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I recently posted on the unrest in Oaxaca, an individual going by 'reportero' dropped by and left this comment...

Many parts of Mexico are very calm - and were quiet all through the recent unrest promoted by disgruntled presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The drug problem is becoming more grave, but it's worth pointing out that it exists because of demand beyond the country's borders.

This teachers' strike is the fruit of the methods of the old Mexico in perhaps the country's least-progressive state. The governor is corrupt and belongs to an old-school PRI, which has never not governed Oaxaca. The teachers, aren't paid well, but do collect Christmas bonuses worth about 90 days salary. They have also gone on strike every year for more than 20 consecutive years. As for Fox, he's not a man of action. He dithers and always shows poor political instincts, avoiding conflict at every turn. Adios. He won't be missed. Felipe Calderon takes over on Dec. 1 and promises to be somewhat more able - not that Mexico is suddenly going become First World.

Ironically one of the first stories I saw this morning reading the news was this...

Mexico's kidnap capital
'Tijuana is going crazy' as abductions, fear soar

The targets, typically middle- and upper-class businessmen or their sons, often are snatched in broad daylight by organized crime rings masquerading as federal police squads. One man was grabbed as he left a circus with his kids.

North American tourists are rarely targets, so the kidnappings don’t get much attention across the border. They usually aren’t reported to police, many of whom are working with the criminal rings, according to federal and state authorities.

Estimates of the number of kidnappings this year in the Tijuana area range from 77 to 120, according to business groups, civic leaders and private security firms. The year before, they say, there were 60.

Tijuana may now have the most kidnappings in the world outside of the Middle East, said Thomas Clayton, chairman of Clayton Consultants Inc., a global private security company.

And let's not forget...

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — In a horrifying show of brutality, gunmen barged into a bar in central Mexico early Wednesday and tossed five human heads on the dance floor, after covering patrons with their weapons, officials said.

Heavily armed men fired their guns in the air as they entered the bar in Uruapan in the central state of Michoacan, said Magdalena Guzman, spokeswoman for the state prosecutor’s office. The gunmen ordered patrons to the ground before tossing the heads.

I don't understand the need folks feel to deny what's going on in Mexico. This is pretty clearly a state bordering on complete chaos and breakdown. Yet people seem to feel a burning need to deny all that and just chant that everything's okay.

Clearly it ain't.

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