Since there is a New Mexico, there must be an old Mexico somewhere. I hear that the drug cartels are about as strong in the south as they are in the north near the border towns. Let’s pray that they are able to make it back in order to grow older. That way New Mexico will one day become Old Mexico.

The drug cartels are growing and becoming stronger. I have learned that they are becoming very strong in the Philippines. They are like a brush fire. When they were stamped out in Columbia, they spread all over the place. I wonder if our cousin Kenneth knows that his work in Columbia to stamp out the drug cartels only served to spread them far and wide.

True! I was just trying to describe my thinking after I arrived in the strange land known as New Mexico, the Enchanted Land, in August of 1965, which was my first trip outside the five-state region of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee. To my way of thinking then, New Mexico was viewed as a younger Mexico in comparison to the Mexico of the Conquistadors which lay South of the Border. Thanks to the new Immigration Law in Arizona, the border states are not the only states which are getting an influx of migrants. These migrants are beginning to pass through these border states and heading up the Interstate highway system to booming northwest Arkansas, Utah, Colorado, and other places. These migrants mean to complete the work of General Santa Ana and take back the country that they believe belongs to them. The Mexican War Number II has begun.

If my ancient Reform School education can be relied upon, New Mexico has been counted as one of the fifty states almost since the beginning of the twentieth century. It is the migrants who want to change that simple fact of history.