"In all those lawless places I went I notice one thing: If you upset the poor locals, the revenge is stealing. To go to far from the beaten path where the presence of the government is not felt, you need to be versed in what I call “the law of the land”.
The lawlessness is absence of the rule of the law, but there’s the “law of the land”. You break the “law of the land” you get punished. The punishment is the ‘revenge’, which is stealing something from you or actually pushing you outright out of your land. Or they send a couple guys to give you the message."
The Swiss family had one adult man, one adult woman, and two children, I think they were trying to tread pretty lightly, and I get the impression they were easy pickings.. revenge can be metted out to someone who looks like someone else who you believe caused you pain.. (your skin is dark/light, your eyes look different) it's pretty fashionable globally. The people who drive them from their house were all armed, guns usually cost some money, so they were clearly wealthy enough to be well armed (which can lead to greater wealth). In regards to Mexico, the two cases I know well where property was expropriated was done by the wealthy and powerful to someone less wealthy and powerful. They of course didn't do the work themselves but hired someone else. I will describe the offences my grandmother's boyfriend committed in Mexico that caused 8 armed men to show up at his house and sign over his property at gun point. He wrote an article in a trade journal that basically said Mexico's harvest of trees was not environmentally sound. Granted this was in the 1940s. In his case it took quite a bit of doing (and mostly regime change) to get back into the tolerable graces of the Caudillo's. The second person owned an import/export business, his offence was not sell land at what he considered a low price in a place that is now known as Cancun. He was told, after being contacted twice about the land that their was a problem with license and they were looking into back taxes. He got the hint. He sold the land and magically his license problem went away. 6 months later the development of Cancun was announced.
I could you more modern tales of Mexico but non of it deals with revenge towards individual actions. |
