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Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 3:11 pm
by Carry-a-Kimber
MojoTexas wrote:Why doesn't the USA just annex Mexico as a territory? If everyone down there wants to live in the USA so much, why don't we take the USA to them? The language barrier isn't as huge as people might think. If the US was calling the shots, we'd be better able to shut down the cartel activity.
:iagree: Completely agree. They have nearly as much Oil and LNG as the middle east. Also the border between Mexico and Guatemala is much shorter than that between The US and Mexico making a border fence much more sensible.

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 4:41 pm
by suthdj
Or we just confiscate all the "funds for familys" going south use it to pay for the illegals here and let the people down there get mad enough to fix their own country not drag ours down to their level.

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 5:34 pm
by 74novaman
chabouk wrote:
MojoTexas wrote:Why doesn't the USA just annex Mexico as a territory?
That's how we got Texas, NM, Arizona, Nevada, and California in the first place.
Thats far too condensed. Americans settled in Mexico, didn't like Santa Anna, took Texas from Mexico....then when we decided to join the US, the Mexicans got mad, US and Mexico fought, then we got the rest. So really, Texas was the important part. The rest of the states were a consolation prize, if you will. :thumbs2: At least, thats my version of the story.

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 5:46 pm
by The Annoyed Man
With Mexico doing so well and so stable right now, y'all are gonna love this one:

Unifying Big Bend, Mexican land under study
Web Posted: 03/24/2010 12:00 CDT
LivingGreenSA.com
By Colin McDonald and Guillermo Contreras - Express-News
BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK — For more than 70 years, the idea has persisted to create an international park among the mountains, canyons and desert plains that flank the Rio Grande.

The wait may be coming to an end.

Top Interior Department officials recently toured Big Bend to re-evaluate the vision of a cross-border park and to prepare a proposal for President Barack Obama.

“This creates the opportunity to share an agenda,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said about working with Mexico to preserve the unique landscape.

Between the work of the federal governments on both sides of the border, the state of Texas, private landowners and the CEMEX cement company in Mexico, some 3 million acres already are protected and straddle the Rio Grande as it cuts through the Chihuahuan Desert and the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains.

Larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined, the land is conservation on a scale rarely seen in the lower 48 states since Franklin Roosevelt was president and created Big Bend National Park.

Back then, the understanding was that the park eventually would have to become international to fully protect the wilderness and the plants and animal species that live only there.

Border barrier

Though the region now is mostly protected, the lack of a framework for international management along with the closure of all legal border crossings, including La Linda, after 9-11, have stymied stewardship, research and the economy.

To do any cross-border projects means a 15-hour drive one way.

“Working on just one side of the river makes no sense,” Big Bend National Park Superintendent Bill Wellman said. “And I think we are much more secure when we are friends and working together with the people on the other side of the border.”

Wellman led Salazar, Tom Strickland, assistant secretary of the interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, and Jon Jarvis, National Parks Service director, on a tour of Big Bend National Park with U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, an advocate for the international agreement.

The point was to showcase the desert landscape, which had just started to bloom, and demonstrate the challenges the closed border presents.

The U.S. has one international peace park. Created in 1932, the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park bridges the border between Montana and Alberta.

With two helicopters providing security, the D.C. delegation took canoes down the Rio Grande and joked about the implications of making a pit stop on Mexico's river bank. Their guides lamented not hearing the songs of the cowboys who sometimes sing for tips on the river's south bank.

The presidential appointees listened to a ranger talk about dinosaur bones and 10,000 years of human history and heard a biologist brag about the 450 species of birds that live in or migrate through Big Bend, more than any other national park.

They learned the only reason the national park now has black bears again, after they were hunted to extinction in Texas, is that a small population survived in the mountains of Mexico and re-populated the park.

Similar work is being done by CEMEX on both sides of the border to reintroduce herds of big horn sheep.

Because of projects like those and concern about climate change shifting migration routes and habitats, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is looking to international and private partnerships to do more large-scale ecosystem preservation, the kind the Big Bend region makes possible.

“We can't just buy all the land that needs to be protected,” Strickland said.

On the tour, the Washington delegation saw abandoned homes in shrinking Mexican villages where the residents were once dependent on tourists and learned about the stunted scientific research resulting from the closed border.

The officials nodded, thanked the rangers and biologists for their passion. They stood in silence as they gazed up at the cliffs and mountains. With the broad bends of the river, it was difficult to tell which side of the border the limestone uplifts were on.

Salazar said he was committed to working on the international park proposal with fellow Cabinet members, specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

His commitment and work is being duplicated in Mexico.

“Ever since Santa Elena Canyon and Maderas del Carmen were designated protected areas, we have been working on projects with our counterparts in Big Bend National Park,” Carlos Alberto Sifuentes, engineer and director of the protected areas south of Big Bend National Park, said in Spanish. But “we have never had a legal marker that strengthens us as one unified area. ... Right now it's in the stage of a proposal developed for the secretaries of the environment of Mexico and of the Department of the Interior of the United States.”

National differences

The politics of creating an international park can be complicated.

Government land control is a sensitive subject in Mexico. Revolutions have been fought over it and private landowners aren't eager to see tourists.

On the U.S. side is the challenge of securing the remote border while allowing comprehensive management and researchers to study the entire region.

Unlike the protected areas in the U.S., in Mexico there are no visitor centers, maintained trails or rangers standing by for search and rescues. The land is mostly privately owned and protected not for public use but for biodiversity. People live a near subsistence existence there as they have for generations.

From the banks of the Rio Grande, those differences are a world away. The mountains in Mexico have the same pine and cypress forests as those in the Chisos Mountains at the heart of Big Bend National Park.

Rodriguez said he hopes that one day, maybe after he's gone, even tourists will again cross the border from Big Bend.

He has a lot of work ahead to make that a reality, but coming off the river he was all smiles. He had invited the Interior Department officials to come see the park and the day had gone without a hitch. The weather was warm, the water cool and clear. The scenery of mesas, mountains and desert expanse slowly drifted by as they floated the river.

He climbed the river bank on the U.S. side to take a photo of the cliffs in Mexico.

The bands of limestone glowed pink and orange in the afternoon light. It was all he needed to make his point to the Washington bureaucrats.

“This is an opportunity to look at an international park,” he said.

Image

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 7:01 pm
by SwimFan85
MojoTexas wrote:Why doesn't the USA just annex Mexico as a territory?
Send Obama and Pelosi down there and don't let them come back until they fix it.

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 7:31 pm
by A-R
[quote="The Annoyed Man"]With Mexico doing so well and so stable right now, y'all are gonna love this one:

Unifying Big Bend, Mexican land under study
Web Posted: 03/24/2010 12:00 CDT
LivingGreenSA.com
By Colin McDonald and Guillermo Contreras - Express-News

Great, as soon as that becomes an "international" park/wildlife refuge then international law will likely usurp the right to carry concealed in National Parks that we just finally got passed.

I'll freely admit that I carried my Glock concealed in violation of Federal Law the one time I went Big Bend. When the park ranger told me there's a decent chance I'd see a mountain lion or a rattlesnake on my hike, I decided I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 6:54 am
by Lodge2004
austinrealtor wrote:I'll freely admit that I carried my Glock concealed in violation of Federal Law the one time I went Big Bend. When the park ranger told me there's a decent chance I'd see a mountain lion or a rattlesnake on my hike, I decided I'd rather be safe than sorry.
I love Big Bend and spent lots of time there in my youth. Always found it amusing to be told..."beware of mountain lions and bears, no firearms allowed".

While in that area, I have seen human "mules" packing very heavy loads through the desert and planes flying low overhead with no lights at night. In the mid 80's, when stationed at Ft. Hood, we did field training exercises on the north side of the park. It was excellent practice for the OH58's and Apache's to try and track the drug runners coming out of the park at night.

All that said, I'd go back in a heartbeat. It's a beautiful place.

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 8:24 am
by The Annoyed Man
Lodge2004 wrote:
austinrealtor wrote:I'll freely admit that I carried my Glock concealed in violation of Federal Law the one time I went Big Bend. When the park ranger told me there's a decent chance I'd see a mountain lion or a rattlesnake on my hike, I decided I'd rather be safe than sorry.
I love Big Bend and spent lots of time there in my youth. Always found it amusing to be told..."beware of mountain lions and bears, no firearms allowed".

While in that area, I have seen human "mules" packing very heavy loads through the desert and planes flying low overhead with no lights at night. In the mid 80's, when stationed at Ft. Hood, we did field training exercises on the north side of the park. It was excellent practice for the OH58's and Apache's to try and track the drug runners coming out of the park at night.

All that said, I'd go back in a heartbeat. It's a beautiful place.
It is. The problem isn't whether or not it is a beautiful place. The problem is whether or not the U.S. government ought to be talking with Mexico — a country that can't even govern itself or control its gangsters — about ceding partial authority over a fairly large portion of Texas and giving Mexico a say in how that land is managed. What ever happened to American sovereignty? Those clowns in DC are actually thinking about giving it away, to a country that can't even handle its own sovereignty, without involving voters in the decision? Are there no patriots left in Washington? What will they do next? Invite China to co-manage Yellowstone as an "international park?"

That can't be allowed to happen.

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 8:27 am
by DONT TREAD ON ME
:iagree: its complete and utter crap. I understand that drug cartels use it now but one can only imagine what will happen to it once mexico has a say and part ownership. the cartels will run it and ruin it.

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 8:59 am
by Fangs
I agree with you guys that this is an absolutely horrible plan. Aren't there already Class B crossings where people can "legally" cross without a passport? At what point do you think Texans will stick it to the man? :txflag:

I'm starting to think more and more that the illegals being allowed to come in are part of the bigger plan to destroy this country from the inside. If the US wanted to secure the border, it could be done. I just don't think they're trying, because having drugs to go after allows them to raid anyone they want to "for the children". :grumble

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 9:03 am
by jimlongley
chabouk wrote:
MojoTexas wrote:Why doesn't the USA just annex Mexico as a territory?
That's how we got Texas, NM, Arizona, Nevada, and California in the first place.
Yeah, and most of that was Texas.

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 10:52 pm
by UpTheIrons
Back to the OP's point - don't forget that next week is Holy Week. Tens of thousands of Mexicans "temporarily emigrate" to the shopping areas of Texas for two to three weeks over Holy Week and the Easter holidays. This is a bigger vacation season for Mexico than Christmas is for us.

My wife hated every single minute of it when she worked at the outlet mall in San Marcos. Thousands of people who were used to having people follow them around picking up after them traveled in roving bands from store to store and tearing the places up. What they didn't buy, they just dropped where they opened/unfolded/looked at it.

Why the CDC would be on alert for that though, I do not know.

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 11:10 pm
by marksiwel
74novaman wrote:
chabouk wrote:
MojoTexas wrote:Why doesn't the USA just annex Mexico as a territory?
That's how we got Texas, NM, Arizona, Nevada, and California in the first place.
Thats far too condensed. Americans settled in Mexico, didn't like Santa Anna, took Texas from Mexico....then when we decided to join the US, the Mexicans got mad, US and Mexico fought, then we got the rest. So really, Texas was the important part. The rest of the states were a consolation prize, if you will. :thumbs2: At least, thats my version of the story.
let me get this straight, People came here illegally, settled, didnt speak the Native Language and didnt like to pay/want to pay taxes and then overthrew the existing government. Sounds familiar, si?

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 6:26 am
by MojoTexas
marksiwel wrote:
74novaman wrote:
chabouk wrote:
MojoTexas wrote:Why doesn't the USA just annex Mexico as a territory?
That's how we got Texas, NM, Arizona, Nevada, and California in the first place.
Thats far too condensed. Americans settled in Mexico, didn't like Santa Anna, took Texas from Mexico....then when we decided to join the US, the Mexicans got mad, US and Mexico fought, then we got the rest. So really, Texas was the important part. The rest of the states were a consolation prize, if you will. :thumbs2: At least, thats my version of the story.
let me get this straight, People came here illegally, settled, didnt speak the Native Language and didnt like to pay/want to pay taxes and then overthrew the existing government. Sounds familiar, si?
Are you referring to the Texas Revolution, or the American Revolution, marksiwel?

In the case of the Texas Revolution, yes some settlers may have settled her illegally when Texas was still Mexico, but Mexico opened up Texas for "gringo" immigration so that the white settlers would provide a buffer between the Comanches and the Apaches and "real" Mexico. According to the history I've read, most of the Texicans were perfectly happy with the arrangement and content to be good Mexican citizens, under the constitution of 1824. It wasn't until Santa Ana took over the Mexican government as a dictator and threw away the 1824 constitution that Texicans started to take offense. Most of the settlers weren't in Texas illegally, however.

I'm not sure where you get the, "people came here illegally" part in either case.

Re: Mexico just fell apart?

Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 7:36 am
by stevie_d_64
XtremeDuty.45 wrote:
MojoTexas wrote:Why doesn't the USA just annex Mexico as a territory? If everyone down there wants to live in the USA so much, why don't we take the USA to them? The language barrier isn't as huge as people might think. If the US was calling the shots, we'd be better able to shut down the cartel activity.
I like Ron White's idea better. We "flip" Mexico.
"You cain't fix stupid..."

All kidding aside, this is certainly something that generates a lot of concern, but feckless action by those who need to address this issue seems to not generate much action...Only reaction...