It seems to me that the United States owes a particular duty to Mexico. Consider three facts. First, Mexico is falling prey to incredibly ruthless militarized drug cartels who exist solely to provide narcotics to the United States, which has an almost insatiable demand for such products. Second, these militarized groups acquire their weapons from the United States, made easy by the scandalously lax gun laws north of the border (I’ve seen numbers suggesting that between 70 and 90 percent of weapons come from the US). And third, the United States demonizes and locks out poor and vulnerable Mexican people who are trying to escape a desperate situation.
Clearly something is very wrong here. Something is wrong with a culture that tacitly approves of massive hedonistic consumption of narcotics, without heed to the cost. Something is wrong with a culture that worships the cult of firearms and violence, without heed to the cost. And clearly something is wrong with a culture that – as the US bishops have stressed – shows disdain for immigrants and refuses to recognize their value and dignity. In the US-Mexico relationship, these issues are all interrelated and feed upon each other.
This interconnected injustice is clearly an example of social sin, defined as “every sin committed against the justice due in relations between individuals, between the individual and the community, and also between the community and the individual”. It is an example of the “structures of sin” in action – “obstacles and conditioning that go well beyond the actions and brief life span of the individual and interfere also in the process of the development of peoples”. It’s time that we started connecting the dots.
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