The email sent will contain a link to this article, the article title, and an article excerpt (if available). For security reasons, your IP address will also be included in the sent email.
■"Out of the underworld: Numerous, mysterious, and now spreading fast in the United States," The Economist, 11 January 2006, p. 23.
You read these articles about once every 10 months: the one declaring the rising tide of criminals seething into our country from the south. They run so much smuggling and account for so much violence. The center of their activity in the U.S. is Los Angeles.
As always we hear that their growing threat rivals that of traditional transnational terrorists, except they have no political agenda whatsoever, except to be left alone enough to make their dough. Their numbers are vast, and yet virtually no one in the gangs seems to have any money. It's a sad, desperate, Hobbesian existence, and it's coming to a neighborhood (you know the one) near you.
I read these articles every ten months and hear the same thing every time. Don't really doubt any of it. Just don't know what to do with it particularly, cause I just don't see the tide rising to point to truly redirecting U.S. national security, which I see stuck in southwest Asia for now and sliding into Africa over coming years.
And yet watch this trend we must, because if there is to be a turn southward in the GWOT, this will be the main reason really. Problem with this scenario is, what is the wild card event that pushes this?
End of the article is sadder still but accurate: "The only real hope is that economic growth will eventually lift El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras out of their poverty and so reduce the incentives for joining gangs."
Pretty pathetic, I know. Trouble is, pretty accurate too.
Return to Article
