Mexico usually makes the international news headlines for the wrong reasons. To be fair, stories of uneventful sunny holidays on the Mexican coast, Pacific or Caribbean aren’t terribly newsworthy. If there is anything about the news coverage, particularly (but not exclusively) that originating from Fox, that irks me, it’s the twisting and distorting of facts and alarmist opinions accompanying them. The stories are usually in themselves true, and horrific enough without the silly right wing banter.
This week Mexico City found itself in the glare of global media after local residents in a town just outside the city blighted with crime decided they’d had enough, and went to the local police station to extract a quartet of ‘alleged’ kidnappers from the care of the police, and perform the act of justice themselves. Death probably. Even if not an intended outcome, there were too many people there wanting to dispense justice for any other likely result.
Do I blame them? Not really. It’s a complex issue though. I don’t believe in the death penalty, but do believe that Ian Huntley should be dragged from his cell and slowly disemboweled with blunt spoons whilst being splashed liberally with a corrosive acid of some sort . Just one of life’s little contradictions. Lynch mobs and death squads are not new but are both a growing part of Mexican life, and whilst I’d like to think both might improve Mexican society in some twisted, primitive and perverse sort of way, the corner the country needs to turn is still some way off. Sadly.
I favor the return of Medieval stocks placed prominently in public places. This, of course, would be for lesser crimes. Graffiti vandals especially. More serious crimes can be dealt with directly by the public if a poorly run legal system, as we often have in Mexico, fails to do the job.
Funnily enough I have been extolling the virtues of the stocks for a few years. For the UK too. A little public humiliation would do some people good.