Mexico Fatalism in the Face of U.S. Gun Trafficking Must End

By Sergio Aguayo Quezada
Mexico Voices 

The debate over guns in America is a good indicator of the status of Mexican fatalism.

A part of Mexico continues to be trapped in the mind set described by Octavio Paz in The Labyrinth of Solitude. According to the poet, we Mexicans drag along with us an "inferiority complex", from which follows our resignation and silence before unjust reality. I argue that behind these attitudes lie the consequences of being the neighbor of an expansionist and aggressive country. Mexico's military defeat in 1847 [in what the U.S. calls the Mexican-American War, Mexicans call the U.S. War of Intervention] and the loss of half our territory deepened Mexican depression and dragged us into isolation from the world. We stopped systematically studying our northern neighbor from that year until the early seventies of the twentieth century.  Read more.