Classism, prejudice in Mexico lead millions to slip across US southern border

Beach resort of Costa Maya at Quintana Roo. (Photo US Government)
Had you ever thought about what it’s like to live in Mexico? We assume so many people slip across the border simply because of jobs, or to obtain welfare and healthcare. That’s partly true—I’ve often said the U.S. government currently runs the world’s largest taxpayer funded charity.

But there are other reasons people leave Mexico, and those reasons are rarely addressed by US media.

Jerry Kammer at the Center for Immigration Studies wrote an article about classism in Mexico, and he pointed to a well-known writer in that country, Luis Rubio.

Kammer pointed to Rubio who wrote in the Mexico newspaper Reforma about “problems that keep us from prospering: disregard for authority, impunity, the classism in our society, and the absence of a police system that is relevant, that fits our reality and circumstance." There’s a link to a telling video, showing how women in an affluent Mexican neighborhood curse at policeman for whom the women obviously have no respect. If you have even a cursory knowledge of Spanish, you will recognize some very vile terms in the women's language.

I did some reading of Rubio’s other writings—one, in particular, The ‘And Why Me? In that essay Rubio explains the failure of government after the authoritarian era ended. Rubio notes, “[U]nfortunately, Mexico did not have a Mandela to inaugurate the democratic era.”

Rubio explains the corruption among the governors:

“[T]he governors, heirs to part of the power that was previously consolidated in the presidency, have become established as feudal lords of the manor with no need to be accountable to anybody (why me?). The governors not only corner the greater part of the public expenditures, but they also do this without the least federal or local scrutiny. One governor contracts debt after the election of his successor, the money disappears, and there is no earthly power that can call him to account.”

Rubio said another governor designated his own brother as successor.

Even worse, freedom of expression, according to Rubio is sharply curtailed “in the majority of states, where the feudal lord and master in the semblance of the governor or the narco (or a fusion of both) has ended up imposing his law.” Rubio noted that the authoritarian regime may well be over, but “the ability to govern disappeared.”

There is a very enlightening backgrounder on classism in Mexico at the Augsburg College website. Augsburg is a Lutheran College in Minneapolis; the school sponsors a study abroad program. The backgrounder explains racism towards certain classes of people as well as discrimination towards indigenous and low income women, partly due to the culture of “machismo.”

The Augsburg backgrounder notes, “The indigenous and the Afro-Mexican people are subject to blatant racism in Mexican society.” Skin color, as anyone who has visited the country knows, does count.

I have often written that Mexico’s is a failed government. I stand by that assessment. If the country was free, if all had equal rights not only guaranteed but enforced by law, millions would not risk their lives to cross the US southern border.

What we Americans must ask ourselves is how classism and prejudice will impact our communities. At the moment, no one approaches the disaster on our open border with any method resembling common sense. We currently not only have a national security crisis because of that, we have a foreign policy disaster as well, courtesy of politicians who remain vocal about US shortcomings but silent on Mexico’s treatment of her own people.

(Commentary by Kay B. Day/Sept. 6, 2011)

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