[PEN-L:6809] Cap's fantasy

[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)]

>From Cap Weinberger's new novel. This is the only bit I've seen - it was
quoted in Chris Whalen's Mexico Report - but I hear it's about some
terrorist state that goes mad and if only we'd had Star Wars....

Doug

----

>        For more than six months now, Lewis and more than 60,000 U.S.
>troops had
>been deployed along the U.S.-Mexican line from the Gulf of Mexico to the
>Pacific Ocean to plug up the flood of refugees and illegal immigrants
>pouring across the border every hour. But it was a losing battle. "Its like
>trying to dam the Mississippi River with toothpicks," the Missouri native
>angrily told his wife one night in frustration. The border that separates
>the United States and Mexico is the only land border between the industrial
>and the nonindustrial world, the so-called third world. And the United
>States had been fortunate in the twentieth century. Trouble in a country
>with such geographic proximity to America was something new.
>
>        A mass exodus of the weary and hungry was driven north by the chaotic
>situation inside Mexico. The tumult had begun with the assassination of
>Mexican President Lorenzo Zapata on June 2, 1999. Much hope had followed
>Zapata into Los Pinos (the presidential mansion). The American-educated
>economist was hailed as a symbol of political maturity for Mexico,
>unblemished by the venality and incompetence that had characterized so many
>previous regimes. This time the anticorruption drives were carried out with
>real zeal, and cooperation in eradicating the flourishing cross-border drug
>trade was substantial. But unfortunately, the promise of change did not go
>far enough for a radical with a gun. Utopian dreams led the
>twenty-one-year-old student to a grisly act. The assassin's bullet not only
>brought down Zapata's body, but also the hopes and dreams of those seeking
>genuine reform and moderation in Mexican politics. And to add insult to
>dishonor, the assassin escaped from police custody, apparently with the aid
>of the Mexican drug cartels.