BayouVixen's Blog

Has Mexico’s plan for the reconquista (“reconquest”)  of lands lost to Texas and the U.S. in 1836 and 1848 been put on a fast track and changed from waging demographic warfare to an actual consideration of armed conflict?

The increasing frequency and size of incursions by Mexican military personnel into the U.S. would appear to verify that assessment, and it would appear the Mexicans have become emboldened because of the Bush Administration’s lack of response.

The El Paso Times reported on Jan. 29 of this year that records obtained by Judicial Watch showed 25 incursions by Mexican military and police into the US in 2007, and 278 incursions since 1996: The Border Patrol documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group in Washington, D.C., said that 21 of the 2007 incidents involved Mexican police officials and four incidents involved Mexican military personnel.

The most egregious of the incidents took place in January, 2006, when Mexican soldiers aided drug smugglers who had run into a group of 30 American law enforcement officials, including Texas policemen and the FBI. According to a report in The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario, Calif., Mexican troops established fighting positions several hundred yards across the Rio Grande at Neely’s Crossing, about 30 miles east of El Paso. 

Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Mike Doyal told the paper that Mexican Army Humvees were towing what appeared to be thousands of pounds of marijuana across the border. 

"It's been so bred into everyone not to start an international incident with Mexico that it's been going on for years. When you're up against mounted machine guns, what can you do? Who wants to pull the trigger first? Certainly not us," Doyal told the paper.

FBI spokesperson Andrea Simmons confirmed the report, telling the Daily Bulletin: "Bad guys in three vehicles ended up on the border. People with Humvees, who appeared to be with the Mexican Army, were involved with the three vehicles in getting them back across."

Deputies captured one vehicle and found 1,477 pounds of marijuana inside, according to Doyal, who added Mexican soldiers set fire to one of the Humvees stuck in the river.

Only a week later, a news crew from El Paso television station KFOX-TV witnessed a second incursion. In the company of a Sheriff’s deputy, they had gone to the scene of the previous incident when several Mexican soldiers emerged. The deputy then spotted a number of other Mexican soldiers making a flanking movement against him and the news crew and chose to withdraw because he was heavily outnumbered and outgunned.

Video of that incident is available at the KFOX-TV website.

Mexican officials have said their military is forbidden from traveling within three miles of the border.

Officials within the Bush Administration, including Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, have downplayed the incidents in spite of the clear evidence for reasons which remain unfathomable.

“This is reconnaissance,” retired Col. Steve Duncan told this writer. “This is a pattern similar to what I’ve seen throughout a lot of modern conflicts – they want to see how fast we react, what we react with, and whether or not we take it seriously. What the Bush Administration is telling them is that we’re not going to react to a military incursion with military force, that the only thing they’ll have to deal with is law enforcement armed primarily with handguns.”

At the same time, Mexican officials have been vocal about the far fewer instances when U.S. law enforcement personnel have strayed into their country while attempting to apprehend drug smugglers. In one instance, U.S. law enforcement officials strayed all of 40 feet into Mexico near Fabens, N.M., while chasing smugglers.

“We’re seeing a network developing, using the smugglers of both drugs and other goods,” Duncan said. “Down in the Rio Grande Valley, for example, there are hundreds of rings of thieves who shoplift items from Wal-Mart, Target and other big stores, take it into Mexico, then smuggle it back across the border and sell it as wholesalers – sometimes they’re selling it back to the very people they stole it from.

“The reason we’re seeing so many Mexican military involved in the smuggling is pretty simple -- they’re scouting out easy crossings across the border so they can flank where you would expect the strongest resistance to be – in the larger border cities,” Duncan added. 

Last fall, Mexican president Felipe Calderon made it clear that he now considers the southwestern U.S. to be part of his country, not American soil. In a speech at the National Palace, he said: “Wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”

Calderon was sharply critical of U.S. efforts to curtail illegal immigration, including stepped-up raids on factories and farms suspected of hiring illegals, as well as the “harsh treatment” endured by illegal immigrants who have run afoul of U.S. law by murdering, raping, robbing or otherwise harming U.S. citizens.

“In the name of the government of Mexico, I again issue an energetic protest against the unilateral measures taken by the Congress and the United States government that exacerbate the persecution and the vexing treatment against undocumented Mexican workers,” Calderon said.

The speech was roundly praised in Mexico and in the Hispanic community in the U.S. and timed to coincide with Mexican Independence Day, Sept. 16.

“What we see there is the start of the build-up of political will,” Duncan analyzed. “Watch closely as we continue through the election season and you’ll start to hear harsher and harsher rhetoric coming both from Mexico and the Mexican radical movement in the U.S. They’re building their case for more profound incursions.”

Duncan said that despite the bluster, the Mexican military is under no delusions about its ability to actually win a war with the U.S.

“We could take out everything they’ve got with one National Guard division,” he said. “They’re not stupid -- they would never actively engage our military forces, even our most inactive reserves. But they know they have a ready-made fifth column already entrenched in every major American city that could do a lot of damage if it got down to that. But I honestly think they will still stick to trying to take control politically first.

“If Mexico is serious about trying to take the border states back, then they’re going to get a fight one way or the other,” Duncan concluded.