There is so much going on in the world and in this nation that it is tempting to want to touch on all topics. However, when family and friends who are not usually into politics or current events want to speak of almost nothing else I listen.
The killings of two men, Sergio Hernandez, 15 a student and Anastasio Hernandez, 32 father of five within the past two weeks by border agents of the U.S. has gotten the attention of those living on both sides of the Rio Grande.
This killing spree seems inspired by Arizona’s SB 1070 genocide by legislation. European invaders have managed to eradicate by homicide many of the original inhabitants of this entire hemisphere. The terroristic actions of those invaders have been aggravated by their centuries-long occupation and now their continued genocidal tendencies toward people who look like me.
In my previous discussion I spoke of the psychotically irrational and narcissistic penchant for those who migrated to Tejas just a few generations ago to declare themselves “Native Texans.”
I’m not oblivious to the fact that there are opposing views to the immigration issue. However, it is important to take note of just whose opposing view it is.The oligarchs who run this nation have had it made because of the existence of those who migrate here from the lands south of the Rio Grande. Those who call themselves “Native Texans” have long since benefited from the labor of those they call “illegals” the undocumented workers.
The study supply of cheap labor has kept wages irrationally low. Those in power have been able to keep more of the profits of this exploitation. Poor Mexican-Americans are in the unenviable predicament of having to compete with fellow countrymen for jobs.
Meanwhile Americans in general have had the benefit of cheap labor to harvest crops across America. Migrants’ status is only marginally better than that of slaves and never in question when they are putting artificially low priced food in supermarkets, restaurants and dinner tables.
This seemingly near in-exhaustible supply of cheap labor from the south has had Americans in general and the oligarchs in particular spoiled. It is part and parcel of the culture and mindset of this land. After all, Africa-Americans cleared most of the nation and then worked plantations to make racists rich. Chinese-Americans built the railroads that connected the east and west of this country making travel and domination possible. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans have long provided general labor. All three worked the American sweat shop and continue to do so even in places like the Marianas.
Over the past 234 years powerful (European) men, their interests (transnational corporations) and political processes have exploited the people and resources of the lands south of the Rio Grande to their benefit and to the detriment of its indigenous peoples. The heavy boot of the European has long been at the neck of the original inhabitants of this hemisphere from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.
This exploitation has left few options for the people of those lands. European oligarchies across most of Central and South America have worked and are working in league with American-based transnational corporations to wring every drop of natural resources, blood and sweat from those lands. The governments of those lands have been the domain of the European since the first Europeans foisted their genocide-enabled will.
On this side of the Rio Grande the poor of the lands south of that river face both discrimination and exploitation matching that of their respective homelands. This is largely true whether those who look like me are documented or not.
Their choices are few. They can stay in their homelands where they are systematically marginalized and exploited by European oligarchs (only in Israel are there more European-Jews for example than there are in Argentina). The poor of Central and South America often make another “choice.” [When one does something because there is no other viable option is it really a choice?] The poor risk life and limb to come to this land. We do sell the idea around the globe that we are the land of opportunity, “land of the brave and the home of the free.”
The little money the exploited can put together is quite often paid to “coyotes” or human traffickers to bring them here. The life of the “illegal” is a dangerous, pitiful one. Their collective problem of having been born in their respective geographic location is only exacerbated by also having been born poor and on the wrong side of the river.
They don’t climb into a gas-guzzler “American style” and drive here. They walk, hitch rides on trains, buses, cars to come here to work so they can feed their families back home.
Once here---a daunting enough accomplishment they take on hard labor. They labor under the hot sun or in what is for them unnaturally cold environments to build our schools, roads, homes and hospitals.
In some states, California, for example these undocumented workers are exploited, harnessed by economic forces but not allowed a driver’s license.
Now they are stressed, pressed and depressed by the system that exploits them no matter the side of the divide. Worse those who look like me are also now killed.
That some strides have been made by some Mexican-Americans cannot be denied. Yet how many of them have you heard decry the deaths of Sergio Hernandez, 15 a student and Anastasio Hernandez, 32 father of five or the passing of SB 1070 in Arizona?
In the 1970’s and 1980’s killing Mexicans and Mexican-Americans was a past time, a sport for law enforcement in this land in general and in Tejas in particular. Push back by civil rights activists halted that---but alas apparently only for a short time.
Hasta Siempre
Univision Shows Cell Phone Video Of Border Shooting
Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka , 15 student
Mexico anger high as US Border Patrol kills teen
Anastasio Hernandez, 32 father of five
Who is boycotting Arizona?
Latino USA
Hispanics abandon Arizona, fleeing economy, immigration law
Ex-Cop Faces Trial In Racially Charged Murder Case
Oscar Grant, 22, grocery store worker and father
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