[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 54 (Tuesday, May 5, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H2776]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CINCO DE MAYO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, today is Cinco de Mayo, the 5th of May, which 
is celebrated throughout the Americas. It is a day of celebration for 
those who have their roots and heart in Mexico. It is a special day in 
history for Mexican and Mexican-Americans because, on the 5th of May in 
1862, a very small, poorly armed band of Mexicans defeated, in an 
unbalanced contest, their colonial oppressors; as history records, too, 
that just several years after defeating their oppressors, that Mexican 
independence was lost and there was oppression in the country.

                              {time}  1830

  That is the day we celebrate today.
  I come before the House tonight, and I have come many times to talk 
about the situation in our country relating to illegal narcotics. And I 
wish I could come here and celebrate the Cinco de Mayo with other 
Mexican Americans and supporters of Mexico but, in fact, I am not here 
to praise Mexico but to condemn Mexico on this occasion.
  In fact, today, Mexico is a source of 50 percent of the hard 
narcotics entering the United States of America. Not only are these 
drugs entering the United States, but they are also corrupting the 
Mexico that these Mexican individuals fought on the 5th of May in 1862 
to free their country and their people. Drugs are oppressing Mexico and 
they are destroying the United States of America.
  We have tried to work with Mexico. I serve on the Committee on 
National Security of the Congress that deals with our national drug 
policy. We did not decertify Mexico last year or this year, and we 
should have. And I have sponsored resolutions and supported them in 
both instances, but they have not passed, for whatever reasons. But we 
should have decertified Mexico.
  Mexico, to date, has not extradited one drug felon or one drug 
offender to the United States. And one reason they were not decertified 
was because we sought their cooperation in these areas such as 
extradition.
  Mexico, to date, has, in fact, refused to allow our agents to arm 
themselves. Mexico, in fact, has not signed a maritime agreement. And 
the only other country is Haiti, and they have not done that because 
they have not organized their government. But Mexico is the only 
country I know of in the Western Hemisphere to not sign a maritime 
agreement. And the list goes on and on of failure to cooperate.
  So we are not celebrating a happy Cinco de Mayo here in Congress. I 
am not. I am concerned that, again, that Mexicans who fought for 
freedom, for independence, for the right of the people to live in an 
open society and a free society are being oppressed because of drug 
trafficking within the country of Mexico and the drugs that have come 
into the United States.
  If my colleagues do not think it is a problem, 50 percent of those 
hard drugs coming into the United States have put 2 million Americans 
behind bars. We have 20,000 deaths in the United States that are drug 
related. The cost to the American taxpayer is now $16 billion. And we 
can lay at the doorstep of the Mexican Government the responsibility 
for so many of these illegal narcotics coming into the United States.
  It is a sad commentary that our neighbors, in fact, are sending 
chemical weapons into the United States and chemical destruction, which 
is also destroying that country and its freedom that was fought for by 
these heroes on May 5th of 1862.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that I can come a year from now, on May 5th, 
1999, and say that indeed the Mexicans have cooperated as neighbors, as 
friends in this hemisphere to gain their own people's freedom from the 
drug trafficking, from corruption and from the depression that it has 
brought to their society, and also free our country from the 
oppression, from the deaths that it has caused and from the drugs that 
are on our streets, in our schools, and in our communities.

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