Monday, March 09, 2020

Where have all the women gone?

Hey, fellas. What if all the women in our lives decided to take the day off?

Sounds pretty scary, doesn't it? Who's gonna fetch your pipe and slippers when you get home from work at night? Who's gonna make you a sammich for the next day, just the way you like it?

Well, "south of the border, down Mexico way," they're doing just that.

After a string of gruesome killings of women, feminist activists here began wondering: What if we all just disappeared?

Mexico is about to find out. Women across the country are being urged to skip work next Monday, stay off the streets and purchase nothing for 24 hours.

The March 9 national strike, which is being promoted as #UNDIASINMUJERES, or “a day without women,” is meant to deliver an economic punch to cast light on what activists describe as a crisis of violence.

This has implications for those of us in "El Norte" -- that's the United States, for those of you who don't get out much -- as concerns over border security, or the indifference thereto, divides the nation, not to mention both houses of Congress.

But don't take my word for it. This is what I am told by a trusted colleague, an expatriated "gringo" living in Mexico for years now.

Abduction of women and children has become a very serious problem in México. A lot of them, if not raped, beaten, or killed, end up smuggled across the US-México border and become sex slaves. Just one of the "businesses" operated by the big crime cartels. I am personally aware of one woman who, as the Chicago Police said, "is 'dating' men on the streets at night.” And yet, we have US politicians who oppose “The Wall" - I've talked to Mexicans about this, and found that the closer one is to the border, the more "The Wall" is favored.

Well, yeah, it gets a bit crowded in downtown Juarez with everybody from out of town crowding all the bars and drinking all the beer, #amiright?

Most Democrats, including President Obama and former Senator Hillary Clinton, were vocal supporters of tighter border security, including the building of a wall, as well as the detention centers where children are separated from their parents. Then they discovered that, if illegals were allowed to vote, they’d favor the party that gave them access to benefits otherwise limited to citizens. This caused one big-@$$ 180 degree repositioning, and so people who are not citizens can get away with voting in some places.

And so, last year, refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador were compelled to pass on jobs in southern Mexico, to crash the gates at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. Makes you wonder if what happens on one side of the border might spill over into the other side, don’t you think?

Or don’t you?