South Texas

I spent the month of June in Laredo, TX as a part of my MPH practicum. This public health rotation was an extremely interesting experience. Not everyday do you get to a chance to get so close to / in the Rio Grande River.

We visited colonias (shantytowns set up by unscrupulous developers to take advantage of the poor) and conducted various forms of fieldwork (mosquito catching, water sampling, air quality sampling, etc). From these short four weeks, we gained a lot of useful perspective on the hot-topic issues of immigration, border security and border health. One of the families we visited barely got running water and sewer hooked up a few months ago; they've been living there for over two decades already.

Never take things for granted. Running water, flushing toilets, air conditioning, garbage pickup, safety. You really don't notice these things until they're gone. In the United States of America, there are American citizens who are living without any of these basic needs.

On the other hand, the US-Mexico border is really scary. With regards to infectious disease (think TB) and to a larger extent, drug violence.  There isn't an easy solution.  The cartels have too much power in Mexico, too much money, too many guns. How do you clean up corruption, when people's lives are being threatened? If you were offered a handsome bribe and to refuse is to be kidnapped & burned alive or worse - your family would be kidnapped and chopped to pieces, wouldn't you take the money? I would. I ain't seen nothin'.

Give me a few decades' time and I'll come up with a more realistic idea, but maybe we should develop something to put into the water to break people's addiction to illicit drugs. No demand -> no profit -> no money to be made. Thoughts?