To the north of Rio Bravo, who in the United States is known as Rio Grande, Mexico Stop called Mexico. As soon as this water boundary intersects – or the desert, depending on where it intersects – Mexico becomes Texas, Arizona, California or Nevada. Mexicans become angels, New York, Bostonians and become fans of the Yankees, Dodders and the Galaxy. You might think that Mexico ends there; But just look at the hands of these migrants to understand that they are still Mexicans.
The hands of women who cleanse the rooms of the great hotels in Manhattan and Las -Vegas and the cooks, which in restaurants throughout the country prepare a typical food of the countries of the world, are Mexican. Mexicans are the hands of the cooks who are developing the menu of the Beverly -Hills restaurant and the leaders of the films who try it after receiving an Oscar. Mexico is known to have many persons; But hands, they are always the same.
38 million Mexicans live in the United States. Eleven of these millions were born in Mexico and other 27 in the United States; That is, they are Mexican second, third or some more distant generations. This amount is equivalent to the amount of the population of Belgium, Greece, Portugal and Norway and a third of the total number of Mexicans living in Mexico. A little more data: of these Mexicans in the north, half has been living in the United States for more than 20 years; Six out of ten living in California or Texas; 70% are fluent in English, and 65% retain the use of Spanish.
But 38 million Mexicans also represent a demographic bonus in a country where the white population and young labor passes into their hands: the average age of the Mexicans in the United States is 27 years, which is significantly lower than the US average, 38; This trend is supported. These 38 million Mexicans are also sending money transfer to Mexico for almost $ 40,000 and equivalent to 60% of Latin American people in the United States, a group with the purchase authority of almost $ 700,000 – one out of ten dollars from the income available in the country.
There are many reasons to spend a trip
Most of the poverty in Mexico is spent by those who migrate to the United States, which, in turn, are integrated into the decille of the poorest of this country in order to increase the standard of living of their families in another. Do not think, however, that economic income was the only engine that will transfer the house to the north. It is true that millions of Mexicans in the United States have arrived unregistered – like millions of immigrants from other countries – but over the past two decades, the number of people in the country have illegally entered it with legal documents, whether it is not a visa or visa of research, tourism or work that they allow them to re -evaluate. This migration of white collars is evidence that there are as many reasons in the country as migrants. Hands that work, study, purely and therapeutic cure have their own stories.
Although it is true that many have changed the country to improve the life of the family at the place of origin, many others did it, simply and clearly saved their lives. As in the case of migrants from Central America, a large number of Mexicans do not go north because they want, but because corruption and impunity at all levels of the Mexican state subject them to their lives and make them go. Some migrated according to medical indications, such as a family that lived in California for two decades without documents, because parents, despite the fact that they were professionals and having a stable economic life in Mexico, could only receive medical care for their daughter in the United States. There are those who decided to live in cities such as Los -Angeles, San Francisco or New York, where they can openly live their gender identity and sexual orientation, being a violation in their conservative communities of origin.
There is also a cause of migration that is associated with productive activity. Hundreds of thousands of peasant and/or indigenous workers, from the southern states of Ohak, Chiapas or Herrero, decided to go to the United States to go to the fields. It is also a two -day story. According to the neoliberal paradigm of the distribution of work, which was materialized in Mexico through the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta or Nafta), Mexican hands, which before that cultivate, the fields were supposed to go to the macilum for assembling electronic devices manufactured in plants of multinational companies – the door to the first world. Of course, this did not happen; The workers took their hands, their things and went north to continue working on the field, now in exchange for a salary of seven dollars per hour. In a good “Mexican” peasant in California, it is summarized: they take the same Genee, but it is better to pay them. Of course, a huge condition that this represented for American society during the year is pandemic, when the hands that cultivate and harvest, those that are clean, those that are distributed, those who care, and those who treat, become “essential”.
Thus, in the United States, millions who live, pass their house, their parents, their friends. There are those who left the navel buried – a ritual of radical origin, which connects newborn with the ground that saw them born – and dreams of returning. They do not return, because there is a daughter who goes to the university or a son who can go through the streets without typing on Narco, and because there is a mother who can buy medicines with dollars that cross the boundaries. But all this Mexico, who has no doubt, continues to beat in the skin.
If we remember that the peak of Mexican migration in the United States took place at the beginning of the 21st century, it is easy to understand that in two decades there are those who ordered their immigration situation and built a stable life. That there are those who have formed a family who already feels more gring than Mexican, and that there are those who cannot or do not want to return. But it does not matter whether they arrived several years ago, or their ancestors always lived in the Texas Valley before the border crossed them; Resistance and solidarity networks that characterize this community have work against racism, xenophobia and classism. All, regardless of their personal circumstances, exceeded the barrier of the language, origin, color of the skin and cultural identity. These Mexicans often participated at work to protect their right to health care, education, worthy work, family reunification and political mission. Living peacefully on the ground that works, and that, despite everyone who ultimately loves.
Many migrate to help their families in Mexico; Others to save life or openly live their sexual orientation
Although it is easy to register with a flaming finger on the imperialist/capitalist mechanism of the American system, the Mexicans in the United States do not forget the responsibility of the Mexican state in the process of emigration. They know that, despite the fact that, depending on the money that their own migrants send, Mexico does not want migrants from Central America to cross the country-country-at the same time when it sends the National Guard to the southern border to prevent the passage of migrants who honor the Spanish exiles of the Republicans who arrived in the Mexico on board the Sinaias of the Sinaia. 80 years ago.
Mexico, a country that was characterized by the reception of foreigners with open arms over the course of the twentieth century, ultimately made its own migration in the United States invisible. The last Mexican government, which in 2000 devoted significant resources for this community, was Vicenta Fox, in 2000. With the arrival of Felipe Calderon, six years later, the migration caused by exile and violence joined the economic one. The current President of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Odor, limited his speech to the migrants from Central America, who crossed Mexico, ignoring Northern Mexico. And the Mexicans in the United States, meanwhile, politicized, ask their congressmen in Washington, as well as the governors of their states in Mexico, because they know that with the money they send, are entitled to receive these accounts. Mexicans in the United States resist and refuse to be victims of the unsuccessful system of both countries.
American and Latin American
The indifference launched from Mexico, an attempt is added to dilute the Mexican personality that works in the United States. When the Mexican arrives in this country, he is immediately added to this anomic mass, marked as “brown”, Latin American or Latin. During the first years, it is difficult to understand belonging to this group, since, in strict expression, Latin is any resident of the peoples of Europe and America, which speak languages received from Latin. Then the Latin American – Mexicans, Argentines, Spanish, Italians or French; Latin American, who are Americans, Latin Europeans, European. But for some reason in the international community, the Americans turned out to be “American”, while others, including the Mexicans, are clearly “Latin American” – and other Latinoramans, originals, “European ones. ”
Outside of Mexico and the United States, the rest of the world must carefully monitor the Mexicans of the North and, in addition to the economic situation and political discourse, recognize them with the strength and the essence of the two countries in debt with them. Mexicans in the United States – despite the lack of documents, into the operation of labor, into the invisibility of their strength – bear their culture, their joy, character to Metiz, who allowed them to maintain their identity. In every place where there are two or more Mexicans, you can find music, food, full -color clothes, expressions full of smart humor and harm. Boys of the second and third generation speak English, but “for breakfast” they ask for coffee and sweet bread, thus in Spanish. Language becomes identical; Words are communicated for their meaning and claim to history and origin.
In the north it is easy to find Mexico. People work and survive, and continue to love, cook, dance; He falls in love, ignores, has children and is proud of them. In Northern Mexico, it is easy to see the young oahaku dancing Syrop Sierra, and the next morning reaches the Berkeley university for the 10th grade. The Mexicans, wherever they are, leave an imprint that extends to their Brothers Central America, South America, which fills with the same joy everything that concerns, although the world outside thinks that Mexico ends where Mexico ends, where the river begins.
For a person who crosses the border back to the United States, after visiting a family in his city, there is a difficult internal giggle to restrain when a customs agent asks in English: “What do you bring from Mexico?” But you hear, you have not seen our hands? Have you not seen this from Mexico, we already brought everything?