Tarahumara Victims of Mexico's Drug War
- Thread starter curraheeeasyc
- Start date
I agree with you here Mark, but the Mexican drug cartels are very crafty and always striving for new methods of smuggling so I'd think regardless of BTR they would have tried to exploit them at some point.
I actually don't think BTR had anything to do with this, based on three points:
1) Tarahumarans may have been unknown to many before BTR, but we mexicans have always known about them and their amazing running and endurance abilities, it's even taught in elementary schools, so the cartels were well aware of them way before the book.
2) Sadly the average mexican does not read many books, and the drug smugglers (or "narcos" as we call them here) are specially under-educated people, so I really doubt they had stumbled upon a copy of BTR and got the idea from there.
3) The article says they have seen an increase in these cases since 2007, before the book was even published.
This situation is indeed really sad, but wherever and whenever there's poverty and someone has the oportunity to take adavantage of it, this will keep happening. The tarahumarans are a really incredible tribe and I think their real problem arises from the intrusion of modernity to their culture and their territory.
There's a good case to be made that it's not necessarily the drugs that screw things up so much as the "war" approach to dealing with them. Legalization would go a long way toward taking some wind out of the narcos' sails. Prohibition just empowers the bastards and doesn't seem to be leading to any sort of solution to the problems.
Sure, sure. However, given the current legal climate and DEA raids in California, if one really wanted to be conscientious, one could buy American. People do go out of their way to buy American, organic, free range, locally sourced, hormone free, cage free, etc.
