Mexicans Uniquely Alarmed
by Arizona Shooting Attack
"Giffords has been a lawmaker that has repudiated her state's controversial law SB 1070. She is an advocate of realistic immigration rules that would allow a path to legalization, with the goal of bringing some order to a broken immigration system. And so the politicians of the Tea Party, led by Sarah Palin, have focused their attention on her and any politician that doesn't cling to their ideas and discourse of anger and violence."
The inflammatory language in
U.S. politics has surpassed acceptable limits. The warning lights lit up this
weekend with the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, at a
community event at a supermarket in Tucson where an individual arrived, drew a
gun, and opened fire.
He killed five people
including a little girl, a federal judge and at the time of this writing,
Giffords is in critical condition, struggling between life and death.
Giffords has been a lawmaker
in the liberal-wing of the Democratic Party who has repudiated her state's controversial
law SB 1070. She is an advocate
of realistic immigration rules that would allow a path to legalization, with
the goal of bringing some order to a broken immigration system.
And so the politicians of the Tea Party, led by
Sarah Palin, have focused
their attention on her and any politician that doesn't cling to their ideas and
discourse of anger and violence.
As recently as last
November’s elections, Palin posted a map of the United States showing states
with congressmen who were targets of her attacks in the crosshairs of a rifle.
Twenty lawmakers were on this list. Giffords was one of them.
What was a metaphor for
Palin was a reality for the individual who showed up Saturday at a Safeway
supermarket. He arrived with his gun in hand and opened fire on Giffords and
those around her.
The rhetoric of intolerance
in the U.S. is worrying. That was the message we heard from Obama, Palin, as
well as politicians on the left and right, all alarmed by what happened in Tucson.
In Mexico, this intolerance
affects us directly, because unfortunately, the brunt of it is aimed at
immigrants - and not only illegal ones. Even if the primary suspect in the Giffords
shooting isn't of Hispanic origin.
Besides repudiating politicians
who disagree with laws like SB 1070, almost anything having to do with
Hispanics, Latinos or Mexico are rejected in Arizona.
The New York Timespublished
an article this weekend that recounted the unhappy fate of Mexican-American
studies programs in Arizona schools. They have been declared illegal.
Branded as a propagandistic subject
that brainwashes students into believing that Latinos are an oppressed class in
the U.S., prohibition of the subject has now been passed into law, and as a
result, current school curricula must now be dismantled.
This only applies to subjects
relating to Mexican-American studies, and not other similar programs of study such
as African-American, Asian or Native American.
This is a complicated topic
for Mexicans, particularly because right now in Mexico, Central American
immigrants continue to disappear or be kidnapped and killed. Our rhetoric in
defense of our compatriots in the United States can be dismissed by the simple
response, “don’t come asking us not to do here, what happens every day on a
more violent level in your country.”
