how close to the Mexican border is to close?

A late 1950s Ford Edsel. A car so far ahead of its time that 60 years later it's still just as ugly as the day it was made.

Trapped inside the Arctic Fox by yet another chilly, rainy  day here in Deming New Mexico, I grow weary of the cold wet weather but am nonetheless resigned to wait it out till it's supposed to get back to normal on Saturday.

I just saw on the Internet today that Pres. Trump is going to declare the Mexican drug cartels terrorist organizations. If that happens there could be a lot of serious ramifications both good and bad. But just looking at it from an RVers point of view, and wondering how, if at all, it would affect RVers particularly boondocker's like myself, I'm thinking back to what the terrorists we've been fighting, such as Al Qaeda and Isis, sometimes do, and it occurred to me that they often take hostages to either gain a bargaining advantage, sell back to their country of origin for large amounts of money, or to use as human shields.

Since the drug cartels have always used terrorism as a way to control the local government leaders and population, it seems to me that if they get squeezed enough, taking hostages, especially American hostages, may give them a lot of advantages. I know there's quite a few Americans living in Mexico, and at the moment I'm glad I'm not one of them.

But getting back to RVers, there's a lot of RVers such as myself that enjoy boondocking in places that aren't very far from the Mexican border, and some of those places for quite some time have had signs up warning Americans of cartel activity in the area, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument near Ajo Arizona comes to mind, and I'm sure there are others.

Now I don't know if kidnapping Americans will ever become a "thing" or not, but I'm heading for southern Arizona when I leave here, and I often boondock, as do a lot of other folks in the winter, within a few miles of the largely unguarded Mexican border. The situation as it stands is not enough to get me worried just yet, I'm doing more wondering than worrying, but I am going to pay closer attention to what's going on with this new "terrorism designation"  thing.

They say, among other things, it will allow the American government to legally confiscate cartel money anywhere in the world, and if that starts happening what better way for the cartels to get their money back than to sell the American government a few hundred RVer hostages.

                        theboondork

This sturdy looking building used to be the town bank, right downtown on Main Street. But now it's been repurposed into a restaurant. The building seems far too dignified to be a restaurant, but it continues to stand stoically against the indignity.

An old out of business garage on Main Street. Unfortunately there's a lot of folks out of business in Deming.