No, Not <I>Those</I> Seven Corpses, <I>These</I> Seven Corpses!
03/15/2009
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During the mid-1990s, while living in Far Rockaway, Queens, for a time I would share taxis with black ladies who, like me, had just taken the A train from Manhattan or Brooklyn to the last stop at Mott Avenue on ”The Rock.” (The taxi stand’s unofficial policy was to not take black males, because they would either skip out on paying, or rob the drivers.)

One night I got into a conversation with a black matron about a drug-related mass murder that had taken place in Brooklyn the previous week. After a few minutes, it became clear that we just weren’t clicking. I was able, eventually, to determine that each of us was talking about a different drug-related mass murder that had been carried out in Brooklyn during the same week.

That situation was unique; I can’t recall any other time during the mid-1990s that saw two drug-related massacres in Brooklyn in the same week. About contemporary Ciudad Juarez, however, I make no such assurances. On either Friday or Saturday–the 123-word AP story wasn’t clear–the border town, Mexico’s murder capital, had another mass corpse find, seven and counting (as well as a policeman’s badge).

”State security official Enrique Torres Valadez said that 1,500 more troops are expected to arrive Saturday, and 2,150 arrived Friday.”

[ Police find 7 bodies in Mexican border city, by Marina Montemayor, Associated Press, March 14, 03:48 PM US/Eastern.]

In Southern Mexico, just before Christmas, two sets of eight victims each of drug gang massacres–eight civilians in one case, and eight soldiers, in the other–were found just two days apart. Thus, it would have been possible for two Mexican strangers in a taxi to start talking about a drug gang massacre that had just occurred, and find that they were talking about different drug gang massacres altogether.

This is just the sort of conversation that President-for-Life ”Barack Obama” wishes for Americans to have more often.

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