Dear Sir,
I am writing to you as a follow up to the letter from Richard Johnson (GR February 8-15) about the treatment of pets at the Guadalajara Airport.
When we arrived recently at the airport, our cat had also been in transit for 12-13 hours, had not had anything to eat or drink and was unable to evacuate. We had our health certificate with us but officers found a minor problem with a missing Mexican address and my husband’s incomplete name on one of the documents.
When we finally entered the “examination” room, I asked the official there if he was a veterinarian and he replied that he was. He proceeded to spray the carrier and threw out a blanket. He then took hold of our cat roughly and jammed a thermometer up her rectum, at which, of course, she screamed. This happened five times, and he held the thermometer in place for a good 3 to 4 minutes. I have never had a vet keep it in for more than 30 to 60 seconds. He continued to treat her very roughly, flipping her over several times during the rest of the examination.
In my 40-plus years of owning 15 cats and dogs, I have never seen such rough treatment as this veterinarian subjected my cat to. The whole process took over an hour. I came out of the room in tears.
Why in the world would someone become a vet if they don’t have respect and compassion for animals? He displayed no “bedside” manner whatsoever.
I totally agree with the opinion of Mr. Johnson and am outraged at the treatment our cat received.
If these procedures continue, I am sure more tourists will be turned away.
D. Knowles, Ajijic
Dear Sir,
On February 20, I was waiting at a green light to cross the Carrretera in La Floresta, when a dog that was trying to cross the road was hit by a car. Screaming, the dog got up and tried to limp across the road when another car hit the dog again.
The dog still managed to limp in agony across the road into La Floresta, where it disappeared. I looked for it for half an hour with no luck. It was probably hiding somewhere as it waited to die in great pain.
Neither driver bothered to stop although both knew they hit the dog. I guess they were too busy to take 15 minutes to pick up the dog and take it to one of the many vets nearby.
These drivers know who they are. They apparently don’t know how despicable their behavior was. Although there is no way for them to atone for their callousness, they might consider making a substantial donation to one of the many groups trying to help animals in the area. At least that might help sooth their conscience, assuming they have one.
John Marshall, Lakeside Friends of the Animals
Dear Sir,
The time has come to put a stop to the irresponsible members of our community who believe that they can drive a golf cart anywhere they want. These vehicles are designed for golf courses NOT roads. Consequently they do not have adequate braking, signaling, lighting, or safety systems for road usage. Yet this does not deter the increasing number of freeloaders cruising about the village in them. Are they really freeloading? Yes. They expect to use our roads for free yet pay no license fees, emission testing costs, or insurance coverage. To save themselves a few pesos they are quite prepared to put other road users at risk and ignore the rules of the road.
Would this be tolerated in Canada or the United States? Of course not. You would not travel half a block in a golf cart before the police stopped you. So why should we tolerate it here? We shouldn’t. Let’s start treating these people as the irresponsible leaches they are and voice our disapproval in no uncertain terms.
Geraldine Castle-Trudel
Dear Sir,
Thank you, Martin O’Connor, for saying (GR February 15-21) what we have long believed to be true about U.S. politics, and Allyn Hunt’s articles! Ever since I loyally voted for George W. Bush and ridiculed a close friend’s sour prediction that the U.S. was in danger of becoming a fascist state due to corporate funds swamping political campaigns, I’ve been afraid to say so. Martin’s Mussolini quote was news to me, but in view it was prescient in light of subsequent events. Fascism, or extreme rightism, was then and is now the merging of corporate power with government power, at the expense of the people. We even have Tom Perkins, a notable member of the Top 1 Percent (mostly corporate barons), saying that the more money you have, the more votes you should have!
On top of the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United that corporations have the right to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns, where else is the U.S. headed but down the road toward Mussolini’s corporate-fascist state? Leftism and rightism are opposite sides of the same coin – ways of thinking and sets of rules we either grew up with or fell into along the way that, like religion, help us make sense of things that otherwise don’t make sense. In other words our political beliefs give us ready-made answers that save us from nutting things out for ourselves while we devote our energies to more immediate daily concerns. Which doesn’t make either leftism or rightism the ultimate solution to anything.
The challenge, in my opinion, is to heed the lessons of history and avoid either “ism” leading us down the road to disaster, which is where Mussolini’s, Hitler’s, Tojo’s, Osama bin Ladin’s and all the other despots’ roads led to. In a less overtly violent sense, it’s the road the U.S. government is blindly heading down now. In the digital age, corporate-government merging is infinitely easier than in Mussolini’s time and as the NSA scandal shows, largely invisible.
Both major U.S. political parties swill at the same corporate money troughs, and Obama’s string of broken promises attest to the dismal conclusion that it doesn’t matter who’s in power – the corporations will get their way just as the insurance industry did in Obamacare. Some could argue that it’s always been this way, but I’m old enough to remember when it wasn’t so obvious – when we were idealistic enough to expect better from our politicians, and to see actual changes that we voted for come about. When we could actually feel that our government was “of the people, by the people and for the people” – something our grandchildren may never feel. Now that our generation has aged into relative impotence in America’s daily affairs, I’m glad I live in Mexico and won’t be around to actually feel the new fascism’s full effects.
Jim Dickinson, Tlachichilc