The Reason Greg Abbott Should Take Back his ‘Third World’ Remark

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

Any smart politician worth their weight in political advise would take back what Greg Abbott said about South Texas. Abbott is the Texas Attorney General and GOP candidate for Governor, and what he said has been haunting him since he said it. In a visit to heavily Mexican-American deep South Texas he compared criminal activities along the U.S.-Mexico border to a “third world country.”

PolitiFact Texas did a good job of reporting on the context:

Abbott referred to law enforcement misdeeds in two border counties, saying: “Increasingly, we are seeing corruption among local, state and federal law enforcement officers themselves.

“A former Starr County sheriff’s deputy was sentenced last year for accepting bribes to protect drug dealers and their smuggling routes,” Abbott said. “Members of a drug enforcement task force and other law enforcement agents in Hidalgo County are awaiting sentencing for money laundering and drug smuggling. A former state district judge was convicted for accepting money in return for favorable rulings in a public corruption investigation that included a former district attorney and a former state representative.

“This creeping corruption resembles third-world country practices that erode the social fabric of our communities and destroys Texans’ trust and confidence in government.”

Context notwithstanding, 20/20 hindsight in focus, it was a bonehead remark – not because of what he said, or how he said it, it was a bonehead remark because of where he said it and to whom he said it. It’s emblematic of his party peers’ attitude toward Latinos in general: they don’t bother to know or understand that segment of their constituency, rather, they lament the fact that Latinos are not more like them, and propose measures to “help” Latinos change. It’s a residue from the Reagan adage “Hispanics are Republicans, they just don’t know it.”

South Texas Latinos were quick to smell the condescension. They called him on it, and the candidate for Governor dug-in his heels. This was posted on his official website:

“My comments about ‘corruption resembling third-world country practices’ are as true today as when I said them last week. My goal is to make them untrue tomorrow… It does not matter where public corruption occurs in Texas; it must be stopped. Texans deserve better, no matter their ZIP code.”

So if corruption and criminal activity don’t discriminate between zip codes, it follows that it exists in the Town of Westlake, Texas – home of the Jonas Brothers, Mark Teixiera, and a gaggle of CEO’s. Would Abbott have used the third world comparison in that Dallas Suburb?

That’s the context that infuriated the folks in the part of South Texas known as the Rio Grande Valley (RGV to those in the know).

The thing is that Abbott and his cronies don’t see that context. It’s entirely possible that they don’t understand what was wrong about the third world comment, and they cover that lack of understanding with a layer of indignation – if we were more like him we’d understand . The problem for Abbott is that Latino voters matter in Texas because you can’t win a state-wide election without a significant percentage of the Latino vote (this assertion is double-edged because, how can Texas Latinos explain Rick Perry?).

Still, he’s not going to take the remark back, and it’s going to hang over him whenever he address Latino voters. No matter what he says, Latinos will see him as the guy who thinks they’re third world.

He should take it back, but he doesn’t understand why. And that’s the context that Latino voters will use.