The Mexican Election: More Collateral Basura
I ran into a friend at the gym of the local university. He is from Mexico’s interior ( but the north). Smart guy, a brother. The university sits smack dab on the border and looks across to Juarez from El Paso. The university has many Mexican nationals mostly from Juarez but with a significant number of citizens from the interior, a majority of Mexican Americans and a smattering of Anglos. Like many things on the Border, it is physically the United States and pragmatically in Mexico (language, culture, food).
I ask him if he voted in the recent election.
He did, he said, “…had to go back to the interior to do it.”
I am impressed with the effort. Apparently absentee voting isn’t very enabled in Mexico (can someone fill me in on this?).
So, I asked, getting ready to hit him with the big one: Who’d you vote for?
He laughed slightly, looked at me like I should know the answer, of course, and I awaited his reply with no idea at all what he’d say.
Was he for the Republicanesque Calderone or the left leaning (meaning leaning toward improving the lot of the underclass, as he did when he was mayor of Ciudad Mexico) Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador?
“Calderon,” he said, after I hadn’t filled in the blank. His look had the look of someone who couldn’t even conceive of another alternative: a bit wry, a bit questioning, very much conspiratorial.
I hit him with the second part of my query: You didn’t like Obrador, I nudged?
He became more animated.
“That guy is Anti American,” he spat indignantly.
“Why would you say that,” I replied, truly curious, but a bit provocatively.
“He wants to help the poor, like a Communist.”
Silence.
I am kind of used to hearing this on Right Wing American radio (Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh) and, of course during every election (but in more veiled terms).
I went no further. I have always liked this guy a lot. He believes what he believes, he has his reasons. He is from a demographic that is trying to rise and is rising and I can’t begrudge the emerging middle class of Mexico any more than I can in the United States. I could, but to be fair, I understand walking in those shoes. He believes what he believes and he has his reasons. His misuse of words is no more extreme than the misuse we, here, on the US side of the border use every day, at least, for sure, every election cycle.
The thing I’m wondering is: If helping the poor is considered a bad thing, in Mexico, in The United States, and much of the World, and helping the rich is considered a good thing, who will ever help the Poor? When will they be helped? When will that project begin? Why doesn’t that project have top priority? What are they supposed to do in the meantime? Some suggest, it is that attitude, the often-proved-wrong idea that the good times will trickle down, that ensures that millions of Mexicans -and every other downbeaten nationality- will flow into this country as long as they are needed, irregardless of doctrine.
The obscenity of sending your own people north, in this case, because the ruling class won’t even make an attempt, through law and policy, to try and provide a playing field of any kind, is an outrage.
The iriony is that Mexico is sending some of its best people north and the sooner they don’t realize it and the sooner the U.S. does, the better.
These are the true believers, the hard workers, the ones who are really tough and durable and honorable. They are the “meek,” of the earth, but not the passive. These migrants are the bravest of the brave. They head north into hostile territory, to the dreaded El Norte and bring their sweat and their hearts and El Norte is the winner.
Like every other wave of new Americans before them (including my grandparents), they are starting at the bottom and their hunger, their willingness and demand to succeed, will propel many of them to the top. Most will go the Middle. Few will stay at the bottom. They will innovate. They will become part of our community and I just hope they won’t turn their backs on those who come after them. In that way, maybe they’ll be different from the voices that yell at them now.
I say bienvenidos, come on, and welcome.
In the meantime, Mexico is safe for the ruiling class and its aspirers.
They’ll be OK. We’ll be OK. Mexico will be OK.
But I have a few questions (and from where I sit, almost directly on top of the boundary line that divides and unites our two countries, here in Ciudad Juarez/El Paso, these questions are for us all):
What happened to the idea of helping the poor? What happened to eliminating Poverty?
Isn’t there enough money to go around (Mexico has more billionaires than the United States does, although, admittedly, our billionaires mostly aren’t doing much about our very own currently expanding underclass).
Does anybody, particularly those with the ability to read dry statistics, think that this thinking has lead to a decrease of the Lower Class, or an increase in the Upper Class (clue: The answer to this quiz begins with an “L”)?
What happened to doing the right thing for the right reason and aiding those who can’t help themselves?
Does anyone know the difference between Socialist and Communist?
Does anyone think there will ever be Peace on this planet if we don’t get to the idea of bringing everyone up from the bottom?
I’m not sure who should have won that election. If it was “fair,” and it looks (please see No Se Fue, above) like it was, the winner was the right one. But I know for sure it isn’t Anti American to put your emphasis on raising up the bottom part of the society.
If helping the poor is Communist (which is absurd), don’t you think Christ was a Pinko?
