For over 50 years successive US administrations have been obsessed with Cuba and how dangerous the "communist threat" is while a much bigger threat was evolving right next door in Mexico. Cuba is not much of a threat and is one of the countries which has much lower crime rate than many cities in the US and Canada. However, Mexico is a different story.
Last night on CBC Sunday Night news there was an engaging and at the same time frightening story about drug trafficking in Mexico. It has become very intense over the years and drug cartels are becoming more powerful than government and while government powers are contracting the drug cartel's powers are increasing. According to CBC report drug cartels have managed to deeply penetrate police, army, and the government in Mexico and are heavily spreading their tentacles into the US and even Canada. The real threat is that the murder and mayhem which has plagued Mexico over drugs for years now is fast spreading into the US and even reaching Canadian cities. The drug cartels' tentacles are reaching into other South American countries and other continents to countries as far as Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Mulroney/Reagan free trade agreement benefited drug cartels in Mexico and they started transporting drugs by road into the US through Texas and the rest of the country and right into Canada. In the past they did it by sea only via Florida. Benefits of free trade, eh! Drug trafficking is spreading like swine flue and killing people. There are spectacles of such killings in Mexico where members of rival groups are hung in public places, burned, and buried in concrete structures and dead bodies are left for public spectacle. There is a real threat of similar events taking place in the US and Canada.
It is about time that US and Canadian governments start worrying about this threat and start doing something about it.
