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| Who is the vendido voting against our children? |
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Is Roberto Ramirez, excuse me Robert Ramirez a Mexican Republican or a Republican Mexican? Does ethnicity trump politics? That’s a no brainer. As an Indigenous Zapotec woman told me as I strolled in un mercado in Oaxaca in one of my many trips to Mexico, “La politica es la reina del mundo.”
Would it have taken more guts for Ramirez to have voted for the ASSET Bill and taken the heat from his party than to stand in front of the community with thumbs down? Unwilling to commit perfidy against either group will have its consequences. I think one act is an act of courage the other is a pendejada. Which one you would have made depends in which political lenses you are looking through. Somehow the conundrum Robert Ramirez found himself wrapped around regarding the ASSET bill recently voted down during state congressional hearings may become his nightmare.
I don’t think Martinez suffers from dementia praecox, a multiple personality disorder or a lost identity; I believe he suffers from politicalism. He was quoted as saying the decision broke his heart. What is one to deduce? Ramirez has no heart since he voted thumbs up for the defeat of the bill?
There is no antidote for lacking humanity. Inhumanity cannot be rationalized in any way. Politicians like Ramirez become window dressers bending to the will of the political puppet master. Marionettes controlled by others are blinded by false ambition, with a deep desire to please the “masta.” No one can deny Ramirez’ decision was a tragic one that will have specific detrimental effects on the immigrant community with a repugnant stench permeating the entire state. It goes against the grain of human rights.
Ramirez might want to venture into the literary field and read Luis Alberto Urrea’s “Devil’s Highway.” Urrea eloquently describes the pangs of heat stress, heat fatigue, heat syncope, heat cramps and heat exhaustion experienced by immigrants as death hovers over them while traveling across the desert. In Urrea’s eyes everyone is an illegal alien in the desert; the desert does not discriminate. Ramirez might want to think about the painful sojourns his ancestors traveled a generation ago.
Passage of the bill would have given rationale college opportunities to undocumented children whose parents peregrinated into American society looking for la vida buena. Young whippersnappers are not going to pack up their bags and head south now that the bill has been defeated. They are Americans in every definition of the term. They may slowly slither down the economic stratification system where they will remain permanently. They will be cast into food deserts, euphemisms for barrios without healthy food, filled with vultures lacking humanitarian consciences. Ramirez has now successfully laid an urban path where his paisanos to follow.
In some sense, the children who lamented at the State Capitol following the heart-breaking decision are children without a country. They are marginalized on both sides of the border. Even, when the initial version of the Dream Act included military participation, youth agreed to the provision to fulfill America’s thirst for incessant wars.
Why does Ramirez’ ethnicity matter? When the tide is turned, why is the mantra of white privilege never questioned? Although I cannot relate to white privilege, I am painfully aware that those who are born with it have increased opportunities to set the agenda and determine how rules are applied. It grants cultural authority for those who possess it. Seldom is this privilege confronted.
According to Allan Johnson, a contributing author in White Privilege: essential readings on the other side of racism, “Privilege means being able to decide who gets taken seriously, who receives attention, who is accountable to whom and for what. And it grants a presumption of superiority and social permission to act on that presumption without having to worry about being challenged.”
I haven’t heard anyone hurl invectives at white people for voting the “white” way or men who vote the “male” way. Immunity from any type of interrogation bestowed upon White males by virtue of their racial or gender categorization is a given. White male privilege is never questioned because it is imbedded in the customs of the society.
Ramirez fell prey to politicalism; unwilling to upset his cronies. He was unwilling to swim against the tide. He backpedaled by blaming his auntie. The consejos given to him by the woman from Mexico is a play on the psychology of the Mexican male, that is, that Mexican men do not deny their mother’s, in this case a tia’s requests.
Accusing Lady Justice of being a happy camper as one commentator stated is ultimate denial. I think La Virgen should be brought into this one to confer bilingually with Lady Justice. I do not know women who would forsake their children or who want to see anyone suffer.
Who is the Vendido? Let me play Roberto Ramirez who gave away his power to vote by unconscious pressurized proxy and let you decide.
Dr. Ramon Del Castillo is an Independent Journalist.
©2011 The Weekly Issue/El Semanario
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