SAN DIEGO -- There is a familiar stench coming from south of the border. It's the smell of lies and spin, cover-ups and fairy tales offered up for public consumption.
Brace yourselves. I think the Mexican government is not being totally honest. Shocking, right?
You know that horrible story from a week ago about the brutal slaughter of nine members of a family of Mormon fundamentalists in Northern Mexico?
Well, I've made my way through the three stages of shock -- first sadness, then rage, and finally curiosity. I'm stuck on No. 3.
The more I look at this story, the more it stinks. We still don't know why three women and six children (including babies) were, on the afternoon of Nov. 4, shot and killed as their caravan of vehicles was snaking along a country road in the dangerous drug corridor that connects the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua. We know a little about the barbarism of the attack from the eyewitness accounts of six other children who were wounded but survived thanks to 13-year-old Devin Langford, who hid the others behind some bushes and then walked nearly 15 miles to get help.
U.S. media outlets love the story of the boy hero, and they can't stop telling it.
I don't blame the media. It's a powerful story. Still, I wish they could find a little time to also dig into the motive for the killings and explain to us all why this atrocity happened in the first place.
For that, we may have to rely on the Mexican press, which is currently working to flesh out the details.
What the children have to say about the deliberateness of the violence suggests that these were targeted executions, and not -- as the Mexican authorities first suggested -- a case of mistaken identity where the killers mistook the family caravan for a rival drug cartel. It seems very likely that the gunmen knew full well that they were killing women and children, and that the family was targeted. It's also likely the attack was meant to send a message: Get out.
According to media reports, the LeBarons are part of a wealthy and powerful community of about 5,000 Mormon expatriates who own large parcels of land, dabble in politics and hold both U.S. and Mexican citizenship. By many accounts, in Mexico, these people had operated with a brazenness that got them banned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is based in Salt Lake City. There are allegations that the LeBarons practiced polygamy, which didn't go over any better with Mexican officials than it did with the mainstream Mormon community in the United States.
But, according to a recent article in the Daily Beast and various accounts in Mexican newspapers, what put the LeBarons on a collision course with other powerful interests in Mexico wasn't wives but water. The family resides on several large ranches in the border states of Sonora and Chihuahua, and those parcels use a lot of water. Other local Mexican farmers have complained for years, according to the article, and the confrontation has become violent in the past.
All of this puts me, and many people, in a tough spot. Like a lot of folks in the United States and Mexico, I want to know why this terrible thing happened. But I don't want to say or write anything that blames the victims or makes it seem as if they brought this tragedy upon themselves.
Let me be clear. They didn't. No one deserves this. The women and children who were gunned down were innocents. But that doesn't mean that U.S. authorities should not be taking a hard look at the other members of the family -- those who were not in the caravan that day, and some of whom have now packed up the rest of their relatives and left Mexico to return to the United States.
The FBI is working with Mexican officials to investigate the murders, and some arrests have already been made. But this is Mexico. Who knows what really happened?
The Daily Beast quotes an anonymous source identified as a member of a Mexican drug cartel, who doesn't seem to know who was behind the attack but suggests it was personal.
"Kids? Little babies? This is more along the lines of retaliation," the source told the website. "Mexicans don't kill a bunch of white kids for no reason."
I'll buy that. So what was the reason? We should not rest, or stop digging, until we know.
Editorial on 11/15/2019