3/28/23

By Josh Rubin

We hear the news.

A fire in a detention facility in Juárez, holding men. At last report, 39 dead, the rest injured, at the building with a capacity for 60, last night perhaps holding 68.

Cryptic remarks from the Mexican authorities. The shelter operators “reject” the actions that led to the fire. A riot, they say. Lopez Obrador, the president of Mexico, suggesting a protest at the place triggered the tragedy. We will know more, perhaps when the smoke clears. We do know that in the last couple of days, police in Juárez have been rounding up people, many of them Venezuelans, because, they say, they have been begging on the streets. Nuisances, they say.

But more than that, whatever sparked the flame that took their lives, the final cause is already visible through the smoke. The unholy alliance of the United States and Mexico enforces a policy that must always come to this: little by little, the goal of discouraging migration to the north intensifies. It escalates. Inflict poverty, hunger. Expose to criminals, to assault, to extortion, to rape.

And now incineration. Will they see, finally, what they have wrought?

This much we know. This we can see through our tears.