Latin America's views of the wall on America's border!
That Damned Wall - Building Barrier On America's Southern Border
Luis Figueroa - 1/17/2006
Miguel Vargas Alvarez, a Spanish singer, used to sing, many moons ago, a tune that went something like “That damned wall”. A tune that my father used to sing to laugh at me because I sleep walked.
Yep. I sleep walked. And one of those nights I went to my parents´ bedroom, and asked: What shall I do with the wall? Still asleep and surprised, my father answered: Put it aside. And I went back to my own bedroom, in peace, to bed again.
My father liked pranks and was a fun guy, so whenever he told the anecdote of me sleep walking, he would also sing: That damned wall.
Less funny is the story of another wall, that is the one that made angry Guatemala´s comandante, oops sorry, Guatemala´s vice-president Eduardo Stein, and other Latin American politicians. That is the wall that the American government may build on its southern border to keep illegal immigrants out of their country.
Even recognizing that proverbs are ambiguous, that there is one for each convenience and that the so-called ‘people´s wisdom’ is no more than bits of wit put at the service of particular circumstances, I adhere to the one that says that good fences make good neighbors, and I want to comment on something that my Guatemalan colleague Jose Raul Gonzalez wrote about the above mentioned wall.
Many people forget that one of the reasons because the United States of America is a prosperous country is because up there, the laws are made to be respected, contrary to what happens down here where the laws are made to be violated. That is the reason why many politicians and analysts, from Guatemala and from other Latin American Countries, cannot understand why is it that the American politicians do not just simply ignore their migration laws and make us the favor of not applying them.
I agree with Gonzalez on the idea that those who should be ashamed of the possibility of such a wall are us, Guatemalans and Latin Americans, because we have been unable to create dignifying life conditions in our own countries.
Some people down here compare the wall in the American border to the wall that existed in Berlin during the Cold War; but they never mention that while the former may be built to keep people out and prevent them to enter illegally, the later was done to keep people in and prevent them to go out.
As it happens in Cuba, where the wall is the ocean, while many people gave their lives to escape Berlin, many people give their lives to enter the US. Why, on Earth is that? Maybe it is because in the US those people find jobs, because they find security, and because even with all its lack of perfection (Is something human perfect?), in the US they find a rule of law. Maybe because there is a better standard of living there.
I strongly favor free traffic of goods and people. I resent it when American ambassadors press Guatemalan judges during political sensitive trials. I loathe the war on drugs. But I am not consumed by the antiyankee fever of the Latin American populists and socialists. I do not ignore that while the Americans system attracts multitudes and allows the creation of opportunities for multitudes, our systems in the subcontinent expels those same multitudes.
Gonzalez´ article (published in Guatemala´s daily Prensa Libre) which inspired this, mentions something important that should make some people blush. What does the Guatemalan government do with the Chinese, Ecuadorian and Salvadorean migrants that cross our own border illegally? It imprisions them and sends them back by force. Do we have a policy of open borders? No, we don´t.
There we have it! We are as bad as the Americans, only worse, because we are hypocritical.
My advice to the Latin American voters and tax payers is that we should press our politicians not to play victims, but to once for all establish a system with equality for all before the law and absolute respect for individual rights. A system like that would permit the creation of more and more wealth, and opportunities. In such conditions our people should not be forced to face a damned wall.
Luis Figueroa is a journalist who writes a column for Guatemalan daily Prensa Libre. He is also the Director of the Public Relations Department at the University of Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala.
http://globalpolitician.com/articledes. ... d=1&sid=26
If all these countries like Latin America and Mexico would make things better in their country, America would not be forced to build a dam wall on our border to protect our soverignty!
