It’s surprising that the Los Angeles Times had an article critical of Mexican culture on its front page, and it actually reports on the shocking incidence of mob violence performing extra-judicial executions. Usually the paper fawns over all things Mexican, but it must find the long history and common occurrence of crowd lynchings to be disturbing enough to report. There is even a word for it — linchamiento.

Here is the Times’ front-page story on Sunday about two men killed by a mob incensed by the rumor that the two were child kidnappers.

It was a familiar sounding crime story to me, since I read and reviewed the book True Tales from Another Mexico by Sam Quinones. The review appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of The Social Contract. Here’s a snip:

. . . some of the stories are shocking to the core. The tale of how two unlucky traveling salesmen came to be lynched by the town of Huejutla reads like pitchfork justice from the Dark Ages. When the men had chased off a group of children from their truckload of merchandise, one of the salesmen grabbed a young girl and remarked how he would come back in a few years and kidnap her, a crude remark one that was not beyond the social norms of rural Mexico. But because there was a rumor going around that a group of organ-snatching child kidnappers was in the area, the children’s fearful complaints landed the men in jail. The people of the Huasteca region are known for credulously believing the most unlikely tales of crime, which is not surprising. Like many in the Mexican countryside, the villagers of Huejutla are poorly educated and their minds are filled with superstition. Even the diversity-loving BBC has called Mexico “a deeply superstitious society.” . . . The author, journalist Sam Quinones, notes in passing that lynching is not an unusual occurrence in Mexico; in fact, he reveals that his file of clippings on lynchings from 1994 until 2000 is three inches thick. The state of Morelos, south of Mexico City, has a particular penchant for community executions. In 1994, four men accused of robbery were “shot, stabbed, kicked, hacked, beaten, stoned, and finally burned.” In a Veracruz village, a man suspected of rape and murder was given an extra-legal trial followed by his being tied to a tree, doused with gasoline and burned to death as the event was videotaped.

The LA Times story suggests that social media has worsened the incidence of community lynching — perhaps, but the important admission is “Mob attacks are nothing new in Mexico.”

Apparently Mexican culture is still mired in the same old violence, since “At least 25 people have been slain by mobs in Mexico this year,” according to the paper.

Mexico is the Third World at its violent worst — yet another reason to Build The Wall.