Mexico's sewage warfare

After decades of being a good neighbor and spending more than half a billion dollars to build Tijuana's sewage treatment plants, Mexico has repaid the favor by intentionally unleashing 143 million gallons of stench-filled sewage onto San Diego's beaches over 17 days in February. It's the biggest spill in two decades, the San Diego Union Tribune reported. San Diego officials say it was done without warning, was deliberately done, and still has garnered no response from Mexican officials who won't even take U.S. phone calls. Supposedly, the idea was to save millions in pumping costs by shipping it to the gringos up north. But it makes one wonder if it might just be sewage warfare, given Mexico's fury at President Trump's proposed border wall and Tijuana's bizarre silence. The mayor of nearby Imperial Beach calls it "the tsunami of sewage spills." KGTV reported that a binational investigation was announced Thursday.

It might just be window dressing. The act came just days after Mexican president Enrique Peña-Nieto canceled a Jan. 31 visit to the U.S., reportedly after an unfriendly telephone conversation with President Trump. The White House has denied it, but supposedly, Trump threatened to send in troops if the Mexicans could not get rid of its drug trafficking "bad hombres," the AP reported. More significant still, a former Mexican official, Jorge Castañeda, threatened to unleash Mexican cartels onto the U.S. to retaliate for deportations of illegal immigrants and the construction of a border wall. Castañeda is not a standing official and does not belong to the same PRI that is now the ruling party of Mexico, but he's very influential in Mexican power circles and no doubt knows the local sentiment at a minimum. He also could be "plausible deniability" for the Mexican government as he issues the threat, while getting Mexico's message across. "Clearly, they will play dirty," wrote ZeroHedge's Tyler Durden. It's significant, because this is a country that knows how to play poor man's warfare. Instead of unleashing nukes or hacking onto a hated rival, the Mexicans have always specialized in unleashing their least desirable people onto the U.S., like a pressure valve, either in accordance with their own domestic needs or as a stick to punish the U.S. with. Mexican officials have admitted as much in the past. The threat of releasing illegals has always been a tool for them. With those threats, and the sudden emergence of sewage warfare – and Mexican officials refusing to take U.S. officials' phone calls – it appears they may be expanding their range of poor man's weapons. It's tempting to snicker: so much for Tijuana officials' efforts to paint their city as a modern and responsible one, a haven for progress, as it now claims. It may look fairly modern, but its government is still the same old donkey show it's always been, this time with different donkeys, or asses, as the case may be. But Tijuana is no longer the ridiculous border town of lore. It is now one of Mexico's largest cities with more than a million people, and a city larger than San Diego. It would have influence among the solons of Mexico City as a power center. The investigation should go forward, but if it hits a dead end with no one taking responsibility, it will be pretty obvious that the sewage problem extends to Mexico's highest levels of power. If that is the case, sanctions of some kind are in order. Mexican officials cannot be permitted to fling poo at the U.S. from their enclosure like the frustrated apes of the San Diego Zoo.