Political Socialization - and why doing nothing kills people.
My political views did not suddenly appeared, I acquired them through subtle circumstances and everyday events. First of all I will explain myself in terms of my demographics. I was born in Mexico, but two years ago I moved to the United States, I have two brothers and tons of friends.
Mexico is a completely different culture from the United States. Big differences between both cultures is that in Mexico we do not care about time, work is never as important as family, and every excuse is enough to make family reunions. Families in Mexico are also huge, I have at least 40 cousins and 30 uncles and aunts. And as could be inferred from these statements, I strongly appreciate family ties. It would never pass through my mind that I would have a divorce in the future, in fact, it scares me how easily families break apart here in the United States. In addition, if I ever move somewhere in the future I would like my children to have family in the same city. Family has been extremely important for the development of my views. My mom and my dad are both abnormally extrovert; they laugh all the time and they do not pay attention to petty everyday issues; and that is exactly how I am -with my friends- . It’s because of the easygoingness of my parents that I think I have a lot of liberal views on social issues, but many of my views come from a deeper respect for life..
And an extremely important aspect that shaped my political views is not my friends nor my family, but the people in the environment in which I live. The people I interact every day with. The urban area where used to live in Mexico has a population more than eight times the population of Savannah, yet in 2013 we were the number five most violent city in the world and the most violent in Mexico too. Whenever people talk about the drug cartels and the violence in Mexico, I have all the authority to talk about it: I was there, I saw it, I lived it. I have seen deaths, I have lost family members, I have worried about kidnapped friends, I have been on the floor in order to avoid being shot; when people my age in this city were playing in the park with other kids. That definitely shaped how I see the world. After dealing with the death in a daily basis I have learned to respect life. Above everything else life is sacred for me, there is no religion, person, or nation that could ever convince me that killing is right; I have cried many times because of death people; killing would never be right for me. Therefore I am opposed to death penalty.
In fact, my life in Mexico has given me a truly advanced understanding of drugs commerce, I spent many of my days studying the issue of illegal drugs because it was the source of all the killings I saw day after day, and I always thought that I had to know in order to help. What I am going to explain is something obvious for some people but at the same time is incredible the number of people who never rationalize it before. First of all, drugs cartels exist because there is a demand for drugs, and that demand comes from the United States mostly. During the 1980-1990 the principal producer and exporter of drugs to the United States was Colombia. Colombia had a rough time. Terrorist attacks on Airplanes? Killing innocent people in order to scare the government? That’s not just from the US, the cartels did that in Colombia too; Destroying buildings? even Kidnap and kill the presidential candidates and the families of the president’s cabinet? Maybe terrorist have never done that before in the US but the Cartels certainly did in Colombia. Colombia had a rough time; but with their army they overcame their problem, but they did not solve “the problem.” Of course, there is no way to solve “the problem,” the fact that Colombia stopped their drug activity did nothing to stop the demand of the millions of American citizens who consume drugs; and the violence just moved up north, to Mexico. Mexico’s situation is where Colombia was a couple of decades ago. And even if Mexico solves their problem with the use of massive killings, army, marines, guns and trucks - as it appears is the way they know-, they would not solve “the problem.” The US will still need their drugs and they will just import them from somewhere else. And the violence would move again. That is why I hate drugs; all of them; I despise them; they are the reason of innocent lives lost. There is no way I would ever stop hating drugs. I hate how people are able to consume drugs so easily in here, and they have no idea that every time they get high they are contributing to the killings of innocent people, to the killing of my friends. Maybe they don’t deserve that I think of them so harshly but my god, I cannot help but cry -and I had cried many nights- at the thought of how drugs ruined my beautiful city. But am I going to be a wimp and stay here without doing anything? Of course not. I had come up with a relative solution, that will not displace the violence from country to country, but actually diminish it or even stop it. If the addicted US population -millions and millions all the way from high school to the House of Representatives (sadly true)- will not stop to use drugs, then they should embrace their addiction and legalize it. Drugs being illegal in the US just represent how incapable the population is to accept the fact that this country spends billions of dollars on drugs annually. Legalizing drugs will not just make it easier to regulate them, but it would also start an industry of drug production within the country; avoiding the thousands of innocent deaths somewhere else in the world - doesn’t matter if it is Colombia, Mexico or wherever else-. And I am not in favor of legalizing drugs because I respect peoples rights - which I do -, but because the drug issue has human lives involved that could be saved -not just mexicans, but humans in general-. Am I being hypocrite because by legalizing drugs it will slowly kill its consumers? NO I AM NOT, people who use drugs CHOOSE to die -or whatever the drugs do to them -, on the other hand victims of drug violence had done nothing so wrong for dying except being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. I mean, I have been called by people everywhere that I am smart, nice, cool, awesome, and many other adjectives, yet every day in Mexico there was no way to assure I would come home without a bullet in my head. It doesn’t matter how you are of what you have done, drug violence does not discriminate, and should be stopped.
On the rest of the issues that do not involve the direct death of a human life, I always go for liberty - not liberal, but for “liberty”-. Liberty of doing whatever you want with your life as long as you do not interfere with others’ rights -even if they’re not in your country-. Liberty to have an economy. But of course if everything were “freedom” it would be an anarchy, and anarchies had proved themselves horrendous. Therefore I support all necessary regulations that give maintenance to the system. All environmental regulations that assure that an economy would even exist in the future - by preserving human life-, all bureaucratic checks that make our meat be safe from bacteria and our milk pasteurized, and all courts that protect the rights of people. As I said before, death has teached me to love live. I love people in general, I love when they enjoy and laugh - it’s amazing how suddenly we could lose all of this-. If people want to marry somebody, let them do so. Life is too short -sometimes it is even shorter- that everyone should be able to live it at its fullest.
