It was late afternoon and we were on the bus bound for nowhere. In a classic Mexico City mash, our driver was facing off with a panel truck, which had turned crossways against a sea of cars.
Years before, looking down upon the madness from a roadside perch was Cuitláhuac, an Aztec leader best known for his valiant, last-ditch stance against the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés.
That doomed rally occurred in 1520.
Nearly 500 years later, Cuitláhuac the statue, now oversees impasses of another sort, namely the motorized mosh-pits on tree-lined Paseo de Reforma. Today’s traffic jam, by turn, is the direct result of a political protest blocking part of the main thoroughfare. This tactic for getting attention and boosting official blood pressures is legal in Mexico City and subsequently quite popular.
But for us, it had the curious effect of installing our bus squarely before a banner that referred—and none too warmly—to our own stomping grounds. “Repudio a la Ley Anti-immigrante de Arizona,” the banner read. Which essentially translates to: “Repudiate Arizona’s Anti-Immigration Law.”
So it was that we had endured three airports, a hair-raising cab ride and smoke-belching busses, all for a 12-day respite from the ugliness of Arizona politics. Unfortunately, it seemed that Arizona was not so easily shed.
That’s not to say that Mexico isn’t preoccupied with a few problems of its own. Mexican tabloids have a striking lust for gore, and newsstands are a crimson riot of severed heads, twisted limbs and bullet-ravaged bodies. Yet rarely do you read that this narco-savagery is largely driven by America’s appetite for altered states.
But while the mechanics of supply and demand don’t make for snappy headlines, they do comprise a constant discussion in this sophisticated and chaotic city. That’s why the spirit behind SB 1070, our new state law granting police broad powers to combat illegal immigration, strikes many here as a touch ironic.
I was told as much earlier that day by Enrique Peralta, a genial security guard at downtown’s Diego Rivera Mural Museum. “I think the Arizona law is a little bit racist,” said the 45-year-old father of two who has laid carpet in Colorado and built houses in California. His current residence in Mexico City proves an important point: “Mexicans don’t go to the United States for life, or to create problems,” he said. “They just go there to work.”
That labor may keep the American economy afloat, he says. “But even when Mexicans travel there with permission, they face discrimination.”
However, SB 1070 is hardly the only outrage in this city of protests. There are an estimated 10 demonstrations here each day, highlighting grievances that range from faulty sewers and buckling streets to Byzantine college admissions. So widespread are these street gatherings that the city runs an Internet alert, telling commuters which routes are likely to be blocked on any given afternoon.
Today, for instance, there are remnant demonstrations in favor of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former Mexico City mayor who claimed fraud after losing the 2006 presidential election to Felipe Calderón. The day Calderón was sworn in, Obrador led a colossal march along this very street.
Four years later, fleets of blue-black police vehicles have several times screamed past, toward some budding rally in the city center. The militarized processions included endless, bus-sized personnel carriers filled with cops and batons and rifles mounted against welded posts.
Police also addressed dwindling, but still bitter protests against the firing of 44,000 electrical workers in October, when President Calderón closed the state-owned Luz y Fuerza del Centro power company. At the demonstration’s peak, several workers began a hunger strike that endured for 80 days, until they were hauled off to the hospital.
Critics saw the move by Calderón and his conservative National Action Party as an attempt to weaken the powerful Mexican Electrical Workers Union, or SME.
It’s not that protests are unique to Mexico, either. Even as we sat on the stalled bus, demonstrations against SB 1070 were unfolding in Phoenix, although a federal judge had already blocked key provisions of the law.
Finally the traffic loosened, and we rumbled back to our hotel. But that banner stuck in my mind. I was still pondering it a few days later, as we were touring the mysterious ruins of Teotihuacán, home to the enormously popular sun and moon pyramids.
Our guide, 50-year-old Arturo Guzman, gratefully counts a fair number of Americans among his clientele. But even in the middle of Mexico, SB 1070 stings. “The feeling here in Mexico City is that the (Arizona) law is a threat,” said the professorial guide. “If other U.S. states were to do the same thing, it would be a major problem.”
Guzman, who spent nearly a decade bouncing around Europe, said the law “oppresses the relationship” between the United States and Mexico, which is a shame, given that we’re next-door neighbors. And like Enrique Peralta, he thinks SB 1070 has a racist underbelly. “We see it on TV,” he said. The Arizona law “states clearly that people who do not look like Americans, they are the ones who will suffer.”
Later, we stopped for dinner at a busy patio restaurant. That’s where I met Sergio Rivera, a young ophthalmologist from the wealthy Mexican city of Monterrey. Sipping from a sweaty bottle of Negro Modelo, Rivera predicted that the despised law won’t last. And he will not mourn the measure’s demise. “It’s not that I agree with illegal immigration,” he said. “But this is not the solution. It is not the way to confront the problem.”
Next to Sergio sat his sister, Karina Rivera. Part of the problem, she said, is that Mexico doesn’t have enough jobs to keep its people from leaving for the United States. But as she pointed out, the topic of exports can quickly turn dicey. “After all, Mexico is also now dealing with drug trafficking,” she said with a shrug. In other words, America’s drug appetite has made the Mexican cartels a rich and very dangerous preoccupation. But Rivera was polite. “It’s just very complicated,” she said, and sipped on her beer.
A few days after I talked to Sergio and Karina, the 38-year-old, U.S.-educated mayor of Monterrey was kidnapped. A few days after that, cops found his body dumped on a rural road. His hands and feet were bound. He had received death threats from drug cartels.
I wanted to call the Riveras, to see how they felt about this latest casualty of our binational relationship. But in the end, I did not. There’s really nothing more to be asked.
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2010.
We wouldn’t need Arizona’s solution if the open border advocates hadn’t encouraged some 12 million people to come here illegally. Nobody apparently thought there might be a backlash? Wow, who knew, huh?
I didn’t read this article because of the flashing ad for Frankies. It was just too annoying.
How convenient of Mr. Peralta to forget the other reasons that “illegal aliens” come here (they are not “immigrants” by the way. Immigration Law defines an “immigrant” and it is ONLY someone who comes “legally”. This is part of the “word manipulation”). The Mexican drug & people traffickers bringing drugs, sex slaves and job thieves come here to promote their evil deeds (yes, and the “job thieves” steal jobs Americans had, need and want – we now have 31 MILLION AMERICANS either unemployed or under-employed. Americans have a right to work in their own country at their own jobs! Illegals take jobs in Construction, hotels, restaurants, landscaping and lots more. Because they undercut our wages and put Americans out of jobs, they also put our businesses out of jobs who cannot compete with these low wages. Only 2% of agricultural workers the last few years were illegal aliens.) “ALL” illegal aliens commit not one but many crimes: first by sneaking over the border, then choosing to commit fraud by buying and repeatedly using their phony documents with which they get “free” medical (many times putting hospitals out of business- UMC & TMC have worked with a $5-10 Million deficit every year for years), they use them to steal our jobs, they use them to take our benefits & social services Americans have worked for “for Americans” not illegal lawbreakers! Mexican illegals disrespect our people by disrespecting our laws. Our jobs should and must go first to Americans. “WE” should be choosing who comes here but Mexican illegals force themselves on us & don’t care about this nation, just what they can get from us. Then there are those who come because they think they are going to take over (called “la Reconquista”). They are told they owned this land for 40,000 but Mexico only owned this land for 24 years – the least of everyone! Even Spain owned it for 300 yrs. Their indigenous were never up here! They feared the Apaches. The movement of “Aztlan” is based on lies. If they come to work, let them demand their own gov’t make jobs for them, NOT COME AND TAKE OURS! The reason Mexico is in the state it is in is because few people have respect for law over there: “nepotism” & “la mordida” are rife! Then they come here by spitting on our laws and try to make this into Mexico and wonder why Americans do not like job-stealing lawbreakers. They try to change the subject by calling “us” – racists when they are the racists who hate the “gringos” and see nothing wrong in breaking laws – even some other country’s laws. As they used to tell me, “You don’t need laws; we don’t follow laws in Mexico (told to me by a 47 y.o. Mexican who had just smashed his car into a 20 y.o. AZ college student and paralyzed her from neck down – he had no remorse.) SB 1070 catches criminals. If most of those criminals happen to be a certain color (because they make up the majority of those breaking our laws) – so be it! That is not racist – that is “catching criminals”. But part of this war to save our nation is seeing through the “wordplay”. If you protect America, they will call you “racist”. If you are an illegal alien, they instead call you an “undocumented immigrant” (LOL!); “manipulation of our words to manipulate our minds”. Mexico might not be very good at running their own country but they excel in wrecking someone else’s and then changing the words. For whatever reasons they come here and there are many and many with evil intent, illegals do cause this nation “HUGE PROBLEMS” and a $367 BILLION DEBT EVERY YEAR”. AZ alone pays out $2.7 BILLION a year and the amount most states have as their deficit is many if not most times the amount that illegals cost them. Another question: Why are we being forced to pay for those here illegally? Our gov’t apparently has another agenda (globalism?)and it’s not the welfare of the American people. And it is not SB 1070 that oppresses the relationship between Mexico & the U.S. It is MEXICO that oppresses this relationship by 1. encouraging their people to sneak into our nation and 2. break our laws (*a/k/a a “Declaration of War”) and even give them a booklet to tell them how to do it – probably now on its 15th edition -“Guide for the Mexican Migrant”. Mexico is its own worst enemy and ours, also! My Mexican friends tell me in Mexico they bring up their children to hate “gringos” and to blame everything on them. (Just like Calderon). We should close the border with Mexico altogether! We don’t need to deport them, just make sure they cannot get our jobs and they will leave themselves!
One way to stem the flow of illegal mood enhancers would be be to support local (US) Hydroponic Farmers. Their products leave a tiny carbon footprint, no risks traveling across the desert at night and an increase in the Gross Domestic Product.
As for coming to the US to work, why not turn your energies from street demonstrations to increasing the worth and merit of Mexican workers, students, engineers starting in Mexico City a spreading throughout the land of Aztec, Toltec, Mayan and Spanish mysteries and legends.
If Mexican Nationals could reach deep within their rich, ancient history….the Future can be transformed into a Greater nation referred and not feared by millions of laid off Gringos such as I.
“Don’t come here for a life?”. We got that. The come there to use our schools, hospitals, prisons and then they leave. Back to square one.
Mexican workers in the United States without authorization have been exploited by Americans ever since the first one came here. They are paid lower than ordinary wages and never get health insurance or any other normal perk Americans get. They work harder than Americans because they need the money. When ever people are exploited shame should be heaped on the exploiters, not the victims. Mexicans without papers are helpless victims and they deserve much better because their work ethic is much stronger than the typical American’s. Many of the other people who posted comments on this story are sad examples of uninformed individuals. And the most amazing thing is that Mexicans are friendly towards Americans who travel in Mexico. Any Mexican national who says Mexico does not have laws is ignorant of the facts. They have laws in Mexico. For example, you can not drink beer in public in Mexico, just like you can’t drink beer in Public in America. Their immigration laws are very strict on Americans, just like our immigration laws are strict on them. College educated Mexicans are just like college educated Americans. It is obvious that some of the people who wrote comments on this story are not college educated because their viewpoints are too narrow and uninformed.
Take a look at the “Guide for the Mexican Migrant”.
http://www.dallas.org/node/108 It is a realistic guide.
If Mexican nationals followed these suggestions they
would not cross the border without proper US visas and
Mexican passports. That is why the book was written.
Tucson business collect millions
of dollars from Mexican nationals who come here to
shop and are authorized by the US government to
be her as visitors. These people carry US visas and
Mexican passports, and yes, they follow the suggestions
of the “Guide for Mexican Migrants” if they are smart.
Anyone who leaves their normal place of residence for another (temporary or otherwise) is an immigrant by definition. If the government actually was able to penalize businesses that hire illegal immigrants, the immigrant’s positions would begin to open up to US citizens. But the last time US citizens were picking produce in the fields, people were dying of starvation during the dust bowl. There is a difference between sound immigration policy, border and job security and disregard for human dignity in a police state. SB1070 blurs the lines between racial profiling and reasonable suspicion simply because of the xenophobic roots of the nature of the issue which are altered in a moment of sociopolitical insecurity. I really feel that the American Dream, as the mainstream has come to define it, has come to rest on the shoulders of predominantly Mexican and Central American immigrants. But by now, I’m more inclined to call this American escapist ideal the American Bourgeoisie.
Boogle will say that the very fact that it registered as FRANKIES is mission accomplished so it doesn’t matter that you didn’t read the article.
Oxford English Dictionary: An immigrant is a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.
That would rule out people who sneak across the border intending to work here for a while and eventually go home, or until they get caught and deported, or who repeatedly enters the country.
Oxford English Dictionary: Biology: An animal or plant living in a place to which it has migrated.