Face Off in the Plaza

We heard the noise from the rally in De La Guerra plaza before we saw the people gathered in front of the News-Press building. A white man was speaking into a bullhorn about freedom of the press; next to him a white woman was shouting for illegal aliens to go back where they came from. Officers from the SBPD had rigged green plastic netting in front of the 50 or so protestors. There were American flags and placards.

My wife and I stopped on the grass and watched. I gathered that the protestors were supporting the News-Press’s recent use of the term “illegal alien” in a headline. I didn’t see the edition in which this term appeared because I never read the News-Press.

“Did you hear what that woman just said?” my wife asked. I shook my head. “She just compared Mexicans to cockroaches.”

“Does she know where she’s standing?” I asked. “This is De La Guerra plaza, named after a Spanish man, who lived in what was then a Spanish colonial possession. She’s in a state that was part of Mexico until it was taken by armed force by the United States.”

On the other end of the plaza, a larger crowd had gathered, this one calling for a boycott of the News-Press. Half a dozen people in Aztec garb crossed the plaza and were immediately heckled by the News-Press supporters. The man with the bullhorn shouted, “If you are in this country illegally, you’re breaking the law. You’re criminals!”

“Racist asshole,” my wife said.

People who insist that illegal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America are overrunning California, usually argue that these immigrants are living large at taxpayer expense, receiving for free what decent white folks earn by the sweat of their labors. Rarely, if ever, do these doomsayers consider why so many men, women and children risk everything to make the often perilous journey north to the United States. For many the choice is stark – death or survival. Mexico is a mess, decimated by NAFTA and the drug cartels, whose key market, let’s not forget, is right here on Rush Limbaugh’s fruited plain. Not only do we buy the cartel’s drugs, we also launder its money.

The US has a long, long history of interfering in the internal affairs of Latin American countries: Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Panama, and Venezuela to name a few. Along with the World Bank and the IMF, the US has done plenty to flip Latin American economies on their heads, causing major social disruptions, loss of traditional industries, family farms. Like North Africans who for any number of reasons find themselves living on the knife edge, and make the trek to France or Germany or Denmark in order to better themselves, Mexicans and Latin Americans weigh their limited options on their home turf, pack their belongings, and head north for what they hope will be a more promising future for themselves and their children.

And when they arrive here, what kind of employment do they find? The most menial, of course, the dregs and the dreck. They wash our dishes and mow our lawns and trim our hedges and bathe our elderly and pick our vegetables and fruit and nuts and polish our cars and scrub our toilets and take care of our infants. That’s all.

My wife and I moved on. The News-Press boycotters clapped their hands rhythmically. The News-Press supporters answered back -- the white guy with the bullhorn began reciting the Bill of Rights.