nough. I shall go deep into the Okefenokee Swamp, dwell in a hut of clay and wattles made, and live on crocodile meat and watermelons. The modern world is too much for me.I have just read ¡Adios, America
! by Ann Coulter, and discovered that Mexico, my current home, is a suppurating moral sore where men of fifty can legally screw little girls of twelve. Yes. It is perfectly legal. I know this is true because Miss Coulter says it is true. All a drooling pervert has to do is sweet-talk the child.“Hey, leetle girl, want an ice-cream cone? I geeve you a nice toy eef you let me….”I am grateful to Miss Ann for the information. I have lived thirteen years in Mexico without encountering this astonishment. The Mexicans have not heard of it either. Mexican attorneys are unaware of it. The penal codes are barren of it. She in lone splendor knows of this officially sanctioned child-molestation..
Specifically she says that the age of sexual consent in Mexico is “12 in all but one Mexican state and 14 in the other.”
Twelve? My god, that’s barbaric. This is certainly what Miss Ann is peddling as the nature of Mexico and Mexicans. Of course all manner of gullible websites picked this up. Mexico, we are to believe, is now a freefire zone for doing children. Why, it’s legal.
But is it true?
Let us look at the actual law. In the newspaper business of earlier times, this was called “research” or “reporting,” and was thought to be good form in writing for publication.
Penal Code of the State of Jalisco Artículo 142-M.
“A quien tenga cópula o cópula equiparada, con una persona menor de edad o en una persona que no tenga la capacidad de comprender el significado de las cosas o de resistir el hecho, se le impondrá una pena de:”
“On one who copulates or the equivalent of copulation (“cópula equiparada”means penetration with anything other than a penis) with a person of minor age or who does not have the capacity to understand the significance of the act or to resist the act, will be imposed a penalty of:”
“1 Tres meses a cinco años de prisión, cuando la víctima tenga entre quince y menos de dieciocho años de edad y el acto se realice con su consentimiento por medio de la seducción, la cual se presume salvo prueba en contrario, o por medio del engaño;”
“1 Three months to five years of prison, when the victim is between fifteen and eighteen years of age and the act is realized with his or her consent by means of seduction, which shall be presumed unless there is proof to the contrary, or by means of deception”
“2 Ocho a quince años de prisión, cuando la víctima tenga entre quince y menos de dieciocho años de edad y el acto se realice sin su consentimiento, o cuando sea una persona que no tenga la capacidad de comprender el significado de las cosas o de resistir el hecho;”
2 Eight to fifteen years of prison when the victim is between fifteen and eighteen and the act is realized without his or her consent, or when the victim lacks the capacity to understand the significance or to resist. ”
3 Doce a veinte años de prisión, cuando la víctima sea menor de quince años de edad.”
Twelve to twenty years of prison when the victim is less than fifteen.
Maybe that sounds to you like license to screw little girls of twelve. To me it sounds like a long time in a Mexican jail. I do not recommend confusing the two.
The foregoing is the law in Jalisco, where I live. Similar laws exist in the other states. At risk of boring the reader, I offer another example from a randomly selected state: .
For the state of Campeche:
“Artículo 164 Comete el delito de estupro el que realice cópula con el consentimiento de persona mayor de catorce y menor de dieciocho años, independientemente de su sexo. Al que cometa el delito de estupro se le impondrán de seis meses a tres años de prisión y multa de doscientos a cuatrocientos días de salario.”
“Article 164: He commits statutory rape who copulates, with consent, with a person of more than fourteen years of age but less than eighteen, regardless of the person’s sex. A punishment of six months to three years of prison will be imposed on the perpetrator and a fine of four hundred days of salary.”
The age at which a young female can legally engage in sex with any consenting adult without restriction is…eighteen.
Now, Miss Ann could have discovered this in ten minutes on Google. (In fairness, though, it may be that internet service hasn’t reached New York.) Why didn’t she? The penal codes for all of Mexico are easily found here. Is she deliberately deceiving the reader (translated from the prissy journalese, this means “lying”) or is she so ideologically inflamed as to accept without checking anything derogatory about anything she doesn’t like? Actual malice? Reckless disregard for truth? Incompetence? Or just Miss Ann?
She is fiercely opposed to immigration from the Third World, which is reasonable. Yet it seems to me that she should stay within telemetry range of truth. Her book would be useful if she had done so. Instead it is a sustained partisan shriek, often lapsing into the silly.
For example, the subtitle is “The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole.” I picture myself talking to my good left-liberal friend Diana:
Me: “Hey, Di, are you planning to make America into a third-world hellhole?”
Di: “Why, yes, Fred! I’m on the disease-importation committee.”
Come on, Ann. Grow up. This isn’t journalism. If it were any more slanted it would be vertical. Unsupported charges of encouraging pedophilia wouldn’t get past a desk editor at the Weekly Reader.
If she is so sloppy in her research–the most charitable explanation–regarding things I know about, how am I to accept her word on things I can’t check? And this stuff isn’t appreciated by Mexicans since it encourages every pervert north of Laredo to come down to prey on their children.
As so often happens when I read of Mexico in the American press, I see little resemblance to the country I live in. She tells with satisfied dudgeon of the inherent filthiness of Mexicans, who strew trash everywhere. Dirty diapers, plastic bags, used condoms, garbage. Really?
In the last few months, thanks to a major road trip, I have been in Guadalajara, Arandas, Aguas Calienties, Leon, Durango, Rosario, Mazatlan, Ls Paz, Cabo San Lucas, Jamai, San Pedro Itzican, and Loreto, among others. None was strewn with trash. My neighborhood is not strewn with trash.
I found myself wondering: has this tow-headed dragon even been to Mexico? Latin America? The book looks to be a protracted Google search. In her pronouncements about Third World hell-holes, she sounds like the sort of pampered geographic virgin who would go to Cornell—actually, she did go to Cornell—and derives her knowledge of Latin America from having eaten at Taco Bell.
Hell holes exist in the Third World, whatever precisely that is: much of the Moslem world, probably all of black Africa, India, Gaza—but aside from Belize, maybe Nicaragua, and Guatemala, there probably isn’t one below the Rio Bravo (I have never been to Nicaragua or Venezuela.)
Miss Ann is herself a curious piece of work. She is in her mid-fifties, but on her book jackets looks like a hot babe of twenty-two. Achieving this must require enough makeup to fill a peanut-butter sandwich, and I suspect that she has worked a couple of copies of Photoshop into smoking ruins. Do we have here a narcissistic attention-freak? A reporter might be a better idea.
¡Adios America! energetically favors ending immigration to America, a good idea which will not be adopted, but her unending railing against the Left ensures that the book will be read only by people who already agree with it. How bright is that?
Enough of hellholeagenesis. I am off to the Okefenokee, to live peacefully among water moccasins and weird-looking birds.