They Treat Us So Bad

Once, when visiting Teotihuacan near Mexico City, my friend and I stopped to chat with a vendor.  My Anglo friend told me (in English, and in front of the vendor) that I shouldn't buy because it was probably a fake.  I had no answer when the vendor responded "they treat us so bad, even in our own country."

"nearly every immigrant group has been caught at that crossroads for a time, wanted for work but unwelcome as citizens...but Mexicans have been summoned and sent back in cycles for 4 generations"

Picking cotton in Texas in 1919, image from New York Times

image from latimes.com


"They say that 'free trade' is supposed to help us.
We get manufacturing jobs like my son-in-law's at the General Motors plant in Silao.
That's fine with the American companies.
It's expensive for them to pay car workers in the States.

But when it comes to agriculture, this free trade is killing us...
the Americans refused to stop selling their cheap corn in Mexico...
more and more people will try to cross the border now,
to find work.
This, while the Americans are trying harder than ever to turn us back.

From Crossing the Wire by Will Hobbs