Top Reasons for Celebrating Cinco De Mayo

1. Simpler Times.
Mexico defeats France at Puebla. Mexico wins its freedom from French colonial domination. Today, in contrast, it's hard to discern who are wearing the white hats in the crowd of old-government-sponsored-drug-thugs, new, anti-government-drug thugs, new-turn-coat soldiers-aligned with anti-government-drug-thugs, spin-off anti-government drug thugs, etc.

2. Enchiladas Suizas.
French cooking is a great addition that has enriched Mexico's cuisine. Merci boucoup.

3. Half-price lunches at participating locations.
Chamber maids, gardeners and farm-workers temporarily held while traveling to their jobsites in the U.S. receive half-price on their happy meals at all Homeland Security holding station cafeterias (while supplies last).

4. Actors portraying Mexicans.
The U.S. commemorates Latinos' contributions to the magnificent mosaic of American cultures with remembrance of American film actors who have valiantly portrayed Mexicans in American cinema: Marlon Brando. Gracias, Marlon.

5. U.S. Brings End to Mexican Corn Market
The staple of Mexican agriculture, corn, lost its market value when U.S. subsidized corn flooded the market south of the border with cheap corn. Thousands of Mexicans lost their farms and work on farms and were forced to move to cities to find work, including cities in the U.S. No worries. Taco Bell bravely stepped into the Mexican fast-food business to provide the remaining masses with their daily "wraps". The corn goddess Tonantzin is not pleased.

6. Gated-Tourism
Flying in for rays and virgin beaches at heavily guarded Cabo San Lucas and Cozumel is still safe-vacationing for tourists. On the American consulate's no-travel zone: Acapulco, Mazatlan, Mexico City, all points interior (including San Miguel de Allende) and the border, where 5,000 people have died each year on average in drug-traffic related violence.

7. Daily bread vs. Ideology
The terrorism link to Mexican seasonal farm-workers, construction laborers and others coming to the U.S. to work at jobs Americans refuse to do has finally been disproven by the arrests of numerous would be-terrorists from other parts of the world, who only resemble, but are not Latino. Mexican workers leave their homes to earn a living, not for ideological reasons.

8. Legalized Pot.
Mexico's gift to American pharmacology is now being grown and sold legally in parts of the U.S. This is a significant step forward in drying up demand for its supply from old-government-sponsored-drug-thugs, new, anti-government-drug thugs, new-turn-coat soldiers-aligned with anti-government-drug-thugs, spin-off anti-government drug thugs, etc.

Deliver Me From Arizona

Our Father, Who Art in Heaven: What were You thinking when you created Arizona elected officials?

This question comes from an Arizona-born, but reared and educated as a “Got-Here-As-Soon-As-I-Could” Texas transplant. This dual citizenship of a sort has made me wonder how two states that make up the major part of the U.S. –Mexico border could be so different in their approaches to immigration.
The answers I’ve come up with are as follows:

(I have had some help with this vexing question from historians at the college where I teach).

1. Arizona legislators put in more hours than ours do in Texas. Ours only meet every two years and for special sessions called by the governor, while theirs meet every year. I’m normally not a less-government-is-better kind of person, but in this case I’m apparently sipping tea.

2. In Arizona, the border with Mexico is a fence dividing the vast, sparsely populated Sonoran desert. You could see it from our back yard in Douglas, where my family lived for 19 years, and where my Dad was killed in a copper smelter accident when I was a toddler. In Texas, the border with Mexico’s Tamaulipas and Chihuahua states is a river, where villages and towns have thrived for more than 300 years.

3. Every year for the better part of this new century, 300 undocumented workers, also known as people, died crossing the Sonora. Last month, unknown thugs murdered an Arizona rancher. The death enraged residents and sparked the state’s lawmakers to pass a controversial law allowing local police to stop those they suspect of being here illegally to show legal work permits or citizenship. One person dead is too many, but you have to wonder if the Arizona lawmakers were wearing cultural blinders not to react in similar shock to the deaths of thousands in the state’s desert.

4. Culturally, Texas’ history is intertwined with those of Spain and Mexico. There have been serious conflicts, some still unresolved. But there has also been, especially at the border, many surprises and successes in the blending of two polar opposites. It takes real grit and tolerance to smooth over differences between such strikingly different cultures, but the Tex-Mex border has been working at it for fun and profit since Texas won its independence from Mexico. This “best of both worlds” brew of heritages is ultimately stronger than any divisions, despite and including dispiriting health and economic problems, and the recent return of the worst of the Wild West, lawless drug cartel thugs.

5. Follow the money. Both states’ largest trading partner is Mexico, yet according to the Department of Transportation, in August of 2008, Texas’ trade with Mexico was estimated at $8.3 billion, while Arizona logged in $787 million in that same month’s business with Mexico.

6. Money talks, but votes talk too, as the old Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project wisely counseled in their bumper sticker slogan, “su voto es su voz” your vote is your voice. According to the U.S. Census, Texan Latinos comprise 36.5% of the state’s population, while in Arizona, Latinos make up 30% of the state’s population. With both the money and demographics talking, it’s no wonder Texas politicians, starting with former Texas governor and U.S. president George W. Bush, have been listening. Their ears are tuned to business and political strategists more than to talk-radio hate-mongers bent on making scapegoats of undocumented workers.

So do we know if the next session of the Texas legislature will pass a law similar to that of Arizona’s? Or will the U.S. Congress finally see beyond election myopia to pass immigration reform that includes a legal accommodation for workers from Mexico? I don’t know, but I do have a sense that the drug cartel crisis will influence the outcome, as well as the new push for our nation’s climate policy. Likewise, Arizona may experience unexpected economic repercussions from the diplomatic fury in Mexico.

Exploring the different stances at the U.S. Mexican border has convinced me that Texas and my birth state, Arizona, diverge in their approach to immigration for reasons that differ as much as their shapes and sizes on the U.S. map. Amen.