America and Mexico: A Love/Hate Story.

So, I'm an anthropology student.

Yes, I am certain we all know this. I'm studying people. It is fascinating. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love lizards. Reptiles are, for lack of a better term, the shit. Same thing with bats. Canines are pretty cool, too.

But no other species is as complex as the human. I feel I can say this safely- you don't see monitor lizards dividing into groups based on who worships what god and building shrines. I'm not going to say we have dominated the planet, because we regularly have our butts serves to us by volcanoes (thanks, Iceland), earthquakes, hurricanes, and the pig sniffles. This said, we've done a fair job of manipulating the top layer of the Earth. This is a positive and/or a negative thing. I'm not going to lie, I'm a big fan of cars, but it is rather silly of us to use up resources we know won't exist forever. It is ignorant of us to muck up the only air we've got.

All this aside, we are pretty incredible. I don't mean incredible as in "we're so rad," but I mean incredible as in "we are a massive force with which to be reckoned." In our existence of approximately 200,000 years, we've come a long way. We have become increasingly complex. We've moved from the manipulation of rocks to the manipulation of sub-atomic particles. All ethics aside, that is pretty cool.

In southern Mexico, there is a region called Chiapas. It is home to a large group of indigenous people- they far outnumber the state of Idaho. These people have no real system of education, let alone running water. Life is pretty harsh.

Now, I am sure you've heard about the Zapatista uprising of the 1990's. This happened just as the US, Canada, and Mexico entered the North American Free Trade Agreement. Now, I'm not going to explain it all, because that would take far more time than I am interested in giving. If you were not an adult, or at least a cognitive being, during the 90's, Google it. The internet is filled with information.

It boils down to this: here is a group of people fighting for their way of life, and the Mexican government is perfectly okay with abusing them. More than ten years later, nothing has changed. If anything, the situation has gotten worse. Mexico is nearly a failed state. The drug cartels rule the streets, and people in Mexico have nothing. I mean, nothing. Some people have no shoes to wear. They cannot even write their names. As someone whose livelihood will potentially rely on my ability to write, the thought of not being able to so much as sign my name makes my stomach knot.

The only real solution anyone in this situation can see is to risk his life to come to the US in search of work. Let's face it: illegal immigrants from Mexico do the jobs no one here is willing to do. Sure, I would go out and do manual labor like yard work, but not at the wages people want to pay. We hear politicians and uninformed Americans claim that "illegal immigrants are taking our jobs," but they aren't. They're picking up the slack by working the bottom-of-the-barrel jobs we aren't willing to do.

And I do not support this model for multiple reasons. Having people that are willing to do a job at any price degrades the value of labor for the rest of us. Having people who are not formally part of our country throws the system out of whack. When a person who is here illegally has a child, that kid is an American, regardless of what some would say. This causes the child to either be forced to move out of its own country, or be forced into a broken system like foster care.

However, the solution is not what the state of Arizona would have us believe. Their way of doing things causes racial profiling and creates a more volatile environment for everybody, not a safer one. It is akin to the "abstinence only" education policy. It's not fixing the problem at the right spot. The solution to immigration is not kicking people out or building a higher wall- we need to examine why people from our southern border would rather put their lives in the hands of scum like coyotes, and risk their lives in the dangerous desert lands around the border, than use legal methods to come here. We ought to be helping Mexico regain order and be able to provide for their people. We ought to make paths to citizenship easier.

When our own neighbors are suffering as badly as the country of Mexico, we have no right to be invading nations half a world away. Nowhere else in the world do you see such a huge difference between average incomes as you do between the US and Mexico. Even most of our homeless make more money than our neighbors to the south.

I realize that times are hard here in America. We have not had a financial crisis this bad in some time. People are taking huge hits because of the faulty system we built. However, in all this debt, in all this turmoil, we still have shelters for those who have lost their homes. In cities across America, we have places that try to get food to those who need it. If a person is ill or injured, we have ERs that will take them. We do not appreciate just how high our standard of living really is. It sickens me to listen to people in this country- mostly white, mostly men- complain about how "bad the Mexicans are." We aren't appreciating the other side of the argument- the side where a person is willing to leave his home and family, risk his life, and be treated like dirt in a foreign country just so he can provide for his folks back home. No, it is not alright that people are coming into our country illegally, because it disables the system. But it is equally unfair for us to flaunt our wealth in the face of a neighboring nation and then criticize its people for wanting a tiny piece of what we have. We go to Mexico to take advantage of their relaxed liquor laws, their cheap medications, their resorts built on the backs of the poor, and we claim to understand them. I have heard white people who live in gated, protected communities down there claim that they somehow relate to the people who live in shacks built from reeds and cardboard only a few miles away. So many of us see two Mexicos- the colorful parts preserved for tourists, and the faces of the immigrants looking for something better in a foreign place. We get so wrapped up in these two stereotypes that we forget these are humans. Mexico has had its own struggles. They have their own problems with discrimination. The people there, particularly those in Chiapas, suffer in true squalor. We cannot relate. None of us. Those who claim to be "gangsters" have no clue. Even those who are considered "poor" in this country have so much more than the people just next door.

I am so enamored with humankind; we are truly the most powerful species on this planet, for better or worse. My amazement turns to disgust, however, when I think of what we are capable of doing to one another. We can do so much for each other- think the aid after the earthquake in Haiti- but we are capable of being just as cruel as we are kind. You won't see bats kill each other because they believe in different gods. You're not going to see frogs execute an entire population of their same species simply because they have different ideals on the right way to live.

We are capable of passing laws that essentially authorize ethnic profiling because we dehumanize that ethnicity. Illegal immigrants are not people with mothers and fathers and siblings and children to Rush Limbaugh or Lou Dobbs. They aren't people who have friends, and like to play soccer. They're just a bunch of things, objects. It's a lot easier to discriminate against an entire population when you don't have to think about them as people.

But we are also capable of protesting in the thousands when someone discriminates. We are capable of gritting our teeth and banding together because we do see other groups as people, rather than just a population. We are capable of getting in trucks and bringing aid to people when our government drops the ball.

And after contemplating all of this, after listening to just how awful a government can be to its people, my blood boils. It makes me want to get in a truck and go down there myself. It makes me feel guilty to be living in a dorm with indoor plumbing and a heater.

But then I realize I'm an anthropology student. I'm not going to school to be able to get a good job or make a lot of money- I'm here to learn how to speak for people who cannot adequately speak for themselves. I am part of the most privileged group on Earth; I'm a white kid in upper-middle class America. I feel, not just duty-bound, but impassioned to learn about other people and help them. Anthropologists are not just aid workers or sympathizers- we are empathizers. I have been told that my loyalty lies with the people I'm studying, and I think this is true. I'm not out to use a culture to prove some point, and I'm not out to change the attitudes of the culture. I'm out to try as best as I can to be one of them, try to understand them, and finally, to try and explain their goals in terms my own culture can understand. I'm in school because I want to be able to go to places like Chiapas, learn how to relate to the people, and try and help them in the Western world. It is a hell of a lot harder for someone to disregard a white person with a doctorate than an indigenous person with no shoes.

And I realize this has been long-winded and has wandered a bit. I'm angry. I'm having to justify to myself why I'm in school, rather than on the front-lines. I guess I felt that my justification needs to be shared with at least one other person in order for it to feel authentic. It's easy to be an angry American sitting at a desk ranting on a computer. It's a lot harder to be an angry American sitting at a desk ranting on a computer who feels she should be somewhere else.

Thank you for taking the time to read all this. I hope, as always, that my words have entertained, if not enlightened.