Politicians will do anything for public attention. About the only hurdle they have to jump are having a cause or … a wall.
On Wednesday, Queretaro State Deputy Braulio Guerra put on a press show at the Tijuana border showing how easy it is to climb the wall nowadays separating Tijuana from San Diego County.
“You just climb and you’re on the other side scot free” he told reporters. Well, not so easy but then Deputy Guerra is no “pollo” trying to make it into California, but he was trying to make a point as to how easy it is to climb a containing wall even if on the other side the “Migra” (Border Patrol) is waiting to haul and book you and send you back to Tijuana for a new try.
Surely Deputy Guerra was making a point against the continuation of the construction of a wall along the Mexico-U.S. border and the uselessness of physical borders.
Yet what Deputy Guerra is not saying is that the current undergoing raids on undocumented immigrants is making the Mexican government feel the pinch on just how to go about “welcoming” the deportees.
Showman Deputy Guerra of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) would, at first glance, not seem to have anything to do with jumping the fence in Tijuana.
But then, his home state of Queretaro — closer to Mexico City than to San Diego — along with other surrounding states — Guanajuato and Michoacán — are beginning to feel the pinch. The returnees are the same people who had to leave these states due to lack of opportunity to make a decent living to support their families.
Deputy Guerra’s antics in getting photographed on top of the “wall” built along the TJ border obviously, and shamefully, is a grab for attention. In his showmanship Guerra may blame the wall and the future construction of Donald Trump’s “muro” along the border, but like the President Peña Nieto administration, has no visible answer to the plea of returnees.
They left because there were no good-paying jobs in Mexico, and after a taste of American honey, they are back, facing the same economic situation which kicked them out of the country.
One couldn’t agree more with Deputy Guerra’s clownmanship that “walls are easy to jump,” but going north is no longer the answer to the corruption imbedded problems the Mexican government is facing.
Or for that matter, creating quick lunch programs “to protect” the large amount of deportees that are coming home not just culturally misplaced (home is not what it used to be), but once again joining the ranks of the unemployed is also not the answer.
The nation is feeling the pinch of the deportations and demagoguery, such as having a Queretaro deputy show us how easy it is to jump a border wall is not an answer to the plea of throngs of individuals returning home without options to remake their financial lives in the land where their mothers (and fathers, if you can find them) that saw them come to life.
Beyond Donald Trump and his anti-Mexican antics, the Mexican government has yet to come up with a solution to enhance well-paid employment.
That’s a lot tougher than putting on a show to protest against a wall which, unfriendly as it is, was provoked by decades of corrupt governance that’s made a few politicos (Braulio Guerra included) rich and left behind a 55 percent of the Mexican population in poverty.
That’s the real wall Mexican politicians have to jump, and it is not located along the northern border.
