MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson 53

a young Mexican male back home. At the local quick-mart the

cigar box has $1 and $5 bills piled inside, with handwritten notes

appealing for cash. I note that there is rarely more than $30 at any

one time.

Besides the stabbings, the drunk-driving arrests and the risk

of driving at high speed on the interstate without more than a

few days of automobile experience, there is, of course, the plague

of alcohol. Latinos die from cirrhosis of the liver at a rate higher

than any other ethnic group, and twice the rate of whites. The rates

of gonorrhea, herpes, chlamydia and venereal warts are epidemic

in the immigrant population of young adult males�"and rarely

discussed. HIV infection is also generally recorded at twice the

percentage found in the native white population. Our social health

industry�"which daily publishes a myriad of details about farm

workers’ mental health problems, the pathologies of a newly

acquired diet of fatty processed food, and the lack of good dental

care�"ignores the fact that hundreds of thousands of young Mexi-

cans suffer from an array of venereal diseases. I have seen workers

plagued for days by painful urination from recurring venereal

infection, resistant to one-time and often improperly administered

prescriptions of antibiotics.

Others only haphazardly take medication for tuberculosis, a

disease that is thirteen times more likely to be found in Hispan-

ics than in whites. Not long ago, Hernando, who used to come

by to borrow money, peddle illegal fireworks and look for scrap

iron, said his �ślittle” cough was now �śthree years old,” and swore

the medicine was worse than the disease�"and thus to be avoided

at all costs. I apologized for not wanting to talk closely with him

and holding my breath as he went on and on. Nineteenth-century

ailments that are rare among citizens of rural California�"adult

whooping cough, hepatitis, even tetanus�"are not so rare among

illegal immigrants, who enter without the health checks normally

demanded of immigrants a century ago. Thousands of young men

and women are leaving some of the most treacherous and disease-