The Guadalajara Reporter

Security requires stubborn optimism, wise compromise and persistence, plus both ingenuity and imagination

This busy past week at Lake Chapala offered numerous proposals to help tackle currently-noted local dilemmas, meaning, the well-attended public security meeting at Ajijic’s Hotel Real December 7, and the community-centered conversation it has stimulated. Hopefully, the most effective, not merely the most dramatic, of these proposals can become permanent community-wide behavior and thought.

Some suggestions – often by implication – shed light on thoughtful far-reaching concepts requiring long-term commitments to effectively attain significant remedies. Several of these already are being addressed by individuals or small, quietly productive groups.

Foreign visitors and, especially, full-time residents in Mexico must keep in mind not only the trieñio changes in local government, but the longer term of the state governor, as well as the rapid turnover of all officials, especially at the local level. As one security meeting participant noted, it was too bad that the Chapala Ministerio Publico was not represented. That frequently over-worked office is a lynch-pin in prosecuting malefactors of every type. It can become – as switches in personnel occur – either a god-send to those whose rights are being violated under Mexican law, or a place of torment and abuse, a home of timidity and corruption. (Foreigners should be acquainted with this condition, for the local, state and federal governments often tend to nourish such failings.)

This means if you want a semi-sanely administered municipality, you can’t have merely a short spate of vigorous meetings, and once things seem to have improved, stop paying attention to what federal, state and local government is up to. It is true that one can have the most influence – at least sometimes – locally. But, actually, if a large number of like-minded people decide on a common community-nourishing goal and then begin pushing it hard at the state level you can gain some traction. But this implies a knowledge of Spanish and of how Mexico and Mexican government works – or doesn’t work, depending on one’s point of view.

It takes patience, persistence and stubborn optimism. And in creating a common view of somewhat like-mind people, a keen sense of reasonable compromise – a trait that seems unpopular now.

It’s most rewarding to know what your short-term goals are, and what the longer – often more difficult to achieve – goals need to be.

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