Dear Mexico: Please Accept Our Apology

Given our treatment of them and political posturing towards them, Mexicans should despise Americans.

Think about it.  

It’s true.

Put aside your gun for a moment, set down that can of Coors, and press the mute button on Duck Dynasty for the next five minutes.  I promise, no one’s going to run away with your precious pride and joys.  Now, let’s talk about something really important — our neighbors.

We treat Mexico and Mexicans like shit.  We treat them like shit over here.  We treat them like shit over there.  We treat them like shit when we trample all over Tijuana on weekends and then vomit in the streets.  We treat them like shit when we bargain with the shopkeeper relying on that giant cruise ship you’ve stepped from for a couple of hours, hoping he sells enough knick-knacks to feed his family this week.  We treat the poor working-class peasants like shit.  Even a former Mexican president gets treated like shit.

The brave souls who somehow manage to overcome so many barriers against the odds and ultimately make it into our fields and sweatshops are something of a marvel.  Many have to deal with smugglers and make payoffs.  They trek hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles across barren deserts, along dangerous highways and hidden back roads, often at night — leaving their families behind while often risking their lives.  Then, once they arrive they’re often mulled down with the worst backbreaking jobs that pay poverty-level wages.  Yet, as hard as they toil and struggle to survive and as many of them as we still see standing out there daily waiting for work, whether rain or snow or shine, in every major city across America begging for a job — any job — mowing grass or hauling sheetrock in 102-degree heat or performing the most gruesome acts inside a slaughterhouse…we also demand they be tossed out of the country on their asses.  We propose building impenetrable walls reminiscent of the old Iron Curtain designed to keep them out.  Then, we constantly insult them and ridicule their culture between bites and gulps when we’re not cramming our plump bodies with Tex-Mex food while slamming shots of silver tequila.  No Mexican is immune from the omnipresence of abuses; We cheer wildly to the chants of “USA!  USA!  USA!” as those running for the highest office in our land make ludicrous proposals purely for political gain at their expense.

Honestly, if I was a Mexican receiving this kind of shitty treatment, I’d have three words for Americans:  Vete al carajo.

Even if you don’t speak Spanish, I have faith.  You can probably figure that out.  [1]

Fact is, the only thing that separates the typical Mexican from the typical American is that one class was lucky enough to be born on the northern side of a mostly indecipherable border, while just as many less fortunate members of a different crapped out and were born to the south.  Face it.  We aren’t any better than them.  We certainly aren’t morally superior.  We don’t work any harder than they do.  Most of us don’t deserve the advantages we were born into simply by virtue of advantageous geography.  Let’s face it — the baby born in a hospital near Silicon Valley has innumerably greater opportunities than the infant born in a small town out in the Sonoran Desert.  That’s not guilt talking, that’s just admitting we Americans were dealt into the global poker game holding what amounts to pocket kings.  Two-thirds of the rest of the world, including those in Mexico, started the hand on a much smaller bankroll with 8-3 off-suit.

Being born on the northern side of an arid demarcation of tens of millions of lives and ultimately of fates entitles the lucky to a life stoked with undeniable privileges, which has led unfortunately to an unwarranted posture of not just national chest-beating superiority but collective conceit.  Admit it.  We want those Mexicans to come here and pick our produce.  What American worker wants to sweat their asses off in the middle of California’s Central Valley working for $8-an-hour (if that) picking carrots six days a week while living in a trailer?  We want Mexicans to wash our dirty dishes.  What American wants to ride a city bus that takes an hour-and-a-half to commute because they can’t obtain a driver’s license, nor afford a car plus the insurance?  We want Mexicans to do our gardening and clean our swimming pools.  What American wants to work in an unregulated industry with no benefits, and nor future?  Indeed, the captains of American business covet Mexican laborers because they can pay them as little as possible, yet those workers will never ever complain since there’s no one to turn to.  Meanwhile, we commit the ultimate duplicity by claiming that we don’t want them here.  Deport them all.  Build a wall.  Make it tall.

The most inexplicable consequence of all this which I can’t fathom nor explain is this.  Despite the shitty treatment and our blatant hypocrisy on so many levels — most Mexicans still seem to like us for the most part.  Yes, they like us.  Wherever you go throughout North America, Mexicans remain a simple yet happy people — even though, at least on the surface, there’s nothing to be particularly joyous about.  [2]  We see them huddled in packs at Home Depot stores all across the country, begging for any scrap of manual labor.  Yet, we never, never, never see them standing out on street corners with cardboard signs begging for drug money (strange how most of the street beggars working intersections happen to be young white people — go figure).

I just don’t get it.  We say we don’t want Mexicans coming into this country.  Those who do come here get treated like shit.  One of the major presidential candidates fumes that he wants to deport all 11 million undocumented workers, which would not only crash certain sectors of our economy but also result in the very cruelest of outcomes, the separation of families.  Yet that outlandish proposal draws thunderous applause from millions.  We cheer wildly as Dr. Stangelove spews a carnival wheel of analgesic painkillers leading otherwise good people to turn down a dark path.  America has become a fucking madhouse.

In our not too distant past, that mob mentality so often camouflaged by waving American flags manned the trumpets and reaffirmed our national posture that America never apologizes for anything.  We don’t dare apologize to foreign nations, nor their citizens, nor our victims, nor the dead, even those democratically-elected governments we’ve toppled over the decades on every continent.  We don’t apologize for our invasions, nor our extended occupations.  We don’t apologize for the corporate exploitation of natural resources, nor carpet bombings, nor the use of drones.  We are lots of ugly things to people around the world who are different than us, wearing one mask on human rights for our foes (think Iran) yet an entirely different mask for our so-called allies (think Saudi Arabia).  We are not, nor have ever been a nation that apologizes.

When the current president tried to reverse this self-destructive hubris by making diplomatic amends with other nations, as he did several years ago, his actions were deemed treasonous.  This grotesque inability to see ourselves as others see us speaks volumes not only as to our national epidemic of xenophobia but an outright denial of reality.  Call this what it is — national blindness.  America has become that drunken driver barreling dangerously down the wrong side of a busy highway, isolated and now complaining that dozens of other cars are all driving on the wrong side of the road.

Interestingly, this so-called illegal-immigration “problem” has steadily been reversing itself.  There are now about 3.5 million fewer illegals living in this country now than when the current president took office seven years ago.  Was this reversal prompted by a collapse of unregulated capitalism followed by a sluggish economic economy?  Perhaps so.  But I’m just as convinced the prevailing American attitude of arrogance towards Mexicans has a lot to do with it.  The arrogance has a lot to do with it.  The despicable sense of entitlement over other human beings has a lot to do with it.  Who knows what they say about us, what they think of us when they return home and tell the tales of their experiences across the border living and working in America?  Given what they’re up against and how they’re treated, how can those stories be pretty?

I don’t know how Mexicans do it.  Why do they take it?  They continue to seek work here.  They maintain a positive outlook on life.  They cause us little or no burden.  In fact, overall, they enhance our economy.  They’re happy for the most part.  They want to be our friends.

Sorry, but I could never be a Mexican.  It requires way too much personal sacrifice and human forgiveness.

__________

[1] Translated, this means “fuck you.”

[2] A most recent “World Happiness Report” came out which showed Mexicans are slightly happier than Americans, despite the obvious disparity of natural resources and personal wealth.  SOURCE HERE

Note:  Yes, there are drug cartels and dangerous people from Mexico.  There are also far more good people working hard wanting to make a better life for themselves.

Watch More Here:  Very moving 5-minute video on the migrant experience, which shows Bernie Sanders efforts to bring these inequities to our attention:   CLICK HERE