Bound to Cross the Line

(Stepping things up a bit this week. I wanted to address the latest border rhetoric with a bit of context missing from the political discourse. We are doing everything we can, it seems, in Texas and among GOP conservatives in Washington, to alienate a nation that contributes greatly to our economy and culture. The border is being militarized and now America is saber rattling about invading to take on drug cartels after four of our citizens were kidnapped on a medical tourism trip. The same radical Trumpites who don’t want to help Ukraine are ready to bomb Mexico.

Anyway, a curious side note. My piece on the soldier who was possibly the first casualty in the Iraq War twenty years ago this week seemed to have bothered a few folks. I lost about a dozen subscribers, which had not ever happened. I understand political differences but facts are stubborn things, which we can’t change. Maybe they didn’t want to read them again. My hope is that you all will continue to read and share and subscribe. I like doing this but it’s easier with a touch of compensation, but I love free subscribers, too. Thanks for staying with me this long. - JM)

I was 25 the first time I went to Mexico for health care. Working as an announcer for a radio station on the border, my modest insurance did not cover dental concerns, and my wisdom teeth needed extraction. I don’t remember the cost quoted to me by the dentist in McAllen, but I do recall it was far more than I could afford on my $160 a week salary. Even on a payment plan, I was looking at a couple of years to get rid of the cost.

A friend had suggested I go to a dentist in Reynosa, just across the international bridge into Mexico. I was accustomed to the city, had competed in long distance races during a few festivals there, and we had often spent weekend evenings with friends at the restaurants and clubs downtown. Getting dental treatment, however, felt a bit problematic. I had no aversion to Mexican medical and dental training competencies but was worried about what might go wrong.

And something did.

I think the quote for wisdom teeth extraction by the young dentist was $50 per tooth, and at prices like that you can’t afford not to get your teeth pulled. He used gas and local injections to perform the procedure but one tooth on the right rear of my mouth refused to release. I felt like my head was being torqued sideways and my chin was about to be excised from my face. The twisting and pulling by the dentist lasted about fifteen minutes but the deep nerve and root finally relented, and my mouth filled with blood.

“Mira!” he said as he held up the tooth with the nerve and root dangling, bloody and torn.

Reynosa, Mexico

My mouth packed with cotton; I walked back to the international bridge where I had parked my motorcycle. Numbness at the right rear of my tongue, the location of that stubborn molar, did not seem to be diminishing and I grew worried about damage to the nerve. My fear was made real over the next few days. The tongue remained without feeling in the back on that side and I struggled to talk, which kept me off the radio for almost a month. Full sensation has never returned after more than forty years.

Going across the river for affordable health care is still quite common on the Texas border with Mexico. The sidewalks of Nuevo Progreso, Mexico, just across the river from Harlingen, are often busy with Americans seeking better deals on their prescriptions, dental care, and general practitioner doctors to recommend specialists for surgery in the country. It is probably impossible to know the number of Americans who travel into Mexico for health care because of the high costs of premiums and services in this country, but it is a very large number.

Nuevo Progreso, Mexico

Medical tourism for health care, especially for expensive surgeries, has become a booming industry, and not just in Mexico. Several businesses provide travel services and referrals to physicians and specialist surgeons around the globe. Even with travel costs and the doctors’ and hospitals’ fees, in many countries the expenses are greatly reduced by leaving the U.S. Healthcare Insider examined proprietary data that indicated even during the beginning of the pandemic that 290,000 Americans went abroad for dental care and surgeries, and the year prior the figure was 780,000. By leaving their own country for medical treatments, U.S. citizens are believed to be saving 50 to 80 percent on various procedures. In Mexico, for instance, root canals are 80 percent cheaper and in vitro fertilization is more than 75 percent less costly.

The fleeing of Americans to other countries for dental and health care is significant enough that travel business Expedia has a “Medical Departures” division, and its figures show the post-pandemic travel is reaching record levels with a 20 to 50 percent increase of travelers. And Mexico remains the top destination.

“With dental work,” Jack Pope of Expedia told Health Care Insider, “Mexico has positioned itself as a very good destination. They have dentists that are trained in the top schools, or many in the U.S. There are towns on the Mexican border that are half pharmacies and half dental clinics, and you get this drive-to border traffic.”

The four Americans who got caught in a cartel crossfire as they drove through the streets of Matamoros were doing something as common as a daily commute on the border. There is a constant flow of U.S. citizens crossing the river there bound for clinics and doctors’ and dentists’ offices. I assume that many of them are aware of the conflicts between the cartels struggling for control of that corridor and they are still willing to take the risk, which frequently manifests in gun battles in border communities. The Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas make great profits on the coastal corridor moving drugs and people across the Rio Grande, and one of them is determined to oust the other and take complete dominion over the money.

If the four Americans were aware, and still decided to take the chance for what has been described as a “tummy tuck” procedure, the cost savings were probably very significant. Two of the travelers were killed by their wounds from the shootout they stumbled into, as was a woman standing more than a block distant and was slain by a random stray bullet. The two survivors, and the bodies of the dead U.S. citizens, were returned to the American side of the river, but the problem is much deeper than this one incident. The Washington Post reports, for instance, that there are still 550 citizens of this country missing in Mexico.

Matamoros, Mexico

The fact that the four people from North Carolina decided to take a chance and travel into the Mexican state of Tamaulipas is either a condemnation of their judgment or the American health care system’s failure. Maybe both apply. But the U.S. State Department issued a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory for that part of Mexico where Matamoros is located and considers it one of the most violent places in the entire country. The warning is caused by excessive crime and kidnapping, often related the conflict between the cartels.

The tragic incident involving the medical tourists seems to have stepped up the tensions between the two countries and contributed to complications of border travel. The state of Texas, which has turned Mexico into a political whipping boy, issued its own advisory against travel into the country during spring break. The warning comes from the head of the Department of Public Safety, who also oversees much of Operation Lone Star, the state’s crackdown on border immigration.

"Drug cartel violence and other criminal activity represent a significant safety threat to anyone who crosses into Mexico right now," said DPS Director Steven McCraw in the DPS Mexico travel advisory. "We have a duty to inform the public about safety, travel risks, and threats. Based on the volatile nature of cartel activity and the violence we are seeing there; we are urging individuals to avoid travel to Mexico at this time."

The U.S. relationship with Mexico, often its largest trading partner, is growing increasingly strained because of border issues like immigration and drugs. Even worse, conservative Republicans are suggesting a military incursion south of the border to attack cartels. War with Mexico might complicate economic relations a bit, eh? Not since May 12, 1846, when the U.S. Senate voted 40-2 to invade Mexico, has anyone come up with a more outlandish suggestion for dealing with our neighbor. The opposition to that first invasion, even though it expanded U.S. territory dramatically, was quite vehement. No less a soldier and future president than Ulysses S. Grant wrote that he was “bitterly opposed to the measure” to declare war and called it, “the most unjust ever waged by a stronger [nation] against a weaker nation.”

Oh, wait, I forgot, Trump wanted military action, too, but he would probably send troops to look for Pancho Villa. The conservative Republicans who don’t want to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia and Putin are pumping up the idea of war with Mexico. The current chairman of the House Oversight Committee, a Republican, of course, from Kentucky, (also of course but could have been Texas or Tennessee), has suggested that Trump made a mistake by not bombing meth labs in Mexico. Trump thought it could have been kept a secret, which is hilarious. He’d have been on morning news programs bragging.

Lindsay Graham, a U.S. Senator whose profile is the opposite of a tough guy, says he’s going to introduce a bill to set the stage of U.S. military action with Mexico. He wants to “put Mexico on notice” for protecting cartels and terrorists. Of course, like everything Lindsay does, his bill is more about posturing than problem solving. You can’t invade foreign countries without presidential authorization and two thirds votes in both chambers of congress, neither of which will happen. Even in the unlikely event of a winning vote total, your Civics 101 class in high school probably explained to you, even if Lindsay skipped lessons that day, the commander in chief, which is the president, issues the orders for military action in foreign lands.

Texas, however, remains the prime agitator regarding relations with a country that shares a culture and history with this state and nation, and we are cueing up legislation that will put Texans in violation of federal law. There are a couple of bills being contemplated in the current session of the legislature, one of which would make it a crime for people to illegally cross into Texas. A first violation gets you a year in prison, a second two years, and, if you try it a third time and have felony conviction on your record, it’s off to the big house in Huntsville for you for your entire life. Welcome to Texas, the friendly state!

We aren’t yet finished, though, hoss. The big brained white boys in the state capitol have decided Texas needs its own version of the border patrol. The organization will be used to detain and deter individuals who cross over into the state illegally and a similar measure will make it a felony to trespass on private property when you set your wet foot upon our sacred soil. These laws, if passed, mean Texas is committed to complete militarization of the border. There are already 5500 Texas National Guard troops running around toting guns and driving armored vehicles and a few thousand extra DPS troopers busily profiling every brown-skinned person who drives a car. Why not add another law enforcement group, especially one which violates the constitution by conducting activities specifically reserved for the federal government?

The senior advocacy manager for the beyond borders program at the Texas Civil Rights Project, Roberto Lopez, told the Texas Tribune that, “A new military force under Gov. Greg Abbott, potentially staffed by vigilantes deputized as law enforcement authorities, will provide no protection to border communities whatsoever. Trying to solve what is fundamentally a humanitarian crisis with a full-frontal military response shows a reckless disregard for the safety of the people in our state and a fundamental misunderstanding of the root causes of the issues at our border.”

How many cops do we need down there? The answer is, apparently, always more, but a new Texas border protection unit is a profound complication that is not needed. Will they end up deferring to the federal agents of the border patrol? If they have no federal authority to arrest, what in the hell are they going to do? We can expect an immediate constitutional challenge to any such addition to the Texas legal canon, but we can also expect the elected vigilantes to come up with extreme language that will hardly be debated as we creep closer to an authoritarian state. Imagine being in the economic development commission of a border town while trying to attract new businesses. Any visit to contemplate a decision will be affected by the sight of uniforms in every direction.

Mexico’s president makes it clear that his country will not tolerate any foreign nation’s entry into their sovereign territory, and, Andres, Manuel, Lopez Obrador suggested that fentanyl is a U.S. problem and that his country does not manufacture or use the drug. His statement is patent nonsense and there is much evidence to prove otherwise, however, he did ask some rather pertinent questions of Americans. “Why don’t you take care of your young people? Why don’t you take care of the serious problem of social decay? Why don’t [you] temper the constant increase in drug consumption?”

Mexico is part of the global drug problem, but only a part. If there were no market for fentanyl and other opioids in the U.S., there would be no cartels in Mexico. We stop using, they stop smuggling. Yeah, I know, not that simple, and is never gonna happen. Humans wanna be euphoric, even if it is only temporary and threatens their lives, which means we keep avoiding a basic truth about drugs and cartels and addictions and money.

The war on drugs is over. Drugs won.