The Coming Collapse: Not Ours, Mexico's

Some of you folks are from the great state of Texas. Some from the equally awesome states of New Mexico ( wife loves Ruidoso ), and Arizona. And quite a few of you are stuck, along with yours truly, in this pitiful place known as California.

If you're in a border state, or even one that has a large number of Mexican nationals, you need to go look at an article that the El Paso Times has up on their website. "U.S. military report warns 'sudden collapse of Mexico possible' "

Now before any of the Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous pop up and start accusing me of being a racist or anti-immigrant, stealing candy from babies, or kicking dogs, just pipe down and think for a few minutes before clogging the available bandwidth with your words of condemnation and indignation. If you really believe that I goosestep and have a secret room behind the spinning fireplace filled with Nazi regalia or run around with a pointy white hat and a bed sheet, or that I'm one of those "closet haters" you're all so fond of pointing fingers at, dudes and dudettes, I really can't help you. All I'm asking you to do is be logical and thoughtful for a few minutes.

The article basically states that Mexico is under severe internal pressure from drug trafficking, various gangs, and the increasing level of violence being employed by those gangs. Mexico just deployed 2,000 troops to Juarez as the violence continues to escalate. That's like putting an active combat regiment (two batallions) into a city the size of Houston!

I looked for the actual military report online, but wasn't able to find it. There were many references to the El Paso Times article.

What I am most curious about was whether or not the report took into account the worsening economic situation in Mexico.

Mexico's arguably 3rd largest stream of income, behind oil and exported goods, was something called "remittances". Remittances were the monies sent home to Mexico from those on this side of the border who were here working legally or illegally. As our economy has continued to shrink, and available jobs have dried up, Mexican laborers have left and headed south, and that stream of revenue has dried up. In 2006 at the height of the economic boom, Mexicans were receiving in excess of $23 BILLION dollars from their family members working here in the US. In March of 2008, the monies sent home had shrunk to a paltry $1.6 billion.

Those of us residing in border states have seen a sharp decline in the number of legal and illegal laborers in our states as construction jobs have dried up. That may change with all the jobs Obama is promising in public sector projects. Obama needs to limit bidding on those jobs to American companies employing Americans, since its money he's stealing from our pockets to fund this insanity. But that's another subject.

Mexico is also suffering from declining oil revenues. Mexico's oil production is down due to dwindling reserves, and the falling price of oil isn't helping. Mexico's oil company, PEMEX, is state run. Mexico's government has used the income produced by PEMEX to subsidize government programs to the point where PEMEX can not even support itself. In fact, PEMEX has had to rely on massive borrowing in order to remain operational. Mexico has failed to use the revenue generated to improve her petroleum infrastructure and to even search for new sources of oil. Mexico can't even supply her own people with gasoline due to lack of refining capability. All of these factors along with allegations of mismanagement and corruption have rendered Mexico's oil capacity a liability rather than an asset.

Manufacturing and exports. Well, remember H. Ross PEA-ROW talking about that "giant sucking sound" that NAFTA would make? The Mexicans experienced the same thing when China discovered they could supply labor even more cheaply than the Mexicans. Many of those factories that fled south of the border, fled west across the Pacific. What manufacturing remains is being impacted severely by the cutbacks in spending consumers have resorted to in order to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

Tourism is down due to the economy, but also due to the worsening violence and the increase in kidnappings.

So, Mexico is in dire straits indeed.

What happens if Mexico collapses? You can be fairly sure that many will beat feet for "El Norte".

We've all seen the films of refugees from war zones, natural, and man made disasters. Do you think it will be any different on our southern border if Mexico collapses?

Our services are almost non-existent at this point as cutbacks continue. California is $41 BILLION in the RED right now, and everyone is out there screaming trying to keep their piece of the budget pie when the money never belonged to them anyway.

Hey, if I can't afford a pizza, do I go and get a pizza anyway and expect some joe on the street to pay for it? So what is up with these fools? The money is G-O-N-E, it isn't coming back, so the state can't spend it if it isn't there. Get over it.

This is how we got here, spending money the state didn't have.

Time to swallow hard, and take that punch to the gut.

I know other border states are in similar situations.

So where do you think these people will go?

All over the country. If you live in parts of the country where you haven't had to deal with the flood of "undocumented workers", do some research into what happened in areas that became corridors for them. I really do not think you will like what you learn.

I'm not going to spell it out for you because I know the flames from Mr. and Mrs. Anonymous will be incessant, and I'll probably get some kind of a message from La Raza, MALDEF, or MeCha. Do your homework, this is something that is very, very serious.