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Sunday, June 11, 2000
A chilling threat
Border bounty offer - now withdrawn - was an outrage.
In the relationship between any two nations, there are bound to be bumpy, even punishing, passages. And when the relationship in question is one like that of the United States and Mexico - nations so sharply differing in culture, tradition, wealth and values - the potential for rancor and acrimony grows accordingly.
The latest eruption of hard feelings, however, is startling and worrisome: In the Mexican border city of Reynosa, a self-styled activist, Carlos Ibarra Perez, announced last week that he and his organization, the Citizen Defense Com-mittee, would pay a $10,000 bounty to anyone who killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
Ibarra said his action was prompted by indignation at what he characterized as the murders of Mexican nationals by U.S. government agents and by ranchers who have adopted vigilante tactics in hopes of keeping illegal aliens off their properties.
"They (the Border Patrol) are massacring people," Ibarra said, "and now we're ready to defend ourselves."
In all likelihood, Ibarra speaks only for himself, and he is short of both money and followers. Some, however, take the matter very seriously indeed - as well they should. A spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington pronounced Ibarra's threat "an intolerable provocation."
That it was. It served as another reminder of how volatile the situation along the border has become. Ibarra's is not the first such threat: Already, there have been reports of Mexican drug lords offering similar bounties for Border Patrol agents - who, inconveniently for the smugglers, do their best to interdict illicit drug shipments.
Fortunately, this particular affair proved to have the half-life of one of those ultra-rare elements that scientists discover in the laboratory. After the Tamaulipas attorney general's office announced it had opened a criminal investigation into Ibarra's threat, the activist abruptly backed away from the bounty offer, saying he did not want to see more violence along the border. However, Tamaulipas officials - and, on this side of the Rio Grande, the FBI - indicated they would continue to look into the matter.
Some good may actually come of it: This affair reminds us all how important it is to bring the border under control, and to collaborate in cooperative efforts to address the long-standing problems in the U.S.-Mexico relationship.
So long as millions of Mexicans live in dire poverty, and so long as the job lure exists here, the border will remain a turbulent and dangerous place. But if the two governments, and people of good will on either side of the border, renew efforts to seek solutions and develop areas of common interest, better times could lie ahead.
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