Ciudad Mier, a town of about 6,500 residents across the border from Roma, Texas, show widespread effects from more than eight months of drug cartel battles this year.
 |
| In this Friday Nov. 19, 2010 photo, a man who did not want to be identified rides on a pick-up truck with his last belongings as he abandons his home due to drug violence in Ciudad Mier, Mexico. While Mexicans have been increasingly fleeing border towns up and down the Rio Grande valley, Ciudad Mier is the most dramatic example so far of the increasingly ferocious drug violence, and the government's failure to fight back. ((AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills) ) |
The state and federal governments say it's safe to go back and that people are returning. One official even invited tourists to return. The scenes witnessed by The Associated Press say something else.Even during daylight hours, a Mexican army squad patrols the town nervously. A bullet-riddled army pickup truck lies in the yard of the local military outpost, a metallic casualty of an ambush last weekend that locals say killed four soldiers. The Army does not officially recognize it even happened.A man named Rogelio, 72, a migrant who retired after years of lawn
work in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Chicago, has a question for them:
"Where were they nine months ago?" He asked not to give his last name for fear of reprisals. Almost everyone in town has had a relative kidnapped by the gangs, he said. "We have had nine months of gun fights, almost every night. Why did they leave us alone?"
Only about 400 people remain in the town. Most went to Texas or other Mexican cities. Some 300 others are staying in a Lion's Club-turned- shelter in nearby Ciudad Miguel Aleman with no intention of returning, even though the clean auditorium with tiled floors covered in foam mattresses doesn't feel much safer: A shootout a block away from the shelter sent them diving for cover last week.Terrified refugees lower their voices so as not to be heard by the cartel lookouts. A heavily tattooed young man with a flashy, embroidered baseball cap and gold chains lounges on the sidewalk outside and interrogates a reporter: What are you doing here? Who
have you interviewed inside? Gabi, 18, a high school student at the shelter, nearly whispers that
cartel gunmen left a man hanging by his neck from a palm tree in the Ciudad Mier town square in June."His face was taped over, and they had cut off his hands and legs," she said.
About half the houses in Ciudad Mier have bullet holes.
How much Money does the US give away to Mexico? This question is super hard to answer because the U.S. tries very hard to disguise how it gives aid and to whom.
Mexico is a member of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and shares a 2,000-mile border with the United States. Mexico is the 12th largest economy in the world and the third largest trading partner of the U.S. It had $11 billion in foreign direct investment and received $23 billion in remittances in 2009. To Mexico they give money for drug intervention, used military products, farm aid, social aid, direct money to be used as they want, and the list goes on and on,
U.S. Spending At Least $18.6 Million Per Day to Incarcerate Illegal Aliens; More Than 195,000 Illegal Aliens Deported in Fiscal 2010 Had Committed Crimes Here
Why does the U.S. want to spend so much time hiding what it gives Mexico as foreign aid.
Why not be just plain straight forward and list each item to get a total.
My guesstament from numbers available direct to Mexico $34 Billion and entitlements estimated at $13 Trillion illegals have the benefit of by breaking American law when they cross our border. be #
