‘But you guys should at the very least learn some English. I’ve met some immigrant people that cannot even past the “hello”!’
Kelly was telling me this over a table in a restaurant where we –along with other two women: Lorane and Nancy; all of them of white European descent- were sharing delicious Vietnamese food and some white wine too.
She seems a nice person; she is a dancer, like me, so fortunately we have things in common. And I think that’s what enabled us to exchange some ideas the other day when we met. Kelly and Nancy are friends of Lorane, a recent friend of mine with whom I share the love for dance and some views about US culture and how its foreign policies affect people abroad.
Kelly was telling us how her husband, a man of Irish descent, used to be an open minded man, but now he is hooked with right-wing hate-talk radio. Now that the immigration issue is highly debated, now that he has seen many of my fellow Mexicans immigrants waving Mexican flags in the many marches for immigration rights, well, he totally buys into what those hate mongers radio talk show hosts say. And though maybe to a lesser extent, it seems to me she believes that too.
‘You guys should love America’, ‘You guys put up a barrier between us because you don’t want to speak English’, Kelly kept on telling me. Fortunately, Lorane and Nancy didn’t agree with these arguments, which are easily refutable, and gave her reasons and facts about why what she was saying is not true. And I guess because of their help I didn’t feel attacked or overwhelmed, plus, I honestly believe she didn’t want to attack me (am I too naïve?) and that she is truly concerned, so I tried my very best to convey my ideas and my reasons without getting angry or resorting to insults or things like that. And I think I did a really good job.
But how can I explain to her, how can I convey to her and to people like her (and I’m not even taking about people like her husband who might be even much more difficult to reach and with whom I don’t have anything in common other than being human beings) that we are not a ‘menace’, that we are not ‘invading’ their beloved country? (Dime de que te quejas y te dire quien eres) Will they be able to understand such a complex reality? Will people that feel –with logical reasons or without them- threatened or that have been scared to death by manipulative and fanatics be able to understand us and be sympathetic to us?
How can I explain, without overwhelming her (is it possible not to overwhelm anybody when talking about things like these?), that we are refugees running away from economical wars? Unlike what ‘Don Burren’ (Fox’s press secretary) preaches, we didn’t come here to take a PhD (well, maybe some upper and middle class Mexicans do, but unfortunately they are very, very few), we come here because there are no jobs in our places of origin, because our sons and daughters are starving to death, because this is the only way out of hell.
The big majority of us didn’t want to come here, we do love our places of origin, we miss our families, our food, our customs; we were forced to come here. We were forced to risk our lives, yes, risk our lives to come here.
War profiteers, war instigators-who are they? If we are coming here running away from economical wars, who benefits from those wars? Not us, obviously. Nor people like Kelly either.
Maybe part of this tragedy began in January 1st 1994 when the infamous nafta took effect? Maybe when the prices of coffee beans were sent to the floor and lower? Maybe when unfair agreements are signed between our countries, agreements that stipulate that no native researchers or scientists will be allowed to work on any research in our own countries and that rather we should welcome researchers from up north? Maybe when the infamous ‘economic hit men’ are sent to our lands to co-opt or bribe our leaders? (Allende, Arbenz, and a long list of etc’s follows.)
Will they be able to understand this? I didn’t even know until recently about the economic hit men. Though we all –in Latin America this is- suspected their existence, we regular mortals never saw one of them. If I dare to talk about this phenomenon they’d think I’m hallucinating.
How can I explain to her (and I have tried other times with other people like her to no avail) that if we are enjoying this crisp and delicious lettuce is because somebody like me (brown, Indian) picked it up for a meager amount of cents or dollars per hour.
Maybe this tragedy began when our countries were over flooded with cheap merchandise, with cheap produce and we couldn’t compete with those low prices so we went bankrupt and next we went up north. (If you don’t want cheap labor don’t send us cheap produce).
Of course this is not the only thing I’d want to say! The fact that we are economical refugees is not the only thing I want to say to her and people like her! How about the fact that this is Native American land? How about the fact that more than 500 years ago a group of illegal immigrants from Europe set foot in this, our beloved land, land that had nurtured us and taken care of us for more than 10,000 years? And that after they were fed and saved from starvation they returned the favor with genocide and chickenpox? Who is invading whom?
Sorry, forgot to mention that because they were definitely not savages, after the genocide they sat around a table, ate tlaolli (corn) and huexolotl (turkey) and very gently said ‘thanks’.
‘You guys should love America!’ Excuse me? We do love this land. We ARE America. We do love America as we know it. America, according to geography, is the land that stretches from Alaska to La Patagonia in Argentina. Of course we do love this land. And we do respect it too. We are not poisoning it, we are not conducting chemical or nuclear ‘experiments’ on it, we are not creating frankestein seeds to feed it, we are not dismembering it and cutting it into pieces. Who is the real menace?
I’m not even talking about what happened in 1848, about how white illegal immigrants did invade Tejas, la Alta California, Nuevo Mexico, etc, etc. About the great economical contributions immigrants make to this land.
Kelly might be overwhelmed by now. How can then we have a reasonable conversation? How can we convey our feelings and ideas? Will we be able to understand each other? Will she be able to understand that we are being used as scapegoats to frighten them to make them easy to manipulate? Will she be able to understand that they want to take advantage of their ignorance? Will she be able to understand that if she were not that ignorant she’d be ashamed and angry that they have been insulting her intelligence with things like ‘those beaners are invading our country’?
She seems nice and intelligent and one can only hope for her and people like her to be able to open their eyes and focus on who the real culprit is.
