De la Isla: Latino leadership needed on border issues

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President Obama is considering sending National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to keep that country's crime wave from spilling over into the United States. But "I'm not interested in militarizing the border," he said.
A spate of 700 arrests in late February supposedly delivered a crippling blow to the Sinaloa crime cartel. That, of course, remains to be seen. Obama has promised "within a few months" to have a plan to counter U.S. gun smuggling and cash that supports the cartels. Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced a task force to deal with rising border violence by allocating resources to stem the flow of dollars and guns destined to drug gangs.
The average person has a stake in this. But not necessarily the one the crime-busters decry. The simple fact is that choking the border throttles U.S. commercial supply lines, to say nothing about disrupting vacationers, border-family visits and shoppers. Nor are all border cities equally affected. About three-quarters of a trillion dollars in commerce crosses North American borders each year. These are commodities we don't want crime syndicates disrupting. Millions of overland cargo crossings occur annually.
The recession makes uninterrupted trade highly important as a way to keep markets and production going.
In this, there is a critical role for U.S. Hispanic leadership.
Unattended distasteful issues, like drug dealing, have led to distortions to which the Latino population is very sensitive. For instance, a hysteria took hold in California during the 1970s claiming -- get this -- Hispanic prison gangs involved in the drug trade were infiltrating state government. The very thought sounds absurd today, but the phony charge was spread widely in the national media. Distortions such as this still occur. With similar false data, Lou Dobbs claimed undocumented immigrants were crossing the border and spreading leprosy. Asked for months to correct his claim, he never did.
Just last year, public opinion polls registered how Latinos in general realized that others view their Hispanic neighbors as a "suspicious" class, mainly as "illegal." A disproportionately high number of Latinos reported experiencing prejudice. Hate crimes against Hispanics are one consequence.
In response a concerted effort resulted that became the antidote. Latino organizations channeled the angst into educating everyone about such matters. They got involved in the national campaigns and encouraged a strong voter turn out.
A similar civic mobilization originating here to give support to Mexican groups and society, to combat all forms of corruption, may be necessary. Corruption is the wormhole destabilizing Mexican society and gives the cartels leverage.
But most U.S. Hispanic leaders are more comfortable dealing with domestic matters. They want a cozy niche, fitting in, not making unnecessary waves.
The Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Palestinian, Jewish and other international communities have developed their own strong influential networks and voices in Mexico. Our own Latino community is missing an opportunity to have a transnational influence there on matters of critical importance.
Latino leaders -- public officials, advocates, civic and religious leaders, including immigrant groups -- should develop a coordinated strategy to begin both helping and pressuring their Mexican counterparts, on how to begin eliminating all forms of public corruption.
Unless we move quickly, people with guns on both sides of the law will dominate and negatively define all things about the border, more than they do now -- alienating neighbors and friends, them and us.
That way of thinking will have people believing the cartels have taken over. Like that smear that all Italians are Mafia, Latinos will have yet another new smear to contend with.
It's time to teach some reality. Is Latino leadership up to it?

(Jose de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail him at joseisla3(at)yahoo.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)

COLUMNMust credit Hispanic Link