I appreciate your feedback and am glad my work spoke to you – for this piece was inspired in part by the story of a man I used to know: a working stiff who was caught between the world of the “law” abiding and the underworld – he eventually realized that the world of the “law” abiding man was killing him slowly and went headlong into the forbidden world. But unlike this Jacobo you mention, the underworld was not a source of luxuries like plasma screen TVs and SUVs; he was a low-level dealer that just had enough money to clear rent and other expenses with a little left over – most of that he put into a fund to get out of the city one day and start over (since I left town before he had a chance to, I can’t tell you how that worked out).

But I can fully understand why you wanted nothing to do with the cartels as they tend to treat their own as expendable (I prefer smaller groups myself – they tend to value their people since they don’t have so many to begin with) – if you absolutely must deal with these kind of people, do so at arm’s length…

To hell with Zionism (and nationalism in general, for that matter…) – viva Anarchy!

However, there does come a point where fear ceases to be healthy – particularly those forms of fear accompanied by prejudice (as these fears are all too easily manipulated by forces that want attention diverted away from their own deeds). This “fear of the other” actually hinders ones ability to live on his own terms because the concept of the “other” is so open to definition that it may one day be broadened to include the paranoid indivdual himself: rendering him isolated from everyone around him – and thus an easy victim for powers that seek to exploit his misfortune…

Many of our fears are so misdirected, we cannot distinguish the difference between fear and caution. The child who gets burned by the stove may never again put his hand on the burner, but that doesn’t mean he fears the stove. It means he’s learned to be cautious about where he puts his hand. Because of this inability to distinguish the difference, we allow preventive laws to take place; a fallacy if there ever was one. You can’t say a person was drinking and driving if the person isn’t behind the wheel, yet in my state, the police can now go into bars and arrest not only those who are too drunk to drive, but can also arrest the server for giving too much to drink. Five hundred people might climb to the top of a mountain safely before one takes a fatal fall, and because of that one fatality, a fence can be put up at the trail head with “no climbing allowed”. The idea is to make sure tragic incidences do not happen again, but this is not going to insure that someone who wants to climb will abandon his mountain climbing efforts or that a person who has been drinking in his home will not suddenly decide to get in his car and drive, thereby causing an accident.

What we are being fed, as a public kept under control, are irrational fears and an illusion that with enough safety features in place, we can prevent accidents. This type of fear is what consumes and destroys your potential to experience the rich variety of life. If you are thrown from a horse, you don’t suddenly begin fearing horses. You get on your feet and ride again, thus overcoming your fears.

We fear all the wrong things. We fear the stranger that moves in next door to us with all his odd customs, traditions and view points, but we don’t fear the harm we are doing him by ostracizing him from the community. We fear hunger, but do not fear the chemicals and additives placed in our foods. We fear the development of nuclear arms in other countries, but not in our own.

We all have our basic, instinctual fears, and these fears are different in context and proportion for everyone; but these are the only fears we should have to face, should have to battle. The rest, fed to us by a control driven society, are artificial fears. They are taught to us. They are not instinctual.

I recall my years in Tijuana with my husband coming home dejected each day, after 911. Tourists were no longer frequenting the stores along Revolucion Avenue. He had been one of their top sales men, selling curios and silver; bringing home as much as I made as a marketing manager in San Diego for a top electronics firm — about the median income for San Diego, in those days. So, we had been used to making some pretty good money, together.

When the U.S. customs went on high alert and closed in on the borders, my husband barely made $25 a week. Not because he wasn’t giving it his all…but because the business was no longer there. My husband always worked strictly on commission.

He came home many days with his head hung low and feeling a sense of shame. We knew a family nearby, with a son who had joined the local drug cartel to pay for his wife’s kidney operation. My husband played video games with his brother. The man in the carel, Jacobo, now owned two homes, free and clear that had been priced at around $200 K each. He had five new SUVs while we had an old rusty jeep. He was buying the latest plasma screen 50 inch televisions. We had a regular television for that time.

Don’t get me wrong, we had a comfortable life. I was still working. We lived like many middle class Americans; except that we had a beach front home and money in the bank.

In spite of this, we both felt sorry for that man that joined the cartel. He looked so burnt out. He had a nervous twitch. He was more stressed than we had ever seen him. As time went on, Jacobo begged my husband to join the cartel as an enforcer. My husband refused. He had been in a gang and left that life behind. We simply wanted a decent peaceful life.

We invested in an internet business. He grew that into another and we thought we might have found something, there. We were together nine years then and we were aging into a comfortable life.

And then, the bottom fell out for us and we fled Mexico, losing everything we had. We looked back so often during the following years. We knew if he had joined and made the money Jacobo earned, we might have had a better life. Certainly, we could have bought our way into a legal life in the U.S. We chose to do the right thing. It destroyed our lives; because, not only did Homeland Security turn against us while helping those who chose crime to allow in for asylum, they made sure that when he was deported his life would be in jeopardy.

I have many regrets and a great deal of guilt for telling my husband to do things legally. He was held and tortured for three years in the U.S. while waiting for asylum. He was on the run once they deported him. But in the end, he confided he was proud that he had done things right. As miserable as things became, we knew we still had the one thing that drives me now…ethics! That sounds incredibly corny…but it has helped me heal. And in the end, Jacobo was murdered by the people who brought him into the cartel and his family fled Mexico too.