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San Antonio Express-News
24 de marzo de 1996
©1996: Suzanne Cane y Olvera

AMERICA'S NEW ATTITUDE: "YO NO FUI"

Enter U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alfonso D'Amato. It had been awfully quiet since House Speaker Newt Gingrich prescribed execution for Mexican drug traffickers caught crossing the U.S. border. Now we begin to see why. It's not only about Mexican drug traffickers. It seems to be about Mexico and Mexicans as well.

American paranoia does not seem capable of understanding the difference. But, then, it is an election year, and the destruction of anyone, even an entire nation, becomes quite incidental in the general scheme of American things.

I must confess that Gingrich had surprised me. After pretty much forever, he managed to come up with an idea I could agree with. One question, though: Why only Mexican drug traffickers? Why not American drug traffickers? Do they constitute an exempt elite? Or is it impossible for the American imagination to conceive of one of its own doing the same thing?

Doesn't anyone wonder how the drugs get distributed around the United States once they have been smuggled into the country? Do they walk on their own? Do Americans play no role? Is there no American corruption that helps them along their merry way to the user?

Do Americans use drugs only because spooky, evil Mexicans stick needles into their veins or force them to snort the stuff when they're sleeping just to keep their trans-border narco-business going?

In other words, has the American mind fallen into the yo-no-fui trap?

I had a maid once who was perfect. She must have been perfect because nothing was ever her fault. If something fell and broke, she would say, "Yo no fui." (It wasn't me.)

If something burned on the stove, she would defend herself with the same "Yo no fui." One time, the finish on a wood table was ruined because it had been washed with water. According to her, elves could have done it, for she certainly hadn't. Her refusal to take responsibility was a way of life.

And, yet, to a certain extent, I could understand it. The woman was terrified of losing her job.

What is Gingrich's excuse? How do D'Amato and Feinstein explain it?
Yo-no-fuiism seems to have become an American tradition. You may remember the absurd paraquat controversy of a number of years ago. Besides size, little was different then in drug relations between the United States and Mexico.

Paraquat was an herbicide that had been outlawed in the United States. Mexico was using it to spray the marijuana plant. Like other such chemicals, when injected, it causes a toxic reaction. Some of the marijuana survived the spraying, and the contaminated result was smuggled into the United States.

Considering the determination of the U.S. government to see its Mexican counterpart do everything possible to keep drugs out of the United States, no logical person could have predicted the Americans' reaction. The Mexicans were scolded for making American drug users ill! Not quite the stance required to lower demand, is it?

Sad to say, not much seems to have changed in the American attitude: We do nothing wrong. The other guy does everything wrong. Yo no fui.

The drug trade goes on because there are people who use the product. Any businessman will tell you that where there is no demand, there is no supply.

Gingrich wants to execute Mexican drug traffickers? Perhaps, the execution of American users would put a more effective, and immediate, end to the problem.

How many executions would it take to scare people off the stuff, lower demand and make drug trafficking a thing of the past?