MAGA Marge crossed the Mexican border for better healthcare. You can’t make this stuff up

I got a call Thursday morning from my old friend Pedro Timoteo Santiago Delacruz, owner and operator of Delacruz Family Border Concerns, Grievances, and Tamale Distribution Services of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Pedro was upset. This is not unusual. Pedro is a man who once filed a formal written complaint with the Pacific Ocean about the tides. But this time, I have to say, he had a point.

“Are you seeing this?” he said, before I had even said hello.

I told him I was seeing it.

“These Americans,” he said. “These Americans are coming over here and I am losing my mind.”

Pedro, for those unfamiliar, is a proud Mexican citizen, a taxpaying resident of Jalisco, and a man who has strong opinions about everything, which is why I call him whenever I need a column and am running short on ideas. He did not ask me to clarify which Americans specifically were bothering him this week. He just started talking. This is how Pedro operates.

“They come over here,” he said, “and they use our healthcare system. Our doctors. Our clinics. And then the prices go up for the hardworking Mexicans who just want to get their stem cells in peace. You know what I had to pay last month? I had to pay more. Why did I pay more? Americans. That is why I paid more.”

I asked him if he was specifically referring to former Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who traveled to Puerto Vallarta earlier this month to receive stem cell IV treatments at the Dream Body Clinic — treatments not approved by the FDA — while simultaneously not having health insurance despite a reported net worth of $22 million.

“I am referring to all of them,” Pedro said. “But yes, also her specifically.”

He took a breath. I could hear what I believe was a tamale being unwrapped.

“These people,” he continued, “they come over here, they don’t speak the language, they don’t know the customs, they just show up and expect us to take care of them. They are a drain on our resources. They are taking advantage of a system they did not build and did not pay into.”

“And the drugs,” Pedro said, and I could tell we were entering a new chapter of the rant. Pedro’s rants have chapters. Sometimes a foreword. “The Americans, they buy so many drugs from Mexico. So many. They cannot get enough. They are leeching our pharmaceutical resources like there is no tomorrow. And then — and this is the part that gets me — and then their politicians stand up and say we must have a war on drugs. A war! On the drugs that Americans are buying! From us! Because Americans want them!”

He paused for effect.

“Who do you think is creating the market, my friend? Who is out there at two in the morning saying, ‘yes, I would like more of that’? It is not Pedro. Pedro is asleep at two in the morning. Pedro has a tamale business to run.”

I asked him about fentanyl specifically, since it has become a centerpiece of American political rhetoric about the border.

“Fentanyl,” he said, with the weariness of a man who has explained something too many times. “Americans are consuming fentanyl at a rate that is, frankly, impressive in a terrible way. They want it more than they want healthcare. More than they want to fix their healthcare system. More than they want to do anything except consume fentanyl and argue about who is to blame for the fentanyl. We are not forcing anyone. We are simply meeting a demand. We are good capitalists.”

Now, I want to be clear that Pedro’s views on the economics of drug trafficking are not ones I am endorsing. But his larger point about the finger-pointing was landing, and he wasn’t done.

“And another thing,” he said. “This woman. This Greene woman. She tried to rename the Gulf of Mexico.”

I confirmed that yes, last year, there had been a push — enthusiastically supported by Greene and others — to officially rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”

The silence on the line was long and meaningful.

“She tried to rename our gulf,” Pedro said slowly. “Our gulf. The one that has been the Gulf of Mexico since before the United States was a country, before it was a collection of colonies, before it was anything except some land that various Europeans were very confused about. She tried to rename it. And then — THEN — she crosses the border into Mexico, goes to Puerto Vallarta, which is in Mexico, and she asks our doctors to make her young again.”

He laughed. It was not a happy laugh.

“She is looking for the Fountain of Youth,” he said. “In Mexico. The country she spent years trying to build a wall to keep people out of. She is Ponce de León, except Ponce de León had the decency to go to Florida and bother those people instead.”

I reminded Pedro that the purpose of the wall was to keep his people out of our country, not our people out of his country. He was not amused and said some Spanish words I didn’t recognize, but I got the gist.

I then pointed out that the stem cell treatments are not exactly a Fountain of Youth, that the science is, at best, described by medical professionals as “unproven and unregulated.”

“So she crossed an international border,” Pedro said, “for magic water.”

I said that was perhaps a reductive characterization.

“She crossed an international border,” he repeated, “for magic water. From a country she wanted to wall off. Whose gulf she tried to rename. While not having health insurance. While being worth twenty-two million dollars. Do you know what my tamale business could do with twenty-two million dollars?”

Another pause.

“The Americans who come here for healthcare,” he said, winding down now, the tamale clearly finished, “I do not hate them. Healthcare in America is a disaster and I am sorry for them. But maybe — maybe — before they build any more walls, before they rename any more gulfs, before they send any more politicians down here looking for stem cells and miracles and the sweet release of affordable medicine — maybe they should ask themselves why their own country cannot take care of them.”

He said goodbye. He had tamales to distribute.

I sat with that for a while. He wasn’t wrong.

Pedro has since submitted a seven-page position paper to no one in particular, proposed a reciprocal wall (“nicer, better designed, and with a gift shop”), and announced he is considering renaming the Gulf of America back to the Gulf of Mexico, which he points out is a project he can complete for free, right now, simply by continuing to call it that.

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B.T. Clark

Publisher at The Georgia Sun – btclark@thegeorgiasun.com

B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.

B.T. Clark

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