LA Times: Where's the outrage over immigrant slayings in Mexico?

[harvey007]

Op-ed by Hector Tobar published in the LA Times, Sept. 9, 2010:

"In the United States, their presumed destination, even immigrant rights groups have been oddly silent over the Aug. 23 massacre of 72 in a border state."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0909-tobar-20100909,0,5619738.column

[tularetom]

1. Apparently we don't get outraged unless they were beheaed

[peacetalksforall]

3. plus poisoned (was it Jim Jones)? or bombed on our part of this continent, but only the

the blame is said to be someone else and a war can be fought over it.

Neo-con/Bush/Tri-Lateral/CFR crimes - nah.

Banking crimes - nah.

[peacetalksforall]

2. This is a worthwhile read for many reasons - thanks for posting k & r

[Demeter]

4. Excuse Me?

These murders on Mexican soil of Mexican and other citizens of countries other than ours? We are supposed to reveal paroxysms of recrimination and grief, ignoring everything else around us?

Consider it done. Next!

[Igel]

5. Depends on who "we" is, doesn't it?

I think the article looked specifically at advocacy groups. Had the mass grave been located a few miles north of the border, the rhetoric would have been to blame repubs, Limbaugh, Tancredo, etc., etc. There might have been protests, but the assumption would have been that racism was involved and no racism on the part of anybody is okay. There'd the be requirement that the remains be identified, that relatives be compensated, that apologies from everybody from the dog catcher to Obama (or at least Clinton) make apologies. The countries of origin would have been up in arms to an incredible extent.

The Zetas probably did it. At least that's the going MSM theory that I heard last. That means it's a Mexico-internal problem. Certainly bad, but it can't be racist or "ethnicist".

Personally, I think it goes to show the extent to which the entire problem mostly involves two groups with competing narratives and claims to political power. I discount, to a very large extent, the framing in terms of morality and compassion vs. immorality and lack of compassion; it too often seems that compassion must serve the right ends to be judged appropriate. The asymmetry in this kind of story I take as evidence: There was more outcry in some quarters over the reported, yet false, claim that a Minuteman abused an illegal immigrant than over the massacre of migrants by Mexicans. The first story passed through our confirmation-bias filters and served to reinforce a group's narrative because any suffering by members of that group is atrocious and horrible; the second is discounted, even though 70+ members of that group were actually killed. The first had domestic implications; the second does too, but not the "right" implications.