Lone Police Officer in Mexican Border Town Remains Missing

Chief of Police Erika Gandara.  Very brave but very outgunned.  

I was most critical of El Presidente Felipe "Too Short" Calderon earlier year when he had the extreme gall to come to the United States and criticize Arizona for its efforts to control its common border with Mexico.  At the time I strongly suggested that he clean-up his own litter box before trying to tell us how to run our nation.  He clearly hasn't done so either because he is inept or because he would rather maintain the status quo.  He of course is comfortable, safe, rich and far removed from the daily violence that sparked Arizona's legislative action.  Far removed from anything but the money that flows into Mexico via remittances from the illegal alien Mexicans working in the United States.

Now we have a situation in Mexico that hasn't turned out like all the movies Hollywood has made.  You know what I mean.  The movies where the hero/heroine takes a stand and faces down the bad guys bringing law and order to the poor citizens of some unnamed, dusty western town.  Hollywood's suspension of reality allows us to watch such a movie where the villains can't shoot straight and the good guys never miss and believe it could be real.  Reality, unfortunately, is that a lone police officer stands little chance of defeating determined evil especially if evil is backed by a dozen or so killers armed to the teeth.

Erika Gandara, Chief of Police of the small Mexican border town of Guadalupe, is a very brave young lady.  She was willing to take a job that men in her community ran from not because they were necessarily cowards but because they knew the reality of their situation and had families to worry about.  She was willing to put her life on the line for the ideal of bringing peace, law and order to her community in the face of a very determined and very evil Mexican criminal element bent on trafficking drugs on their own terms.  In Mexico that is the reality and "Too Short" is short not only in stature but in any ability to control crime in the country that elected him el presidente.  It's a shame that Mexico, a beautiful country populated with wonderful people, has suffered from successive failures in leadership in the central government.  The people there deserve much better than they are getting and they know it.  That is why so many undertake the perilous trek north into the United States where their future is uncertain but also where they know there is, at least, some safety and justice.  If their entry wasn't unlawful I would feel for them; but the reality of the situation is that it is their own government--you know, the one led by "Too Short" Calderon--that drives them from their homes through its abject failure to provide for their security.  And it seems that the government of Mexico is in no hurry to change things because those who come here as illegal aliens send dollars back to their families in Mexico that eventually winds up in the bank accounts of the Mexican elite.  It is, you might say, financially beneficial if things remain as they are.

Police Chief Gandara's whereabouts is unknown as is her fate.  The reality of the situation, again unlike Hollywood's movies, is most grim.  We should all pray for her.  I know I shall.  But if the worst becomes reality, the blood of this heroine is on the hands of El Presidente Calderon just as surely as it is on the hands of men who took her at gunpoint and burned her home.

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