Lately, the people of Mexico, some 110,000,000 (110 million) masses of them, are going through a hellacious time.
It is a sad state of affairs. And the pandemic of swine flu could not have happened at a worse time. Right smack at a time of Cinco de Mayo (May 5th)... Mexico's National Independence Day, a festive celebratory occasion.
The triple whammies of the global financial meltdown triggered by Wall Street and Canary Wharf have unleashed a first wave of tsunami striking at the heart of Mexico's economy. This horrific scenario is worse than the SARS crisis which whacked HKG, Singapore and China before because then, the global financial system was intact, and there was not the added mess created by the pandemic of drugs, heroin, cocaine growing and smuggling which have now beset Mexico and their American and Canadian customers.
With the price of oil plunging, Mexico's oil industry, a major source of state revenues, has been hurting....as demand has shriveled and global oil consumption shrunk.
Furthermore, because of incessant demand and the rampant abuse and ingestion of drugs by the "gringos" in the North, i.e. namely Americans, there erupted an internecine war which has heated up inside Mexico by rival drug growers and smugglers.
The rival drug gangs were emboldened by a weak anti-drug law enforcement policy and a weak U.S.-Mexican border which experienced rampant smuggling of drugs being smuggled from one way across the border from Mexico; and from the other way across from the U.S. to Mexico.... money laundering and high-powered weapons and assault rifles.
There is a largely unreported "hot war" among rival drug cartels inside Mexico which has wracked the Mexican citizenry caught in the crossfire, and the Central government in Mexico is frantically fighting very hard to stomp out the violence.
The U.S. President Barack Obama knows that Americans and American drug users, gun stores, and American proclivity to buy high-powered assault weapons compound and add to the problems of Mexico's fight against the cross-border drug cartels.
And now...... here we go with the horrific news and perilous pandemic of the swine flu.
This is the third hugh wave of the "tsunami" which struck this sad country of 110 million peoples.
With the news of swine flu afflicting Mexico...... tourism, which is one of its biggest source of cash revenues, is now dead. Hotel occupancy in resort destinations like Cancun, in the Caribbean side of the country, is now down to single digit occupancy, i.e. 7% to 8%.
Cross-border traffic and weekend visitors across the U.S.-Mexican border have virtually come to a complete standstill.
Cruise ships which have provided Mexico's coastal port stops... from Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas, Zihuatenejo, Conzumel, with steady streams of dollar-spending tourists have stopped plying these ports of call as cruise destinations because of the fear of the swine flu.
Read on the story on how much damage this triple whammy has wrought upon the peoples of Mexico:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/05/03/MNC317CR8L.DTL
