Popular Figures

The growing exhaustion with insecurity in Mexico seems to be resulting in the inordinate popularity of normal civilians who stand up to the goons, despite the inevitable consequences. One of these was Don Alejo Garza, whom I mentioned last year. A more recent example is Arturo de la Garza, the son of a former Nuevo León governor who was kidnapped last month. When his kidnappers tried to make contact with his family, he yelled over the phone, "Don't give anything to those sons of bitches". Unfortunately, each man wound up dead; De la Garza's admonition was the last anyone heard from him. What's also striking to me is that that when the public is searching for a figure on whom to project heroic fantasies, government officials never enter the equation.