The Mexican landscape impressed upon me the need to write this blog. This past weekend, Katherine and I took a road trip to the Sierra Chincua Monarch Butterfly Reserve on a weekend trip (I will get to this fantastic experience a bit later). On the ten-hour bus ride, the towns we past by were strikingly similar to that of our own familiar Ziquitaro. The abandoned houses, the dilapidated schools, the echoes of United States popular culture (I was particularly fond of an Interstate 5 sign hung in a window)…you could have very easily mistaken one town for the other. So in that ten-hour stretch, I began to think: Just how many other towns out there are like Ziquirato? The thought was daunting. How many other schools are providing an education to children of bi-national circumstances? How many other families are broken apart from immigration? How many other pueblitos have shrunk in population due to the absence of working-age men?
Whether or not we agree with the current policies and administration surrounding immigration, we cannot turn a blind eye to the challenges it presents. Immigration has become the untouchable subject in politics, not only because of the complexities it presents in terms of campaigning and elections (i.e. winning the “Latino vote”), but because of the Catch-22 that the United States has found itself in with respect to Mexican immigrants. A great film called, “A Day Without A Mexican,” illustrates the dependence of the United States on immigrant (specifically Mexican) labor. The driving point of the film emerges provoking the idea of: What would my day be like without the Mexican labor force? Imagine if you will: no farm workers, no housemaids, no day laborers, no caretakers—no fast food!! Risking sounding completely impersonal, I propose just for a moment we conceptualize Mexican immigrant labor as a commodity, an economic sector that supplies Mexico with a huge chunk of its GDP (in remittances) and provides the United States with a cheap labor force that pays into the tax purse, yet receives no social benefit from those taxes (not to mention the ease of exploitation using documentation as a threat). From this perspective, it is a pretty sweet deal. So in the eyes of the United States and Mexican governments, what would be the motivation to change such a system? Lest I remind you we are looking at the commodity of Mexican labor: Mexico producing an unskilled, uneducated source of inexpensive labor and selling it for remittances, and the United States benefiting economically from the purchase of a convenient, exploitable labor source for which they are not socially obligated or responsible.
But then...where is the origin of such a mutually beneficial system? Ziquitaro. Zinaparo. Numaran. And all of the countless other pueblitos we passed by in our bus trip to see the butterflies. The reality is that the Mexican immigrant labor force is not a commodity to be bought and sold. It is a group made up of people that I have the privilege of sharing my life with in our little town. The future of this group resides within the intelligent young minds that I joyfully teach English to on a daily basis. But what about the students and families that want to break out of the cycle of being under educated and having to heed to the pull of the Mexican immigrant labor force in the US? What is the recourse for the people who live in a community with a system of poor education and families living in poverty? In fact, it is the opinion of many mothers in our community that the school system is so poor that sometimes they question if they would rather keep their children at home. With all the hope in the world, this is what our organization is trying to change. Let me just quote directly from our mission statement: “First Step aims to help town members lead more successful lives in both Mexico and the US through enhancing their access to education as well as bolstering its relative importance in their lives. Ultimately our organization has bilateral aims: to instill a sense of hope and future in towns where immigration has become virtually the only economic option while simultaneously helping forge stronger communities in the US by educating its future members.” We are challenging our students to make themselves more than a commodity in the face of stereotypes, and every day, they impress their beautiful, unique humanness on me.
Now for the butterflies: Katherine and I had such an amazing experience at the Sierra Chincua Monarch Butterfly Reserve in the Zitaquaro area of Michoacan. It was truly unlike anything I had seen before in my life. As we hiked down to the hibernation site of the monarchs, millions of butterflies flitted around in the air. It was as if it was snowing, but the snowflakes were somehow alive. The green trees seemed brown because of the overwhelming number of butterflies crowded on them. To say the least, it was the greatest natural wonder I have ever witnessed. (Other than the birth of my precious niece Katelyn.) Interestingly enough, the monarchs migrate from the Great Lakes area of the US and Canada, then hibernate in areas of Mexico, and will eventually lay their eggs in and around Texas. Imagine all that wing flapping!! I never considered the Monarch butterfly to be an international migrant!
Whether or not we agree with the current policies and administration surrounding immigration, we cannot turn a blind eye to the challenges it presents. Immigration has become the untouchable subject in politics, not only because of the complexities it presents in terms of campaigning and elections (i.e. winning the “Latino vote”), but because of the Catch-22 that the United States has found itself in with respect to Mexican immigrants. A great film called, “A Day Without A Mexican,” illustrates the dependence of the United States on immigrant (specifically Mexican) labor. The driving point of the film emerges provoking the idea of: What would my day be like without the Mexican labor force? Imagine if you will: no farm workers, no housemaids, no day laborers, no caretakers—no fast food!! Risking sounding completely impersonal, I propose just for a moment we conceptualize Mexican immigrant labor as a commodity, an economic sector that supplies Mexico with a huge chunk of its GDP (in remittances) and provides the United States with a cheap labor force that pays into the tax purse, yet receives no social benefit from those taxes (not to mention the ease of exploitation using documentation as a threat). From this perspective, it is a pretty sweet deal. So in the eyes of the United States and Mexican governments, what would be the motivation to change such a system? Lest I remind you we are looking at the commodity of Mexican labor: Mexico producing an unskilled, uneducated source of inexpensive labor and selling it for remittances, and the United States benefiting economically from the purchase of a convenient, exploitable labor source for which they are not socially obligated or responsible.
But then...where is the origin of such a mutually beneficial system? Ziquitaro. Zinaparo. Numaran. And all of the countless other pueblitos we passed by in our bus trip to see the butterflies. The reality is that the Mexican immigrant labor force is not a commodity to be bought and sold. It is a group made up of people that I have the privilege of sharing my life with in our little town. The future of this group resides within the intelligent young minds that I joyfully teach English to on a daily basis. But what about the students and families that want to break out of the cycle of being under educated and having to heed to the pull of the Mexican immigrant labor force in the US? What is the recourse for the people who live in a community with a system of poor education and families living in poverty? In fact, it is the opinion of many mothers in our community that the school system is so poor that sometimes they question if they would rather keep their children at home. With all the hope in the world, this is what our organization is trying to change. Let me just quote directly from our mission statement: “First Step aims to help town members lead more successful lives in both Mexico and the US through enhancing their access to education as well as bolstering its relative importance in their lives. Ultimately our organization has bilateral aims: to instill a sense of hope and future in towns where immigration has become virtually the only economic option while simultaneously helping forge stronger communities in the US by educating its future members.” We are challenging our students to make themselves more than a commodity in the face of stereotypes, and every day, they impress their beautiful, unique humanness on me.
Now for the butterflies: Katherine and I had such an amazing experience at the Sierra Chincua Monarch Butterfly Reserve in the Zitaquaro area of Michoacan. It was truly unlike anything I had seen before in my life. As we hiked down to the hibernation site of the monarchs, millions of butterflies flitted around in the air. It was as if it was snowing, but the snowflakes were somehow alive. The green trees seemed brown because of the overwhelming number of butterflies crowded on them. To say the least, it was the greatest natural wonder I have ever witnessed. (Other than the birth of my precious niece Katelyn.) Interestingly enough, the monarchs migrate from the Great Lakes area of the US and Canada, then hibernate in areas of Mexico, and will eventually lay their eggs in and around Texas. Imagine all that wing flapping!! I never considered the Monarch butterfly to be an international migrant!
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