Mexican army convoys and a navy ship laden with food, supplies and specialists traveled to the U.S. Wednesday to help in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort - a highly symbolic journey marking the first time Mexico's military has aided its powerful northern neighbor.
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Radio talk shows and newspapers in Mexico buzzed with excitement over news that this country, long on the receiving end of U.S. disaster relief, was sending a hurricane aid convoy north.
The convoy represents the first Mexican military unit to operate on U.S. soil since 1846, when Mexican troops briefly marched into Texas, which had separated from Mexico and joined the United States.
It included military specialists, doctors, nurses and engineers carrying water treatment plants, mobile kitchens, food and blankets.
"This is just an act of solidarity between two peoples who are brothers," said Fox's spokesman, Ruben Aguilar.
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The convoy has "a very high symbolic content," said Javier Oliva, a political scientist at Mexico's National Autonomous University. "This is a very sensitive subject, for historic and political reasons."
I dunno. The spirit of the gesture is certainly appreciated. But as much as Americans point at their own poverty-stricken citizens, by Mexican standards they would be middle-class. There are plenty of Mexican citizens living in real poverty, grinding poverty throughout their entire lives, with no hope for infrastructure recovery.
When a significant portion of your citizens literally dream about sneaking across the border in the back of a truck, risking a miserable death in suffocating heat, just to make five bucks an hour picking lettuce for self-absorbed Hummer-driving Americanos, there may be more pressing problems at home. I understand their need to feel like they're helping, but personally I'd feel better about it if they devoted that attention to their own poor people.
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