum.org, January 18, 2024].
Milei was introduced to the audience by none other than WEF’s Klaus Schwab himself, who spoke well of the Argentine president.
Milei delivered the speech in Spanish, but it was immediately overdubbed in English by simultaneous translation. Later, another AI overdub was released, in the same tone as Milei was speaking in Spanish. It’s as if Milei was delivering it in English, complete with a foreign accent. It’s uncanny.
Milei's 2024 Davos talk, directly translated to English by AI (by heygen), in his own accent. Better than the dubbed version imo. pic.twitter.com/8OAGELuqxl
— Aaron Slodov (@aphysicist) January 18, 2024
I followed the Spanish text while listening to the AI overdub and found some differences [Qué dijo Javier Milei en su discurso en el Foro de Davos (“What Javier Milei Said in his Speech at the Davos Forum”), La Nación (Argentina), January 18, 2024].
“Today I am here to tell you that the West is in danger,” he began. “It is in danger because those who supposedly should defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that leads inexorably to socialism, and in consequence, to poverty.”
He never let up after that. Milei used his own Argentina, a rich and prosperous country until bad economic policies and money management ruined it financially, to make his point.
Then, again, Milei defended free market capitalism and denounced socialism, using Argentina as an example:
They say that free market capitalism is bad because it is individualistic and that collectivism is good because it is altruistic, and therefore struggle for “social justice” … The problem is that “social justice” is not only not justice, it does not contribute to general wellbeing. …
[S]ocialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon which has failed in every country in which it was tried. It was an economic failure. It was a social failure. It was a cultural failure. And it took the lives of 150 million human beings. …
Although Milei’s Spanish text reads “150 million human beings,” the English AI overdub translation changed that to “killed more than 100 million human beings.”
Milei also spoke against “the tragedy of abortion” but that was changed in AI English as “the controversial agenda of abortion rights.”
He went on:
The Argentine case is the empirical demonstration that, no matter how rich you are, how many natural resources you have, no matter how well-trained is the population, nor how well-educated they are, nor how many ingots of gold there are in the treasury of the central bank; if you adopt measures that hinder the free functioning of markets, free competition, free pricing systems, if you hinder commerce, if you attack private property, the only possible destination is poverty.
Milei also attacked radical feminism, saying its only accomplishment “was a greater intervention by the state to hinder the economic process, to give work to bureaucrats who contribute nothing to society.”
Milei’s vision for Argentina:
Today we are returning to embrace, after a century of gloom, the model of liberty. I hope that this time, Argentina and the world will journey together the way of prosperity.
Although he didn’t say so at Davos, as I reported in November, Milei agrees with Milton Friedman that welfare states cannot have open borders, and he wants immigrants to pay taxes and to deport immigrant criminals.
I hope he can reform Argentina and make it a good example for the rest of Latin America.
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008 after many years residing in Mexico. Allan‘s wife is from Mexico and is now a U.S. citizen, their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Border Hawk blog archive is here, his website is here.
