MITTNATCH VS. QUILANTAN: A STUDY IN CONSULATE CONTRASTS

By Juan Montoya
Last week, organizers in Matamoros held a march protesting the rampant violence and the acts of organized criminal groups who act with seeming impunity.
That followed the kidnapping and ransom of a local engineer and businessman Fernando Lugo Nieto and an unidentified fellow worker on contract with the FINSA group in Matamoros.
Lugo and his companion were abducted at gunpoint and whisked away by armed men and held for a $50,000 in Mexican pesos ransom since early week. The ransom was dutifully paid, but then the kidnappers then demanded that the price had gone up to $1 million pesos.
A few days later their bodies were found floating in a sewage canal along La Avenida de los Niños in Matamoros with gunshot wounds to the head. In one fell swoop, years of study and dedication to honest work were wiped out by armed thugs who hold the lives of the local populace at their whim.
Among those marching with the estimated 1,500 concerned residents of Matamoros was U.S. General Consul Thomas Mittnacht. He told media representatives that he had attended the march in support of the residents' call for peace and an end to the violence. He only hoped, he said, that something positive would result for the citizens' involvement.
Now, some may be critical of Mittnatch for getting involved in a purely internal and local issue, but showing solidarity with those desiring peace and an end to violence can't really be all bad. In fact, it's refreshing
On the other side of the Rio Grande, in Brownsville, with Border Patrol temporary shelters filled to overflowing with a torrent of unaccompanied minors primarily from Central Americans, Mexican Consul
Rodolfo Quilantan Arenas decided to issue pamphlets at the consulate office at the Old Amigoland Mall discouraging minors from Central American from trying to reach the United States.
Since he is the United States, it is difficult to see how these warnings will reach the children and women in El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala contemplating the hazardous trek north. The tract advises potential immigrants not to believe the promises coyotes and human smugglers make to lure them to undertake the trip.
The deferred action rule only benefits those Central American minors who entered the country illegally before 2007, the pamphlet states.
We doubt that the unaccompanied minors and their mothers from Central America will swing by the Mexican consulate on their way up north to get a copy of the pamphlet to discourage them from reaching the United States.
We're sure that our intrepid Mexican consul has the best intentions in mind in publishing the pamphlets and having local media publicize his efforts. You've got to at least make it appear that they are doing something meaningful in face of the current immigration crisis. But how does passing these leaflets in Brownsville reach the Central Americans? If they come across them that means that they are already here, doesn't it?