False premise on which Arizonians base their blathering
In a recent email StratFor stated this:But these three excerpted paragraphs -- the first and third, particularly -- reveal a faulty assumption by author George Friedman.
The problem is that Mexicans are not seen in the traditional context of immigration to the United States. As I have said, some see them as extending their homeland into the United States, rather than as leaving their homeland and coming to the United States. Moreover, by treating illegal immigration as an acceptable mode of immigration, a sense of helplessness is created, a feeling that the prior order of society was being profoundly and illegally changed. And finally, when those who express these concerns are demonized, they become radicalized. The tension between Washington and Arizona — between those who benefit from the migration and those who don’t — and the tension between Mexican-Americans who are legal residents and citizens of the United States and support illegal immigration and non-Mexicans who oppose illegal immigration creates a potentially explosive situation.
Centuries ago, Scots moved to Northern Ireland after the English conquered it. The question of Northern Ireland, a borderland, was never quite settled. Similarly, Albanians moved to now-independent Kosovo, where tensions remain high. The world is filled with borderlands where political and cultural borders don’t coincide and where one group wants to change the political border that another group sees as sacred.
Migration to the United States is a normal process. Migration into the borderlands from Mexico is not. The land was seized from Mexico by force, territory now experiencing a massive national movement — legal and illegal — changing the cultural character of the region. It should come as no surprise that this is destabilizing the region, as instability naturally flows from such forces.
After summarizing the history of the area in question Friedman says: "Migration to the United States is a normal process. Migration into the borderlands from Mexico is not."
The problem here is Friedman assumes that the area is a well-established, dominantly Anglo region now being invaded by migrating Hispanics. In fact, the area was a generally sparsely region populated by a more or less evenly culturally mixed grouop from about 1865 to the early 1950s. The mixed population got along amicably for the most part. Neither held an upper hand. Each needed the other for economic reasons. Consequently, there was considerable mixing of both through work and marriage.
What in fact destabilized the area was a huge influx of primarily Anglos beginning in the 1950s. First came the Anglo workers moving into the area for employment with the expanding military presence and bases. Then came the Anglo retirees seeking warm climes and lower-priced properties so they could cash in on their high-priced properties and settle down to a upper middle-class lifestyle. The retiree group ultimately came to dominate this "white folk' influx. Both the military-based and the retirees were US nationalist-oriented -- the retirees being the most so. The Anglo retirees then proceeded to only exacerbate the problem by seeking cheap Mexican labor for mowing their lawns (and other services) while disparaging the Mexicans for being poor and stupid for taking on that sort of labor.
There is another seldom mentioned factor. The Mexicans labor force was even more culturally different from the Anglos inasmuch as they were heavily Indian-based. They came from an entirely different historic cultural premise, different even from Hispanic.
Truth be told, the Spanish invaders centuries before had a similar problem with the native population, exploited them as more or less slave labor, while remaining apart from them culturally, keeping them racially separate so far as the upper class could manage.
The fairly balanced population of the 1865 through 1950-ish period muted the problem.
Mix the military and retirees "invading" the area with the increased arrival of Mexicans coming north to provide the cheap labor force being demanded by the "invaders."
Stir in a dedicated group of Republican politicos hoping to exploit the situation in order destabilize the nation for their own political purposes and there you have the ultimate source of the problem that we are now suffering through.
Besides, "they" were here before us and from "them" we have borrowed and adapted much of our western culture. Consider Linda Rondstadt. Long before there was the "Blue Bayou" there was "La Charreada," the rodeo.
posted by Tom Nadeau at 11:26 AM
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