Isaiah Castellanos
Johnathon Stout
Rhetoric
16 September 2014

The Monstrosity in Mexico Land of hard working people, and captivating landscapes; Mexico is a land where the dream of prosperity under democracy has turned into a bloody nightmare. The tragedy playing out just south of our border is not a spontaneous outbreak of violence, but has been building up over the last century. Identifiable drives and motives allow the mafia gangs to recruit a steady flow of recruits. Like volcanic ash over Pompeii, the innocent civilians are buried by real psychological issues that erect, witnessing daily atrocities. Mexico regarding the drug war and how it is effecting/affecting many civilians in the occurring conflict. Abraham Maslow [an American physiologist] proposed that humans have a metaphorical pyramid of needs. Physiological needs such as hunger and thirst, must first be satisfied before the higher level safety and psychological needs. In Mexico, jobs are either scarce or generate little wealth for workers, leaving poverty and malnutrition as a fact of life for many Mexicans. Given the fact that many cartel members come from indigent backgrounds, Maslow would have predicted that the men who work for the cartel to satisfy their own physiological needs. Knowing that joining the cartel is a terrible motive, the drive to satisfy their own physiological and psychological needs come from self-transcendence, safety, acceptance, and self-esteem that the cartel members get from the recruitment process. Violence in Mexico today is not too initially to overrun the National Government, but instead to obtain funds, manpower, and fear necessary to dominate the drug trade. Cartels use terror as an indispensable tool in an attempt to dominate one another in a never ending game of sadism. Mexico continues to suffer from horrific atrocities comparable to war-crimes and its population struggles to live amidst the tragedy playing out in the south of our border. As stated by Maria Elena Medina Mora, director of Mexico’s National Psychiatric Institute, “Mexico has seen a 30 percent increase on mental illnesses and the suicide rate and a tripling of the suicide rate following 2006” (Wells, “Mexico’s Drug Violence Takes Severe Psychological Toll”). Overlooking Mexico as just a country south of Texas, there is so much more going on in the Mexican’s daily aspect of life. Mexico has seen worrying signs that the Nation’s youth is being psychologically affected by the brutality. Parents in both Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana have said their elementary students are captivated by the organized crimes as seen in the surrounding community and TV. “Rather than playing cops and robbers, children are inventing kidnaping games and forming playground gangs named after vigorous cartel names, idolizing their power” (Reuters, “Poor Mexico kids dream of drug lords, hit men”). For example a fifteen year old in Tijuana murdered three of his nephews and his sister-in-law to prove his cartel worthiness. As regards to the Mexicans who have fled to the US because of the drug war are facing difficulty to express their feeling of traumatic experiences. Many American school counselors have trouble in rendering psychological assistance to the students that have fled the conflict. One counselor from El Paso stated her complication when assisting with Mexican students with PTSD: “I have students whose mother have been decapitated. I have a student in one of my middle schools… when he visited his family in Juarez there were three heads on sticks along the path where he goes” (Ortiz-Uribe, Mexican Students Cope With Trauma of Drug War”). Such difficulties highlight an unpreparedness amongst school officials to help deal with students with severe trauma. A poor early adult (age 16) named Frijol has seen a brighter aspect toward the gang life. Having parents that work long hours, virtually non-existent to his life for piss poor pay does not cut it for him. With Frijol being one