American Dream?

Who remembers Pablo? 17 years old and darkly handsome with Aztec features. It's said he's not been heard from for 3 months. His mother Elena in Michoacan remembers as she kneels before the altar praying to La Virgen for a miracle that will not come. Now the dollars too, will not come and so, she must somehow make due and concentrate on her five younger children, but she thinks of Pablo, "He must be dead to have forgotten me". Is he dead? A bloated corpse somewhere in the Rio Bravo?* Or has he become another of the many, lost to La Vida Loca* and past caring in the streets of Los Angeles? or Chicago? or Indianapolis? And what about Felipe? Maria's little boy they live in the slums of Puebla, Felipe is 4 years old and can't walk- his legs are atrophied no one knows why and the local curandera* couldn't help. But Maria has hope- her husband has become an important man, (or so she thinks.) He works for a carpet mill in Atlanta and soon he will send for them- they will come to America and Felipe will have An American doctor soon... And then there is Ramiro from Zacatecas- after a year of field work he had finally raised enough money to pay the coyote.* But he won't be traveling anywhere, he was stabbed to death last week by his own cousin- who was never right in the head and even crazier from drinking pulque.* And so, at the Mexican consulate in downtown Chicago a poster haughtilly declares what is an illusion at best, but for most is rather an impudent lie. This poster proclaims both in Spanish, and in English, "No humano es ilegal". "No human being is illegal". Yet in virtually any American city, as one drives by in comfortable cars, protected from the elements of rain and snow we, men and boys on bicycles ride to and from work hidden, in restaurant kitchens and in those factories that will accept us. Who is it that stops to ponder our fate? Contemplate the history of our lives? Realize all that we have endured just in our coming to American soil? And who cares enough to even be aware of the cost there is in chasing the "American Dream?" Instead, you dine on the food picked and prepared by us, enjoy the products manufactured by us and you turn away, sometimes in disgust without a second thought, to "wetbacks", cheap labor, America's beasts of burden. The accomplished say, 'Why don't you learn English?" but with a 65 hour week who has the time? The complacent say, "Why are you so disheveled?" but crowded 7 or more, in a substandard basement apartment who can be glamorous? But still we come with ambitions and hope trading Third World poverty for dissillusionment and rejection disfranchisement and subservience. *Translations Rio Bravo - What Mexicans call the Rio Grande- the border river. La Vida Loca - Literally, "The crazy life". curandera- a native healer. coyote - slang for a human smuggler. pulque - a terribly intoxicating drink made from the Maguey cactus.