The Latin American in the Modern World

What happens when an American sees a Latin American, politicians have always blamed the poor for every known social problem. If you think about Mexicans, you are bombarded with ideas of crime, from drug to human trafficking, all realities that exist, but they are also stereotypes promoted by politics, and this pervasive image is what keeps Americans in the dark about who a Latin American really is, the dimensions of a criminal are not as two dimensional as American politics would have you believe.

If one is to answer to Americans when they utter the word "Mexican criminal" or "Latin American criminal" one must open their perception.

We do not need to look at liberty or law to answer the dilemma here, we are its cause, we are its effect. Ronald Reagan as well as Linden Johnson and presidents of the past have feared these primitive savages, and this is what it has come down to. Americans do not see the Mexican or the Latin American immigrant as a creature of nobility, he is a thief and their existence is repudiated, but much of what American media would not have you believe, these people are living beings, ones that share the same aspirations as the next man. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm the animals proclaimed after their master had been overthrown that “All animals are equal”, but towards the end of the book the animals had abandoned their beliefs or coerced it to fit their aspirations, “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others”.

This syndrome has cast its net over the country, a form of denial blindfolds our nations leaders, they wish to proclaim their high ideals and yet abandon their lower class, a class undocumented, without rights, without of which, become slaves. If one considers the nature of democracy, American democracy, the illusion of democracy, he must understand where it stands, on the backs of those who know not. Like the animals in Animal Farm, a willing hypocrisy infects worse than the Mexican swine flue, history repeats similar plagues, plagues of fear, plagues of power and plagues of destruction. It is almost certain that capitalists are loosing ground in their enterprise, Latin America has chosen its path and it inclines closer and closer to the left. Leaders like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales have become its forerunners to liberation, regardless of whatever dislikes one has of either, they do more for Latin America than any American corporation ever did.

The truth of the matter is most Latin Americans are dissatisfied with foreign trade; the wages they get paid in their countries are disproportionate to what the foreign companies that infest their nation profit. To understand a villain one has to look at where he lives. What makes a villain? in movies we see people that are evil by nature, and maybe all humans have this inclination, but most of us grew up somewhere, where influenced by our surroundings, if you live in a modest home then your values are shaped by those things that were permissible, you ate every morning, you bathed and you had your needs met by things like hard work. When you grow older your desire for a new pair of shoes, or the shirts you wear, you are taught are the product of a life of honest labor, you are taught not to steal, the world is civilized by these standards. What if you didn’t live in that world, what if you saw famine, and your government didn’t give you those rights? Those high morals of honesty, what would become of them?

The law marks lines for us, they tell us if crossed a punishment must ensue. A price must be paid, you are guilty and you must make right by our law, for if not our nation would not be civilized, it would lose itself, it would make us savages.

Civilization is an illusion, what makes a criminal, a villain? Is it not civilization itself? The clothes on your back the ones you thought were product of your honest labor are marked by slavery. The product of some Honduran sweat shop run by a Chinese foreign assembly line, these people run away from their countries to fill their hunger, to quench their thirst, Mexican people stand before the fence knowing that they have to feed someone, they have to keep them living. To understand a criminal one first must understand civilization, one must understand before democracy stands tyranny, is tyranny not defined by a government that denies its people the rights to live, to eat, to health, to quench their desire. Did not our forefathers tell us to abandon this same tyranny when it choked its citizens?

Men can hold two ideas in their mind at the same time; believe two things that contradict each other. Like the animals in animal farm, one can believe in equality and at the same time not believe in it. When we go to the ballpark and we hold our hands to our chest, we pledge to liberty, and justice, but do we? When American politicians say that immigrants don’t pay their dues to live here, is that really true? And if they left the country are they not still living in a globalized economy, is not GM not leaching of their labor, or Nike living of their famine.

Voltaire said, “When you can get a people to believe in absurdity, you can make them commit atrocities.” I once worked as a store clerk, one of our co workers got fired based on her status as an immigrant, one of the guys was upset that she had been working illegally in the store. His displeasure marked almost as an insult, after telling him that she would still be working for an American company that would slave her back in her country he stammered, that is not my problem, that is their countries problem.

So truly and honestly what makes a villain, a lawbreaker, a savage, an animal?