After having viewed the movie Sicario last week, I started seeing several connections between now with the contemporary issues of drug wars and border indecencies as well as the problems over time dating back to the Bracero program in 1942. During this intense movie experience as well as parts of our readings of the Latino Threat and Migra!, there are so many obscene ways that this idea of the true border is truly recognized. In so many ways there are too many understandings and beliefs for what it stands for in dividing these areas. That being said, from all stand points of people involved in early border patrol and programs as the Bracero every side had deliberate involvement in creating this catastrophe of today. For instance, drawing from what happened in the early stages of bordering shown in Migra! how they indulged in these special Mexican deportation parties. This skewed ideal of what it means to bring someone into this country started with problems just as these. It became in our country this cruel belief that no matter the "use" for these "aliens" in our country they would never truly have a home. An alien is to only inhabitant of our world for so long and that's the part America did their best to hide by trying to show their respects and interests in dedicating time to programs as the Bracero. But in reality. it didn't matter how the program and relations seemed on the outside, the border patrol and administrations within it always played however they wanted in the inner workings for example on 118 in Migra! there is a lot of discussion about how the officers in the border patrol were pushed to move or quit constantly this strategy was dominant for many years and were consistently asked to move and relocate. While I am not defending the border patrol as a whole I am simply making the connections of how the entire system and this "line" is messed up from all sides that we can see it all taking place in our early history of border patrol that has brought us the problems we face today. No side faced fair executions whether it was deportation per-designed parties of the pushing out of work from the opposite side, both were so wrongly based on a false sense of foundation.
Now with that being said, that has led us to today and movies with displays such as current day drug wars that have flourished due to the examples I mentioned. In Sicario, we can see how all the misunderstandings of this border are pushed as the FBI inhabitants this area of Mexico to conquer what they believe to be fighting for good however by doing this in the early scenes they have all-out brawl with some of the members of the cartel and murder them point blank. This is what we have been led to forced by historic problems in first helping aliens of this country. We have not only scared them away and fearful of leading a true and purposeful life here but we have now come into a war among drugs with them. While we are destroying a lot of their people and creating these deadly areas, we (only some) are benefiting from this inter-workings of the drugs which again goes back to this double-standard for those involved. As we've seen all through this class, we want them for their money and intel through Mexico but they are never to be true citizens here they are still treated as aliens of this country. This is the contemporary problems with what we are left with over time due to the missed functions and promises of programs like the Bracero that was simply not carried out well. The U.S. as an entirety needs to find a way to fix this to avoid harsh realities like the living ones displayed in the movie Sicario.
In class whether we are talking about slavery in the United States or the United States-Mexican border patrol, two themes are always prevalent. These two themes are: “aliens” and “brutality”. Both African Americans and Mexicans experienced being “aliens” or the “foreign” and also they experienced “brutality” during their time of oppression in the United States. Another main concept that these two groups shared when being oppressed by the United States was that they both were used for work in the United States but when they were no longer needed they got dumped with no support or anything from those that they were working for.
ReplyDeleteWe are always taught about the brutality of the slave holders to their slaves and we learn in Migra! and also a movie in class of how bad the brutality is and the horrible conditions that the Mexicans had to stay in when they were crossing over the border into the United States. The embarrassment that came with this brutality is not to go unmentioned either as we learned that men would have to strip completely naked in front of each other as they got tested on every part of their body before being able to go to the United States to do back breaking work for basically no money at all. Another place where we see a huge problem with United States- Mexican brutality is in the Bracero Program where we saw Mexicans being absolutely exploited beyond their means for work during World War II. During this time they also had to go through lots of embarrassing checks before they were sent into the United States to do ridiculous work for next to nothing.
Even though the African American Civil rights movement is well known through out the United States one movement that we do not hear about as much is the Chicano Movement. This movement took place during the 1960’s and was much like the African American Civil Rights movement because how how African Americans tried to gain their equality and civil rights, Mexicans at this time were doing the same thing.
Even to this day both parties are trying to gain their full equality and rights in the United States. We see this in one example with African Americans in the “Black Lives Matter” movement. And Mexicans to this day are also trying to gain not just full equality but full acceptance as well. In Latino Threat we read that it takes three full generations of being in the United States before being able to fully be apart of the United States community: “Latino first- and second- generation interviewees engaged the least in this form of transnational activity.”(65). Along with this acceptance and full rights to education as well their is an HBO movie named “Walkout” that was filmed in 2006 about a group of Chicanos who were not getting full rights to education in their Denver school so they started protesting and they preformed a “walkout” where all the Chicanos walked out of the school at the same time to preform their protest. In this day we see many protests being the way for people to get their views of what they want whether it is a Chicano movement of a walk out or an African American movement and they are holding a “Black Lives Matter” protest.