Hey, Anderson Cooper -- Stop Stoking Racist Fears About Mexican Drug Cartels Invading U.S. Cities

On March 25, CNN's Anderson Cooper 360° rolled into El Paso to report on Mexican drug-cartel violence. Cooper was one more in a recent wave of national news heavy hitters to parachute in, scare the pants off millions of viewers, then jet off to the next headline destination.

Dressed in military green, Cooper furrowed his brow and squinted solemnly into the camera as the lights of the international border checkpoint glimmered behind him. Guest Fred Burton, identified as a terrorism and security expert with Stratfor Global Intelligence, was beamed in from a studio in Austin to paint a menacing picture of Mexican cartels invading U.S. city streets. "It's just a matter of time before it really spills over into the United States unless we shore up the border as best we can," Burton warned.

By God, they're coming to your neighborhood! Looking at another live feed from El Paso, listening to the breathless reports of violence and "expert" analysis about "spillover," viewers could only assume that the city in which Cooper stood was under imminent assault.

That's the reality these days for El Pasoans. Or rather, it's the twisted perception created by border-warrior politicians and national news media, and foisted on Juarez's relatively peaceful sister city. For El Pasoans and residents of nearby border towns, it might all be a mere oddity -- maybe even worth a chuckle -- if it didn't mean the construction of 18-foot border walls, blustery talk about National Guard troop surges, and new resources for the disastrous war on drugs. While "troop surge," "border wall," and "drug war" might sound irresistibly sexy to politicians and pundits, it's border residents who have to live with the fences and tanks and consequences.

The truth differs wildly from the perception. Certainly, El Paso's symbiotic relationship with Juarez has been disrupted by the explosion of drug violence south of the border, which began to tick up in January 2008. But it's not the kind of disruption brought to you by CNN, Fox, and the rest of the media pack.

The real impact of the ongoing tragedy in Juarez is felt by El Pasoans in more indirect and personal ways. While the brutality across the river has not caused a wave of kidnappings and murders in El Paso, folks do feel its effects every day. Families are divided. El Pasoans can no longer visit their friends, relatives, doctors or dentists in Juarez. Businesses on both sides suffer. The stories are legion: The high-school student who can't visit her beloved, 105-year-old grandmother because her parents don't want to risk her safety. The young Juarez woman who worries that her El Paso friends and relatives won't be able to attend her wedding. And the many families mourning loved ones lost on the other side of the Rio Grande.

All too often the nightly news portrays Juarez and El Paso as one and the same, with the U.S. city symbolizing the perils of that new buzzword: spillover. Night after night, TV spin-meisters, retired generals, terror analysts and politicians rage on about spillover violence. They call Mexico a "failed state" and argue for militarizing the border. No wonder Americans are scared. No wonder El Pasoans feel doubly besieged.

Consider this gem from former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, now a consultant for ABC News, commenting on Juarez: "There is in fact an insurgency on both sides of the American-Mexican border, and it's stepped up a lot in the last several years because the Bush administration ignored it and put its focus on Iraq."

After weeks of hearing the war drums beat louder and louder, Sito Negron, editor of El Paso's online daily news journal, Newspaper Tree, recently decided he'd had enough. An insurgency on both sides? he thought, listening to Clarke's prime-time pronouncement. Are you kidding me?