In the November 28 issue of the San Diego Union-Tribune Ruben Navarrette was waxing nostalgically in an opinion piece titled “Never Forgetting Where We Came From.” Navarrette begins by recounting his leaving his home in the California Central Valley and feeling guilty about turning his back on family and friends. Then he references expressions of nostalgia on the part of David Letterman, Bruce Springsteen, and the television show October Road.
Next, he points out that American young people leave their hometowns for the greener pastures of bigger cities. That, he explains, is why Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa proposed recruiting illegal immigrants to help alleviate the state’s perpetual youth drain. What he does not explain is that the farmers, meatpackers, and other businessmen prefer, like Wal-Mart, to hire illegal immigrants for slave-wages than to offer honest wages and benefits to their own people.
In Navarrette’s words, “some folks are looking for immigrants to bail them out.” I would put it differently: Some folks are looking to get richer even if it means destroying their communities. Navarrett says that others resist “because they fear the cultural changes that immigrants might bring.” No kidding! FEAR is the key word here.
One illustration of what is to be feared if one’s community becomes a barrio is provided in the same issue of the paper in a story titled “Leader of Anti-Crime Group Attacked.” The leader is Alberto Capella, “who has spoken out boldly against violence and corruption in Baja California,” but who was “yesterday on the verge of tears,” having just survived “an attack at his house by heavily armed assailants,” his house “pockmarked with 220 shots.” CRIME, CORRUPTION, and VIOLENCE are the cultural changes that immigrants bring that ordinary Americans (those who cannot live isolated in affluent safe communities) fear.
And you might remember the recent story on Tijuana titled “Residents Protest the Surge in Crime Rate.” The president of the Baja California Citizens Council for Public Safety, Alberto Capella, said “kidnappings in Baja California are up for the third year in a row, with 220 so far this year.” So why would Americans not fear having the crime, corruption, and violence that is rampant in Mexico and other nations south of the border being brought—legally or illegally—into their communities?
As a rhetorician what Navarrette seeks to draw the reader into the universality of the theme of nostalgia for the home left behind so that it can be applied sympathetically to illegal aliens who have left their national home behind to invade the U.S., saying, “And I bet you thought that protesters waving Mexican flags were making some sort of obnoxious political statement. Nope. It’s a personal one.” Of course, the Mexican flags were a political statement, which was that THE HISPANIC NATION IN AMERICA IS UNITED. But Navarrette is right when he says that the flags expressed a personal sentiment, which is Mexico, not America, is the first home of the Mexicans-in-America. And everywhere the Mexicans go in America they create mini-Mexicos called barrios.
Navarrette intentionally uses equivocation when he tries to get his reader in the mood for understanding the nostalgia the illegal immigrants feel for their homeland by implying that leaving home to go off to college is similar to leaving one’s national homeland to go off to live, work, benefit, and multiply in someone else’s national homeland. But that is not the situation. The situation is that Mexicans consider themselves first and foremost Mexicans living in America. Mexicans will never be Americans for two reasons. First, their homeland is next door. Second, they see Americans as gringos, i.e., as their enemy.
Mexicans have hated Americans ever since the Americans took a large part of Mexico, which Mexicans call Aztlan, and Americans will always hate Mexicans for invading their country illegally and because they know that the invasion has been encouraged by the Mexican government, and now a Mexican television network, TV Azteca, will be providing English lessons on television in America. What better way to ensure that the millions strong civilian army that now occupies the U.S. will remain?
Navarrette says that for Americans “who never forgot where they came from and still remember the road back, it shouldn’t be so hard to relate” to the homesick Hispanics who have set up camp in America. That is like saying the Iraqi people should feel sympathy for the homesick Americans soldiers who illegally invaded Iraq. I don’t think so. Beside, the Mexicans still have a homeland to feel nostalgic about. Soon Americans will feel nostalgia for a homeland that will have been taken from them. Then every road back will lead them to a barrio. Take, for example, Navarrette’s hometown of Fresno, California. Latinos are now the dominate group in Barrio Fresno.
