Sinking Arizona

By Jim Smith

Oh Arizona, where the elderly go to die
a Death’s Head has gripped your state.
Immigrants raise their eyes and ask why
they must suffer such a criminal’s fate.

Sunstroke has come early to Arizona this year, or so it would seem. The Anglo majority in the Arizona government has tyrannized the Latino minority in ways that would not be expected in an American state.

Not since the “good” German Christians decided in the 1930s to declare German Jews to be unwanted aliens without rights has a group of people, defined by their ethnicity, been subject to automatic police harassment and ostracism.

How did the federal government respond to this civil rights atrocity? By sending in the troops – 12,000 national guard to be exact. This should be no surprise since the feds responded to the earthquake in Haiti by sending in the troops. At least, Latinos will have some protection like Blacks did in the South. Wrong. The troops are there to seal up the border, not protect anyone’s rights.

Meanwhile, sources tell the Beachhead that commercial areas of Phoenix are like a ghost town since Latinos – both documented and undocumented – are afraid they will be seized if they leave home.

The word Arizona became a source of derision around the world with the passage of SB1070 and its signing into law by Gov. Jan Brewer on April 23. The bill is euphemistically titled, “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.” Now South Carolina, the birthplace of the Confederacy, has a copy cat bill pending in its legislature.

Cutting through its 16 pages of legal BS, the Arizona law permits police to determine who looks like an “alien” and to arrest them. It penalizes anyone who attempts to hire them for day labor, but goes easy on big employers who “unknowingly” employ aliens. It makes it a crime for a church or an individual to give sanctuary to immigrants. It is a crime to befriend an immigrant by giving he/she a ride or other aid and comfort. Law 1070 also allows any person to sue a police officer, city, county or state agency for not being zealous enough in enforcing its draconian provision.

But wait. We’re not done yet. How can you top SB1070? With HB2281, the so-called Ethnic Studies ban which Gov. Brewer signed May 11. Education will now be controlled by the state legislature. No classes will be allowed that are designed for one particularly ethnic group or that advocate ethnic solidarity (James Brown’s song, I’m Black and I’m Proud, will no doubt be prohibited in a music class).

It also becomes illegal to “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.” Obviously, teaching about the Holocaust would be illegal since it might create resentment toward Germans.

But it should be clear that the real target is Latinos. Any Latino reading Howard Zinn’s “Peoples History,” or numerous books by Latinos about the history of unfair treatment of immigrants, workers and U.S. citizens of Latino heritage would certainly cause resentment against those who perpetrated and continue to perpetrate discriminatory acts in Arizona.

Most Venetians know Arizona, if at all, as a long yawn out the car window, or a moon-like landscape from an airplane window, on their way east. Arizona (arid zone) is a 310-mile-wide desert that must be gotten through to get anywhere interesting. There are two large oases in this desert – Phoenix and Tucson – and several smaller ones. Arizona is also home to one of the world’s biggest holes in the ground, the Grand Canyon.

There would be few people living in Arizona today if not for a modern technological invention – air conditioning. If the power ever goes out, or the water runs dry, the anglo “civilization” of Arizona will go the way of the Native American and Mexican cultures that they trampled on, and are still trampling on. Earlier civilizations in the Arizona area like the Pueblo culture, the Hohokam and the Sinagua peoples were more advanced that the current residents in that they lived in harmony with nature and were not particularly warlike.

The territory of Arizona was originally proclaimed by that great President, Jefferson Davis. Oops. Yes, in 1861 the good people of Arizona seceded from New Mexico so they could enjoy being slave owners along with the rest of the Confederacy. The leaders who had performed this coup had come to power after the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846 and seized two-thirds of its territory, including what is now Arizona. Taking land by aggressive war is hardly a legal basis to impose draconian measures against those Mexicans who would be able to travel freely throughout their land had it not been violently seized from them.

Nineteenth Century immigrants from the United States spread a frontier mentality into Arizona. Towns like Tombstone were admired for their lawlessness. In some ways, Arizona was America’s last frontier. It did not become a state until 1912 and America’s “Indian Wars” only ended in 1918 with a battle against the Yaquis near Nogales, Arizona. Part of the frontier culture in Arizona and elsewhere was a deep seated racism against Native Americans and Mexicans. This long tradition of racism plus “white flight” from parts of Southern California are the ideological foundations of the extreme racial laws now emanating from the state government.

In May 1980, I attended an immigration conference held at El Mirage, near Phoenix. After it was over I visited with immigrant farmworkers in the area. They lived in the fields where they harvested crops. Their living conditions were worse than those of slaves in the antebellum South. Some lived in the open, under trees. Others had built lean-tos out of packing crates and covered them with plastic tarpaulins.

At another ranch a few miles away, the Arizona Farm Workers Union had just won a contract which provided for spartan, but clean, rooms for farm workers. It contained an innovative provision that called for a fund to be used to create jobs in those Mexican states where the farm workers resided. Unfortunately, most growers couldn’t care less about solving immigration problems, let alone improving conditions in the fields, and the union withered and died.

Immigration to Arizona and other U.S. states was spurred by the North America Free Trade Agreement beginning in 1994. It allowed mass produced U.S. goods to undercut Mexican products, thereby causing massive job losses and a constant stream of job seekers to “El Norte.” Mexican farms cannot even grow and sell corn, a staple of their diets, competitively. U.S. corn is now dumped, thanks to NAFTA, at 30 percent below its cost of production. The difference is made up by government subsides to U.S. corn farmers. NAFTA and other freely trade agreements allow capital and products to free cross national boundaries, while workers are either left holding the bag or forced to violate immigration laws in search of a livelihood for themselves and their families. In Arizona, bad politics has placed U.S. workers against Mexican workers instead of uniting them to fight for fair trade agreements and job creation projects in Mexico.

Events may move swiftly in Arizona. After this article is published on June 1, we may hear of other measures by that state to finally solve the “Immigrant Question.” Perhaps they will reactivate the numerous concentration camps in Arizona that were used during World War II to incarcerate Japanese-Americans, who were mostly U.S. citizens, and for housing German and Italian prisoners of war. Or they may repeal the Martin Luther King holiday, that they so begrudgingly accepted after a boycott of the state proved successful. Worst of all, state sponsored persecution of an easily recognizable group can embolden otherwise cowardly racists to engage in violent vigilante acts against immigrants.

How should we respond to Arizona’s assault on human rights? The Los Angeles City Council has voted to boycott Arizona. The Venice Neighborhood Council, other Venice organizations and individuals should likewise commit to boycott travel and goods from Arizona. And let’s urge President Obama to get off his executive seat and tell Arizona that immigration is a federal responsibility and that they have no business getting involved.

In addition, we should see what has happened as an object lesson of where hatred or disrespect for others, particularly the vulnerable, can lead. Let’s ask the L.A. City Council to reign in their harassment and roundup of our own vulnerable group, homeless people.

Meanwhile, Arizona racists – in uniform and out – are chomping at the bit to become latter-day storm troopers when SB1070 goes into effect on July 28. But what will suburban Arizonians do, when Maria the Maid, Rosa the Nanny, and Pedro the Gardener no long come to work, and Manuel the Laborer no longer builds houses and José no longer harvests their vegetables and fruits?

July 2008 – Another Break In The Wall, or Another Wall To Break?

By Maria E. Montano

When one thinks about walls to edify, one thinks about construction, progress and development. However, when one thinks about walls that physically try to separate societies of people, one tends to think opposite with regards to human sociological development. There is no construction of mutual bonds and human compromises to meet everyone’s needs. 

In the experience of different civilizations, it has already been long proven that gigantic walls do not prevent people from crossing over or under them. Take the Great Wall of China, first built during the Ch’in Dynasty, 210 B.C. This was to keep the northern nomads, Mongols, out of China. The wall was rebuilt over and over for centuries to follow. The original plan did not work, but there are many people buried in the wall, both builders and warriors.

More recently, we had the case of the Berlin Wall; which separated the German society. Between 1945 and 1982 German families and relatives were separated by a wall at their border. This was a response to the Nazi regime, when it tried to rule the western world during World War II. Not even 45 years later that wall came down, at the hands of the German youth. Both side were able to reconcile their political differences, and again unite their cultural roots as one nation. During those 45 years the German people missed their relatives and suffered much emotional trauma; not being able to travel all over Germany as their ancestors had done. The removal of that wall was a historical moment around the modern world.

In the case of Israel and Palestine we now have the great cement slab, that stands gigantically erect, hovering over both Israel and Palestine since 2002. It is indeed a threatening sight, even in photographs. Again, an intimidating wall put up as a symbol of political authority to create separation between two societies. Yet, the wall is just a reminder of the disagreements of religious views of culturally different people, who happen to be neighbors. The wall reminds everyone that the separation is uncompromising. How will the two societies contribute to the sociological progress and evolution of the world, if not through the exchange of ideas, language, food, customs and traditions, and just plain civility?

This is an attempt from totalitarian-type governments to have full control over what people say and do: They are unwilling to allow articulation and amicable communication between communities of people. 

If there was more daily social interaction, it would allow for more bonding, and possibly an analysis of what the “enemy” is really like, once the initial prejudgement is effaced. 

Today, there is the proposal to legislate a physical wall of separation at the U.S. border with Mexico. Is this a congruent idea? What effects will it have on both societies, and, the world? Have we really stopped to examine human resources and human relations in cases of totalitarian separation of peoples and cultures? Should we not reconsider lessons of the past before we allow present governments to create more separation, going opposite the sociological evolution of civilized nations?

There is much room left for articulation and rethinking of these ideas. 

These physical walls have never proven to be a solution to world economic problems and overpopulation.

 The world community needs to come together to protest intentions of governments to create massive walls to separate nations. 

The world was developed by people who liked to adventure to faraway lands: Marco Polo, Columbus, Captain Cook, Magellan, Darwin, Neil Armstrong, and John Glenn were some who made the world a little better. They discovered lands, people, and sometimes new knowledge and ideas to further civilization. 

The evolution of humankind is that of constant migration and immigration. Cement walls were not ever made by nature, but mountains were made to climb.

Today’s proposal to build a wall between present day Mexico and the United States is yet another useless attempt to separate a society of people from their cultural and linguistic ties. Just like Germany, just like in ancient China, and now Palestine and Israel. People will always find a way to continue to communicate and to better the world. Or have we forgotten about the Ho Chi Minh trail?

We don’t need your thought control.
–Pink Floyd, circa 1973

April 2008 – NAFTA Is Sucking Immigrants Over The Border

By Karl Abrams 

When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) began on New Year’s Day 1994, a new age of free trade prosperity was expected to begin. Hundreds of thousands of US jobs would be created, immigration from Mexico would slow to a trickle and the living standards on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border would rise to new heights of economic abundance. Unfortunately, this never happened.

Originally pushed through by corporate interest, NAFTA remains a complex trilateral trade agreement which has eliminated most tariffs on traded products between Mexico, Canada, and the US.

The U.S. has already lost 3 million manufacturing jobs and six million Mexican peasant farmers have been driven off their ancestral land. They have had no choice but to migrate into Mexican cities or find their sad way north into the U.S. as slave-wage migrant workers. 

Mexico was once proud and self-sufficient in terms of indigenous food supply. Now it has to import 40% of its food for survival. Mexican corn (maize), for example, can no longer compete with imported U.S. subsidized corn. The Mexican farm industry has nearly been destroyed. As a result, the standard of living in Mexico has gone down and undocumented immigration has risen by at least 60%.

It was Mexico’s former President Carlos Salinas who signed the NAFTA agreement in 1994. What was he thinking? Salinas was aware at the time that NAFTA would destroy the livelihood of 10-13 million farmers and drive them off their land. He knew they would not be able to compete with US and Canadian untariffed grain imports. 

Salinas had hoped and assumed that fruit and vegetable exports would offset the loss to grain farmers. He was so wrong. Millions of farmers and their families have since gone broke, while fruit and vegetable exports have only marginally increased. 

NAFTA wrongly assumed that thousands of Mexican farmers who cultivated corn for hundreds of years would smoothly switch over to growing fruit (e.g. strawberries) and vegetables.

According to agriculture economist Professor Philip Martin of UC Davis, NAFTA proponents didn’t realize the difficulties farmers would have making a smooth transition. Without the Mexican government spending money on crop-change education and efficient roads, the switch-over will continue to be doomed.

Perhaps we should learn from the European Union. They have already implemented their plans to subsidize the infrastructure for poor countries like Portugal, Spain, and Greece to enter the EU. In this way, European countries can better “converge economically” and prevent mass migration of economically displaced people. 

Salinas believed that foreign manufacturers would hire low cost Mexican labor at fair wages. He knew that industrial jobs in Mexico would be created by eager US investors. General Electric, for example, has sent thousands of US jobs to Mexico. Today, the GE conglomerate and its partners employ 30,000 Mexicans at 35 factories. 

But, Mexican workers are only being offered wages half of what they were in the past. And, as the products of Mexican labor, from refrigerators to washing machines, are shipped back to the US, the people of Mexico will find they’ve become poorer than ever. 

In the last several months, tariffs on US corn, beans, sugar and powdered milk coming into Mexico have also been eliminated. This is going to further wipe out the livelihoods of a million more rural Mexicans. 

Farmers from across the country gathered in Mexico City last February to protest NAFTA, demanding renegotiation of NAFTA, restoration of grain self-sufficiency, and wage increases. 

US factories in Mexico can now take advantage of cheap Mexican labor to produce cheaper cars. US companies such as General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler can now ship cars and car parts anywhere in the US in just a few days. By some estimates, 60,000 US car related jobs have been lost since the NAFTA agreement began.

We must continue to challenge NAFTA as the root cause of Mexican immigration even as the Bush administration refuses to renegotiate the treaty.

It should be understood by all how NAFTA has forced millions of rural farmers off their land, decreased Mexican manufacturing job income and increased general unemployment. According to Harvard trade-economist Dani Rodrik, as the wages of Mexican workers continue to fall, they will continue to migrate northward.

The resulting migration into the US has yet to be understood by the average person in the US. Instead of understanding the bigger picture, there has been a dramatic rise in xenophobic hate groups that turn a blind eye to NAFTA as the true cause behind the erosion of worker’s rights on both sides of the border.

If American investment has flooded into Mexico to finance such factories and provide new jobs, why has the number of illegal immigrants continued to rise?

According to Robert A. Blecker, an American University economist, the actual number of manufacturing jobs has actually been decreasing (by almost 40%) since a high of 4.1 million was reached in 2000.

According to the latest annual report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the US has increased almost 50% over the last eight years.

Groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which claim more than 250,000 members, continue to have strong connections to underground white supremacist groups that have emphasized racist conspiracy theories about immigrants poised to “take over America”. 

At the same time however, a recent study by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) shows that “immigrants are far less likely than the average US native to commit crimes” showing clearly that “long standing fears of immigration as a threat to public safety are unjustified.”

In fact, the PPIC has shown that while the the number of “illegal” immigrants has doubled since the 1994 enactment of NAFTA, violent crime have actually declined by nearly 35%. Last month, Time Magazine has also verified that there is “no correlation between immigrants and crime.” 

But immigrant hate groups like FAIR, hiding under the usual flag-draped guise of patriotism and main stream pundits like Lou Dobbs, continue to misrepresent these facts through propaganda and disinformation on TV and radio. So far, it has been a rare occurrence for our politicians and law makers to make any connection whatsoever to the flawed policies of NAFTA and its connection to increased immigration.

As usual, the biggest economic benefits are going to major transnational corporations like Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, General Electric and Wal-Mart.

Let us demand from our political leaders a complete review and renegotiation of NAFTA (including labor and environmental provisions) and a freeze on new trade pacts. 

Let us put pressure on US corporations doing business in Mexico to contribute generously towards the billions of dollars needed to stimulate new job growth in Mexico just as the European Union is doing for members of its union.

Let us welcome our newly immigrated Latino brothers and sisters with love and respect.