Congress keeps putting band-aids on the problem while human beings perish along la frontera.

A woman died Friday as she crossed the desert near Sells with four men, according to a Border Patrol official.

The group had entered the United States illegally from Mexico, with the help of a human smuggler who abandoned them after the woman became ill, said Rob Daniels, a Border Patrol spokesman.

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The solution is not to increase military presence, or build Berlin Wall-style fortifications; it is to take a hard look at the economic destabilization that has been caused directly by U.S. policy.

It’s getting so bad that the Mexican tequila industry is shrinking to make way for corn to produce ethanol to feed the U.S. Beast.  Tip of the sombrero to Cookie Jill at skippy for this nugget of news:

mexican farmers are burning fields of blue agave, the cactus-like plant used to make tequila, and resowing the land with corn as soaring u.s. ethanol demand pushes up prices.  the switch to corn will contribute to an expected scarcity of agave in coming years, with officials predicting that farmers will plant between 25% and 35% less agave this year to turn the land over to corn

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The price of corn is also affecting the bedrock of Latin American comida – tortillas

Corn tortillas, the chief source of calories for 50 million of Mexico’s poorest people, doubled in price last year mainly because our nation’s farmers are converting their crops from food to energy production.

For years, Mexico depended heavily on U.S. grown corn for tortillas. With more than 100 ethanol plants in the United States and a number of new ones expected to come on line in the near future, the price hike is spawning a new call for that nation to free itself from its American corn dependency. Easier said than done, because Mexican farmers look at the price they can fetch for corn to be used in fuel production and want a piece of the ethanol action.

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As the Senate begins final work on an immigration “compromise”, the debate will be full of squabbling for increased border security, more prevalent workplace raids; and how long and how much immigrants will need to suffer before they come out of the shadows of U.S. American Society.

What will be missing is the key question:  why the mass migration?

The answer lies somewhere between the fields of maize and the pocketbooks of the global elite – with the price being paid in human blood.

Crossposted from Latino Político