FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT, EL ZORO

“THIS IS A joke, no? Take back California? Are you completely loco? No fucking way. Apologies for the undiplomatic language. California is a very unpleasant topic. Basket-case, isn’t that what you say?”

The Mexican Government official who spoke these words was reading a secret protocol to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which permits the United States to “at any time”, sell back to Mexico “any of the territories” it annexed from its southern neighbor by force of arms in 1848, for $15 million, the original cost price of the whole deal.

“Holy Mother of Guadalupe, they would want us to pay $15 million for that shit hole!” the Mexican official added. “Are they completely out of their minds in Washington? Look, you won the war, you took the land, you keep the land. We’re happy where we are. Tell me, who would buy all our cartel drugs if California came back to us? Do you have any idea what that trade contributes to our economy? Not to mention the anger it would cause among the cartels. The Sinaloa cartel would have a baby. Isn’t that what you say? You wanna put them on the war path? Have fun.”

The Buy-Back Protocol, as it is known, does require the consent of the Mexican Government, which until recent decades was always presumed to be a given. Not any more.

The Mexican official sighed and folded his arms and stared out his office window, before saying: “Hey, times change. We’ve moved on. The border as it is, is favorable to us now. You know, fewer and fewer of our people are heading to Gringoland these days. What they’re getting in Arizona and Texas is people from south of us, Central Americans, South Americans. They don’t know the difference. Assholes. Our real fear here in Mexico is that things will get so bad in the Estados Unidos, that the gringos will start to come down here in huge numbers. Frankly, we can’t wait for The Donald to be re-elected and get started on that wall again. This time we might even be willing to chip in a few bucks to help pay for it.”