NOTE: The following is meant for the coming launch of a local start-up. (I'll tell you when.) So it's a preliminary draft. Your thoughts and brickbats are all appreciated.

Next time some Mexican is blowing leaves around your house, look him in the eye. Look closely at his face, his nose, his lips, his hair, his skin color.

What you’ll probably see is what the Mexicans call Mestizo. You can call it mixed-race if you like, but the race that’s dominant in that face is probably native-American.

We teach our kids that the Spanish were cruel to the Indians, and they were. But most were allowed to live after they embraced Catholicism. The U.S., by contrast, simply killed its Indians. The 19th Century, the Way West, is a history of genocide. Very, very few were left.

Well, they’re coming back. From the South.

And they’re not just coming back on our lawns and in our construction projects. They’re coming back in business, specifically the drug trade. Unlike black people, who usually conduct their trade in the central city, Mexican drug traders trade everywhere.

Last week drug agents went into 16 locations, 13 in Gwinnett County, as part of an investigation into a single Mexico-based drug cartel.

What they found should be plenty disquieting to those who think that drugs are an urban thing. The Complete Auto Center at 1855 Buford Highway in Duluth was found to be a major drug wholesaling shop. A nice little house near Burns Road in Lilburn was a meth lab. A home on a quiet Lawrenceville cul de sac held 300 pounds of cocaine.

Most of those arrested were illegal Mexican nationals. The one guy with anything like a real name is Javier Alvarez-Lopez, 52, who goes by the name “Gotti.” (Cute, huh?) He was sitting on the 300 pounds of blow.

This was just one arm of one cartel. There are other cartels, each with an arm in Atlanta. Most are likely based, like this one, in suburbs. They’re feeding our kids poison, right under our noses, they’re taking that money and sending it away.

There is irony in this. Alcohol was a major weapon in our “winning of the West.” Liquor, given to men who couldn’t handle it, enslaved warriors to the bottle. Alcoholism remains the chief enemy on many reservations.

Maybe the Indians have learned.

Yesterday a group of conservative Republicans rallied at the Georgia State Capitol, proposing solutions to this problem. (The proper term for this might be “test marketing.”)

Among their proposals:

• Deny illegal immigrants driver’s licenses.
• Deny them entry into state colleges.
• Deny them healthcare benefits.
• Deny their children, if born here, U.S. citizenship.

These proposals are expected to be a focus of the next Georgia Assembly, in January, as Republicans seek issues they can use to block an anticipated national Democratic. landslide. Chrisihardcore calls the rally a form of test marketing, with Gov. Perdue out of the country.

Such a political attack might actually unite whites and blacks. Hispanics are, en masse, replacing black Americans at the bottom of the employment pole. They work harder, they work for less, and they don’t argue. New Orleans, once a haven for poor blacks, is now crawling with Hispanic workers, who are rebuilding the city with the Bush Administration’s blessings.

In Moultrie, local farmers insist they have to hire illegals to bring in crops, that local people won’t take the jobs. This is where five people are now under arrest, charged with being part of a gang that murdered and robbed Mexican workers in mobile home parks. An effort by officials to fly a Mexican flag at the county courthouse, in solidarity with the dead, was met by phone protests.

The Wild West days, in other words, are returning. This time it’s the Indians who are doing the invading. You might think of the Moultrie attacks as being on a wagon train.

For now, the Indians are winning.