Posted on 02/25/2017 3:33:15 PM PST by Ennis85
Americans' patronising views of their southern neighbour are ill-informed, outdate and about to backfire on them Visiting California, I'm always shocked how Americans-even vaping, Prius-driving liberal Democrats-treat their Mexican staff. Need someone to toil in the sun for 12 hours on minimum wage? Need a nanny who won't kick off when you're constantly late? Hire a Mexican. Employers engage little with these people who inhabit their yards and homes(the language barrier is cited) but if they do, the tone is exquisitely patronising. Mexicans aren't so much individuals as a class of biddable brown Untermensch. Likewise President Trump has addressed the Mexican government like a lazy pool-cleaner, a bus-boy who dropped a tray. We'll build a wall-and you'll damn well pay for it. And latterly, we're going to deport all illegal immigrants and dump them over your border, even if they're not actually Mexicans. Travelling around American's southern neighbour these past few weeks. I've wondered if Trump knows what he is dealing with. Has he seen Mexico City's skyscrapers and glittery airport, the growing middle class who fill vast malls and VIP cinemas? Roads, even in the poorer south, are no worse than in New York City. This is the second biggest economy in Latin America, an upwardly mobile, modern democracy of 120 million people, being dissed as a tin-pot, dust bowl loser. Not all Mexicans are as livid as their former president Vicente Fox whose "we're not paying for no f**king wall" tweets have so amusingly breached diplomatic protocol. People I met were more baffled, insulted and hurt. And these feelings, already being harnessed will benefit Mexico and damage America. The term "malinchismo" describes a Mexican self-hatred, a sense that foreign products, ideas, even people are inherently superior to home grown. White faces dominate magazines in a majority mestizo land. All things American have long had a special allure and a status often unequal to their quality. As I tried on a jacket in a fancy department store, the assistant warned me: "You do know it is a Mexican brand?" But already Mexicans are spending less on US goods in part because Trump's belligerence has crashed the peso, but also a defiant new nationalism is brewing. A businesswoman reports that all her Mexican friends, even apolitical socialites, have changed their WhatApp avatars from Cancun bikini snaps to the national flag. Fanners at recent nationwide anti-Trump rallies called for dignity and respect. A student told me; "He might just unite us all."
As a tourist I kept thinking facetiously, it's Mexico that should build the wall. Keep out the American visitors who demand that a deep, delicate ancient culture bows to their thin, tinny one bringing diabolical coffee, gargantuan portions, the Cola-Cola that has caused Mexico's obesity crisis, the corruption of a fine, fresh local cuisine into bowel-clogging Tex-Mex. In lovely colonial towns like San Miguel de Allende, snowbirds trying to eke out Minnesota pensions have driven up house prices. Lathery, pony-tailed hippies browse English bookshops full of atrocious, self- published, expat memoirs about suburban moms "finding themselves" here. "Americans have not looked for Mexico in Mexico". said the poet Octavio Paz, "they have looked for their obsessions, enthusiasms, phobias". That Trump's wall will keep out the "bad hombres" is a particularly pointed insult. Overall crime in Mexico is marginally- 2 percent-higher than in the US. But in America, gun crime is six times greater. In Mexico there are no street-corner gun shops, as in Miami or Houston; indeed gun laws are closer to those in Britain. In theory citizens have a right to bear arms; in practice; it is virtually impossible. And where do the guns come from used by the brutal narco gangs of breaking bad fame? They are bought legally in America. Between 2009 and 2014, around 70,000 firearms seized by Mexican authorities were found to originate in the US, mainly from Southwest border states. The "bad hombres" are armed by America. Indeed the ruthless drug cartels that kill and maim, ruin whole communities and corrupt local democracy, feed a degenerate and wholly American appetite for heroin, cocain and crystal meth. Mexico's drug problem is negligible, use of opiates is opiates is six times lower than in the US. Moreover, it is the choas and violence caused by the cartels that drives migration across the border. If America wanted to keep down illegals, it could save $15 billion on a wall, stop partying, put its alienated addicted youth into rehab and reform its guns laws. Of course, it never will. It is possible that every brick in Trump's theoretical(and most likely unfeasible) wall could help to build Mexico. Already there is evidence of "Trump Slump", with European holiday inquiries about America tumbling. With his every utterance, Trump pulls up the national welcome mat a little more. Meanwhile Mexico's tourist trade is booming. More significantly, a high-level US banker remarks that the smart money is betting on Mexico inward investment will flourish. Meanwhile malinchismo will fade, making it patriotic to buy local goods. And its politicians are growing braver. If Trump tears up NAFTA, imposing tariffs to pay for his wall, Mexico will retaliate: already it threatens to stop buying an annual $2.4 billion of US corn and look instead to Argentina or Brazil. A temperamentally chilled-out nation is rising. America may find that the hardworking neighbour who mows its lawns, cares for its kids, clears up its mess without complaint won't be bullied any more.
The Times YUK
...Mexico won’t take these insults much longer...
So, what are they going to do, invade us?
Has he seen Mexico City’s skyscrapers and glittery airport, the growing middle class who fill vast malls and VIP cinemas? Roads, even in the poorer south, are no worse than in New York City. This is the second biggest economy in Latin America, an upwardly mobile, modern democracy of 120 million people, being dissed as a tin-pot, dust bowl loser
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That’s all good, then they won’t have any problem when 15 million Mexicans come home for good.
They are coming, get ready.
“As a tourist I kept thinking facetiously”
Tourist. That means this idiot doesn’t live here, putting up with the illegals.
Mexico is a turd world hellhole with a kleptocratic government that needs to be just done away with.
Prove your point, Janice and GO LIVE in MEXICO
Then get back with us
Janice Turner, clean up your own backyard before worrying about the neighbor’s backyard.
Typical incoherent rambling, irrational and itself bigoted.
“When I slap you, you’ll take it and like it.”
Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon.
It’s easy to have a booming middle class in a vibrant,glittery capital city when you export all your poverty.
I would be very happy if Mexico built a wall on their side. Problem is, it would be a pitiful wall, likely would have built in drug tunnels and built in human smuggling tunnels, and would fall over in a light breeze.
And, as for not taking the “insults” anymore. What are they going to do to “punish” us? Send even more of there people to us?
OOooooOOOOoooOOOOoooo!! :o
I stopped there. The author should try living in SoCal & see the negative changes brought about by illegal immigrants over the last 40 years.
“... an upwardly mobile, modern democracy of 120 million people...”
Then why come here??
I wish they would declare war.
We should’ve declared war on them long ago.
“...a deep, delicate ancient culture ...”
Yup. uh huh. Such a great “culture”, they can’t exist on their own without us Gringoes.
Yup. That’s a culture to emulate for sure.
Hmmm. I wonder how many states we could carve Mexico up to be? ; )
It's always about the snobbery, and the elites' love of little brown exotics.
Eff off, limey bastard.
She can't. Mexico has one of the strictest immigration and foreign residency policies in the world.
Foreigners cannot vote, they cannot protest the government, they cannot serve in government jobs, and they take a back-seat to Native-born Mexicans when it come to housing, food, shelter, etc.
Mexcio puts Mexican citizens first. In fact, their Constitution specifically outlines that Mexicans are protected to preserve the Mexican state. If we did the same thing, we'd immediately be called racists and white supremacists.
Plus you damn sure that Mexico treats Guatemalans who try to cross the border like the invaders they are.
Just unbelievable that nobody on our side, not even Trump administration, is touting this hard fact.
Mexico is not our "ally." Never has been, never will be. They are to us what North Korea is to South Korea.
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