The wall encloses us – All!
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By:Arturo Yarish, November, 2010 Translated by (Courtesy of the author)
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There is a monster growing along the southwestern frontier of the United States of America. Born of fear, nurtured by racism, fed by profit, the monster grows as it consumes those who approach. It lays in silence as it grows in length and height feeding on US Tax payers’ dollars it devours Latin American, mostly Mexican Migrant, Workers. The Wall snaking along the USAmerican Frontier rises as a grotesque affront to all the people of Latin America, but most tragically, for the USAmericans themselves, it distinctly marks the Southern line of the New Prison State. The Wall encloses them.
The United States of America is the most insular society in the World and now it is proving it with a border Wall. Can we now anticipate that they will soon build northern and southern motes? The USA is enclosing itself in its fortress state and militarizing its borders behind expanding Walls. Surrounding itself in National myths, it now closes itself off from the rest of the rest of its American neighbors and makes enemies of potentially natural friends.
Expanding its military operations throughout the world and demanding freedom to invest, at the point of a gun, in every corner of the world, it encircles itself behind forbidding walls. Consuming fifty percent of the world’s natural resources, it now builds walls to keep out the “hungry and tired” increasing numbers of exploited migrant masses that Transnational Capitalists are creating daily. After more than century of invasions, of exploiting the riches of all of Latin America, overtly and covertly destroying local democracy, destabilizing national economies, creating wide spread poverty and desperation that is today causing the massive northward migration, the victims are blamed. The USA’s Ruling class is now denying its own responsibility and its own immigrant traditions as it build barriers against its closest neighbors. The Wall contradicts the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty and drains them of meaning. Having destroyed the employment opportunities of millions of Latin American people, having eliminated millions of farm and factory jobs, Neo liberalism is creating the new Latin-American Diaspora by pushing millions in the long march for Jobs. The construction of The” Wall of Shame” aka, the “Wall of Death” and its accompanying internment centers is chauvinistic madness to the extreme: the logical extension of Neo-liberal, Militarism that brings us frighteningly close to Fascism. Despite having access to vast communications systems, many citizens of the USA live under a spreading shroud of darkness and growing fear. The rapid production of fear is the Imperialist’s State’s most important product. The few unscrupulous fear mongers manufacture the images that frighten us into closing out our Latin-American brothers and sisters. Stimulating general suspicion of “the other”, the internal other, and the external other, is a powerful social control devise but we must recognize it specifically as a labor-control tool. The cultivated fear and media promoted fears form an imaginary wall that blocks us from reaching out to each other and organizing together. The one percent of the wealth holders is now being challenged by the growing numbers of poor and as the rich sweep in the remaining crumbs for themselves, they build more walls and hire more guards; but anger grows. As the ordinary people on both sides of the wall cry out for fairness in law, truth and in economic equity, the Rulers build wider, higher and longer Walls. The Walls may enclose them but they separate us all. Tear down the walls. As in 1940‘s Jim Garland’s words , often sung by Woody Guthrie, express the deep frustration of working families searching for jobs on both sides of the USA’s Wall of Shame today and every moment fear deportation or incarceration. We worked to build this country, mister, While you enjoyed a life of ease; You’ve stolen all that we built, mister; Now our Children starve and freeze. Think me dumb if you wish, mister; Call me green or blue or red; This one thing I sure, know, mister: My hungry children must be fed.
The USA is in fact a country of many divisions and contradictions that are increasingly evident and separated by many internal walls. With more and more people in the Prison State of fear, corruption and deceit, the Fanatical Right constructs numerous Walls: prison walls, internment camp walls, migrant detention camp walls, economic walls and social barrier walls. More Walls will be built to separate the many divided communities. The large Urban Centers teaming with immigrants will be enclosed then the entrapped migrant workers will get day-passes to work in the surrounding, gated-walled-in communities. Walls are already going up but the most fearsome are those that will surround the mind and the concentration camps. And we said “It can’t happen here”. The external walls and the internal walls are already in place. The walls of fear enclose some, prison walls enclose others, un-payable mortgages mentally enclose more in low paying jobs and narcotics enclose those who have had nothing before they are sent to the Wall of complete desperation. Let’s take up the words of another captured person of the USA’ enclosing, colonial system , the Puerto Rican poet , Andrés Jimenez , when he cries out , to his people who are enclosed in the grip of unabashed colonialism ¡Despiértate coño! ¡Somos iguales, somos iguales! In our Time will we hear a President of The United States of America repeat President Reagan’s words and demand that the USA “tear down this wall” that is dividing our Americas and all Americans? * * On June 12, 1987, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, President Ronald Reagan publicly challenged Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to ”tear down this wall.” Quoted from the NYT of 12 June 2007. |
