When my friend first used the term 'blood pot' it stunned me, weighing me down like a beast sitting on my chest, forcing me to see an uncomfortable truth.
I was grateful someone finally said what I'd been circling around and side-stepping for years: when we buy pot from Mexican traffickers we each of us are accomplices in Mexican murders, kidnappings, extortion and the silencing of justice.
'Blood pot' buys the death squads, the hangings, the prison-break-outs, the black trucks and fire-arms, the short fuses on the lives of young Mexicans whose horizons shorten with each passing decade, the boarded up schools and church of my grandmother's village.
'Blood pot' buys the black hats worn by bad guys everywhere, left and right of borders, on college campuses, on airport tarmacs, in warehouses in deserts and deep in city cement jungles.
'Blood pot' pays off police chiefs and judges, governors and municipal presidents and businesses from banks to restaurants on both sides of the border.
'Blood pot' needs to be screamed so loud that it echoes from San Antonio to Sinaloa, so no one can pretend anymore that they haven't been purchased, paid off and delivered, cheaper than dirt.
I'm grateful to learn a new term, a term that says in few words exactly who pays for the twisted, over-grown and profitable black market that is our drug economy.
I'm grateful too, for legalization efforts in Colorado and other states. Every ounce sold by legal sellers is one less sold by narco-traficantes at a human cost too high to calculate.
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