Murder of Mormon family in Mexico offers no easy answers, only questions
SAN DIEGO -- There is a familiar stench coming from south of the border. It's the smell of lies and spin, cover-ups and fairy tales offered up for public consumption.
Brace yourselves. I think the Mexican government is not being totally honest. Shocking, right?
You know that horrible story from a week ago about the brutal slaughter of nine members of a family of Mormon fundamentalists in Northern Mexico?
Well, I've made my way through the three stages of shock -- first sadness, then rage, and finally curiosity. I'm stuck on No. 3.
The more I look at this story, the more it stinks. We still don't know why three women and six children (including babies) were, on the afternoon of Nov. 4, shot and killed as their caravan of vehicles was snaking along a country road in the dangerous drug corridor that connects the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua. We know a little about the barbarism of the attack from the eyewitness accounts of six other children who were wounded but survived thanks to 13-year-old Devin Langford, who hid the others behind some bushes and then walked nearly 15 miles to get help.
U.S. media outlets love the story of the boy hero, and they can't stop telling it.
I don't blame the media. It's a powerful story. Still, I wish they could find a little time to also dig into the motive for the killings and explain to us all why this atrocity happened in the first place.
For that, we may have to rely on the Mexican press, which is currently working to flesh out the details.
What the children have to say about the deliberateness of the violence suggests that these were targeted executions, and not -- as the Mexican authorities first suggested -- a case of mistaken identity where the killers mistook the family caravan for a rival drug cartel. It seems very likely that the gunmen knew full well that they were killing women and children, and that the family was targeted. It's also likely the attack was meant to send a message: Get out.
According to media reports, the LeBarons are part of a wealthy and powerful community of about 5,000 Mormon expatriates who own large parcels of land, dabble in politics and hold both U.S. and Mexican citizenship. By many accounts, in Mexico, these people had operated with a brazenness that got them banned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is based in Salt Lake City. There are allegations that the LeBarons practiced polygamy, which didn't go over any better with Mexican officials than it did with the mainstream Mormon community in the United States.
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