News and views from the award-winning author of the novels The Skinny Years, America Libre, House Divided and Pancho Land

Monday, September 3, 2007

The fuse grows shorter

Each day the nightmare scenario of America Libre edges closer to reality. Here is a sample of comments on a September 3rd article in the Washington Post on Latino protests in Northern Virginia to a number of measures targeting illegal immigrants:

“They clog out emergency rooms, they flood our classrooms with illiterate babies, they refused to learn English, they clutter and destroy any neighborhood they live in. They simply are beings who should be sent back to live amdist people with habits like they have.”

“…our crowded (with illegal alien invaders) emergency rooms and our soaring medical costs (because of the illegal alien invaders), with the trashing of our neighborhoods (by the illegal alien invaders), with the escalating crime (by the illegal alien invaders), etc. ad nauseum.”

“Why have we become a polyglot, non-homogeneous society?”

“When the U.S. Mexican relationship finally falls apart, the Mexican people and govt. can blame themselves for this attempted plot to turn the U.S. into a latino nation.”

“All of these Beaners should have been gathered up and sent back to Mexico or their other Native lands. America is supposed to be a place that Americans can reside in safety and without trash all over the place. These scum just drop trash everywhere. But of course in Mexico this would be normal behavior.”

Unfortunately Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderon, is not helping cool down the debate.

“Mexico does not stop at its border. Wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico,” Calderon said in response to recent U.S. crackdowns on illegal immigrants. This is kind of rhetoric may play well at home, but it’s guaranteed to amp up nativist anger in the United States.

Meanwhile, the separatists continue their harangues as witnessed by this recent web posting by the Mexica Movement:

“We Mexicans and Central Americans are indigenous to this whole continent. We demand our human right to immigrate anywhere on our continent.”

As envisioned in America Libre, the fury on both sides of this issue is escalating. With each angry accusation, the fuse grows shorter on a calamity we will all later regret.

Raul Ramos y Sanchez