Majestic landscapes. Savory foods. Friendly people. These are some of the many beautiful things México offers to the world.
A corrupted government. Drug trafficking. Endless warfare. Those beautiful things have now become overshadowed by violence.
We keep ignoring it because we think it doesn’t have anything to do with us. Because here in the U.S., México seems far away and its issues can appear small and insignificant.
I’m not saying everybody has to do something about it, but it’s crucial to learn from the mistakes that my country is making.
I lived in México for 12 years. I saw all of its beauties and its disfigurements. I remember coming home from tennis practice just to hear how the police did nothing to stop a cartel massacre. Another time, it was watching thousands of people at the border pleading for better lives, only to be ignored. Looking back, I saw my country’s raw truth: the issues we ignored were coming back to haunt us.
For years, the reigning political party in México, Morena, has named itself as a “party for the people.” In order to legitimize themselves, they’ve crafted a divisive narrative — “the poor” vs. “the rich.” Through this image, Morena paints itself as México’s savior of those being exploited by the rich.
This level of government control led to self-serving manipulation, especially with education. While online learning during the COVID pandemic spanned hardly six months at St. Mark’s, schools across México were closed for nearly two years. Millions of kids, myself included, would spend hours watching the TV instead of learning about our history.
But even then that wasn’t the greatest issue, as less privileged students would have to learn through a one-hour national education broadcast. Millions lost two years of education, and three years later those same kids who missed proper education voted for Morena.
Morena has also been accused of having cartel ties, along with one of its candidates Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), the president of México during the pandemic.
In 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice investigated if AMLO had received funding for his 2006 presidential campaign from “El Cartel de Sinaloa.” A New York Times article addressed accusations made by the US government on AMLO and his cabinet for accepting bail money from Los Zetas, a rampant Mexican cartel organization. While these accusations were eventually dropped, more cartel members have been released into the US, causing new accusations on AMLO to emerge.
So how do México’s issues affect us? I’ve seen ignorance turn my country into one that votes for people who support criminal organizations. I’ve seen how humble people, who’ve never had a shot at life, are being manipulated — they’ve been promised lies and are left to suffer.
We need to learn from México. We can’t afford to be ignorant of glaring issues, or else we’ll find ourselves with the same issues my country is struggling with. So while México might seem distant, it’s often the farthest problems that hit hardest when they finally come to our attention.
