by Jorge Ramos
And there are days when I am alone, very alone indeed.
I’ve never felt it more than one New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles. I hadn’t gone back to Mexico because of work and instead had been invited to a party downtown. When the clock struck midnight, everyone around me embraced and wished one another a happy New Year. But I didn’t have anyone there. That’s when I realized I was totally by myself.
I was an immigrant.
Alone.
However much you may have integrated yourself into your adoptive country, you will inevitably feel out of place from time to time. You will feel a physical and mental sense of displacement (which I actually prefer to the Spanish word, desplazamiento), and no matter how much you wish it were otherwise, you will know that you don’t belong.
Of course, this isn’t always the case. A friend once told me that my daughter, Paola, who had just been born, would end up saving me. And she was right. Paola made me understand what was truly important in life, and because of that, I held on to the United States. A few years later, the birth of my son, Nicolás, helped me reconfirm my decision to remain here in this country. Plus, he became my best English teacher.
How can people live far away from their children? I don’t think I could have done it. A parent’s first obligation is to be present, to literally be there for their children. My children’s lives were in the United States, so mine would be, too.
Nothing ties you closer to a country than having your children born there. It will transform both your plans and your way of life. All of a sudden, the thoughts you harbored of one day returning to your country of origin are gone, and you realize that you will never permanently leave the United States. Throughout history we have seen how immigrants gradually pay less and less attention to what’s going on in their countries of origin, how they send less and less money back to their extended family members, and how, after two or three generations, their children or grandchildren have almost lost the emotional or psychological connection with the nation of their parents and grandparents.
This process of integration took place in an almost organic way from the mid-1960s through the end of the twentieth century. But after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, anti-immigrant sentiment—including state and local laws that made life all but impossible for some foreigners—gradually grew, leading to the emergence of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. This has all but shattered the centuries-long tradition of accepting immigrants into American society.
Of course, this wasn’t the first time that groups of immigrants have been rejected en masse. The suffering once endured by the Irish, Chinese, and Japanese is now being felt by Latinos and Muslims and possibly will be by Asians in a few more decades. What’s different about this particular occasion is the extent and intensity of the attacks on foreigners…and the fact that some of the attacks are coming from the president of the United States himself.
Something like this has never occurred before.
Trump’s original plan during the campaign for massive deportations was brutal and unprecedented in the history of this country. In August 2015, he told NBC journalist Chuck Todd that the eleven million undocumented immigrants living in the United States would either have to leave the country or be deported. “They have to go,” he said during an interview on a private plane. “They have to go. Chuck, we either have a country, or we don’t have a country.”
And according to CBS, in September of that same year, during a conference call with members of the Republican Party, Trump set dates for his massive wave of deportations: “I think it’s a process that can take eighteen months to two years if properly handled,” he said. “I will get them out so fast that your head would spin, long before I even can start the wall. They will be out of here.”
Let’s do the math, horrifying as it is.
To deport eleven million people over the course of two years, you would need an army or some other similarly sized force. This would be a much larger event than Operation Wetback, which removed over one million Mexicans back in 1954.
Trump’s aggressive plan would require identifying, detaining, and deporting more than fifteen thousand people per day. Getting them out of the country would require at least thirty Boeing 747s per day. In the meantime, housing them would require the use of stadiums and other public spaces. The daily images of families being torn apart and destroyed would be leading newscasts across the globe.
Further, what about the 4.5 million American children who have at least one undocumented parent? Would they be deported along with their mothers or fathers, or would they be left to the care of the state?
What Trump proposed was terror and intolerance.
And with this plan, he was elected president of the United States.
For me, it’s personal.
How could we not feel attacked and rejected when over half of Latinos eighteen years of age and older are foreign born? How do you remain calm when your country’s elected leader is planning to deport your neighbors, your coworkers, your relatives? Those who feed and care for you? How can he dare ask for the Latino vote with a straight face while at the same time telling the Hispanic population that he wants to deport their parents and siblings?
How do you not feel like a second-class citizen when the entire history of the United States is filled with examples of immigrants eventually becoming citizens, yet now there is not even a means of legalizing the undocumented, leaving them without a path to citizenship?
Part of the American experience is having an immigrant past—legal or otherwise—and then participating in a civic process that grants you the same rights as everyone else.
There is nothing more American than incorporating and integrating those who come from outside the nation’s borders, regardless of their accents or origins.
But that experience of belonging is beginning to crack.
The experiment known as the United States is based on the extraordinary process of converting “others” into “us.” And for the first time in our nation’s history, this process has been halted via a presidential initiative that offers little hope for the future.
Trump and his supporters refuse to accept those they consider “criminals” or “invaders.” But these “invaders” about whom Trump complains are the same ones who clean and maintain his hotels and restaurants, and they would never be invited to join him at the table.
I am convinced that this effort to push us aside will fail. But it will take years and perhaps even decades to overcome. In the end, the demographic revolution that the United States is currently experiencing—in which minorities will become the new majority—will end up overwhelming xenophobia, rejecting the radical extremist groups, and the United States can continue with its tradition of ethnic diversity, multiculturalism, and acceptance of immigrants.
Despite my optimism for the long term, we must acknowledge that we are living in a very dark and dangerous time in U.S. history. It is truly disheartening to see that ideas, proposals, and laws are arising systematically in the White House and both chambers of Congress designed to attack immigrants and minorities without justification.
This is the hand the United States has dealt us, and we have to play it in order to change direction.
What does it mean to be a Latino immigrant in the United States during the Trump era? First of all, it means being a member of a persecuted and discriminated minority. But it is a growing minority that now knows, for the very first time, what it means to hold a certain amount of power.
Being a minority does have at least one advantage: sooner or later, everything becomes greater. And this is why we must maintain an attitude of revolution, of constant struggle, especially if your particular group is being misunderstood or marginalized. How could you not fight back when you’re being insulted, when your neighbors are being deported, when you realize that others have more opportunities than you, when you are marginalized for the way you talk or because of the color of your skin? How could you not, when
you are made to feel that this is not your country?
One of the things I have most admired about the United States is the inherent conviction that things will always get better, that people will overcome obstacles, and that there will be opportunities for all. It is a philosophy for life that has been built up for more than two centuries. Or better yet, it is a matter of faith (which, incidentally, has nothing to do with religion).
There are nations whose history lends a sense of pessimism and skepticism. The United States is not one of them. Even during the most trying of times, such as these, there is always a case for optimism, a clear spirit of improvement, and the certainty that everything can be changed.
Despite the bad news and negative atmosphere, this is the country where my children were born, and I believe much more in them—and in the power of their generation—than I do in the racist, xenophobic, and destructive ideas of Donald Trump.
So here I’m going to bet on my children and the country they want to build for themselves.
When I Return to Mexico
Though I travel to Mexico several times a year for both personal and professional reasons, I have to keep in mind that I have lost touch with the country to the extent that it can be reduced to a series of news reports, snapshots, and outbursts that are not always tied directly to reality. Sometimes I think of Mexico with a true sense of nostalgia. On other occasions, I fall into the trap of stereotyping it as a nation of extreme violence and hidden graves. And then there are the times where I can imagine it as an almost magical place, as if I were a foreigner watching it for the first time.
I have written many columns on Mexico, most of which have to do with politics and the transition to democracy, which is as difficult as it is incomplete. Here, I would like to share three short essays that I have selected and updated because they reflect, in the following order, my nostalgia, my frustration, and my astonishment with Mexico.
“GOING HOME”
(From December 2015)
We’re stuck. It’s almost midnight, and Mexico City’s airport doesn’t have enough gates to accommodate all the flights that are landing.
So we wait: a half hour in an airliner at a standstill, then another half hour in a small bus, then an hour in line at customs. By daybreak, there is a chill in the air. But it doesn’t matter. I’m finally home, for a little while—to see my mother, my siblings, and the city I left almost thirty-three years ago.
Those of us who can go home to Mexico from the United States do so at least once a year, preferably around Christmastime or for New Year’s. This year in particular, world events have made all of us more conscious of just where home is.
Whenever I visit Mexico City, familiar flavors and aromas are the first things that spark my nostalgia. I binge on tacos, Mexican-style eggs, shrimp broth, Churrumais snacks, Maria Cookies with La Abuelita butter, glasses of cold milk mixed with Pancho Pantera Choco Milk powder. These were all my favorites growing up. Today, they are comfort foods for those of us who return to visit—and they always bring back a Mexico that exists only in my memory.
The conversations with my family are full of reminiscences—“what happened to what’s-his-name” and so on. Our talk eventually turns to who might now be living in “our house.”
One of my siblings pulls up a photo on his phone. It’s of our old house in Bosques de Echegaray, in the state of Mexico, where we grew up. Our parents sold the house many years ago, and it’s now painted yellow. I notice that the old tree at the entrance has been removed. It’s still our house, the one that my soul—whatever that is—acknowledges as my home.
Now my life is anchored in Miami, my second home—a generous, multicultural city that is populated mostly by people who were born elsewhere. As a good friend often points out, Hispanics in Miami are treated as first-class citizens. He’s right. Nobody is an “alien” in Miami.
But many Mexicans, documented or not, who are living in other parts of the United States—in Chicago, in Houston, in Los Angeles, in New York—are simply exhausted. They scrape by for years, doing jobs that Americans won’t, yet they remain far from achieving the American Dream—a nice house, a decent job, good schools for their children, and the promise that things will be better tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who is running for the Republican nomination for president, seems intent on making the lives of all immigrants miserable, and his messages of hatred and fear have only increased his popularity. And his anti-immigrant rhetoric is repeated constantly on social media.
For the first time since the “Operation Wetback” program of 1954, more Mexicans are leaving the United States than entering. According to research from Pew, from 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans returned to Mexico, while 870,000 came to the United States. This means that there are about 130,000 fewer Mexicans living here than there were a few years ago.
Yet Trump likes to talk about a Mexican invasion, even though he is very mistaken. Of course, it won’t matter to him—Trump will continue to use fear as a strategy to win votes.
Many immigrants are returning to Mexico for good, despite the drug-related violence and public corruption that plague the nation and the failure of leadership from a president who prefers to hide from his problems. The lack of economic opportunities in the United States, coupled with an anti-immigrant sentiment, is becoming too much to bear.
At the end of my recent visit to Mexico, I boarded another plane and again felt torn. Yes, I was leaving loved ones behind in Mexico, but others were waiting for me in Miami. Home for me is not one but several places. That’s what it means to be an immigrant.
The celebrated author Isabel Allende once pointed out to me that immigrants don’t have to pick between one country and another.
They can belong to both.
“DAYS OF THE DEAD”
(From March 2017)
Authorities called it “the swimming pool” because the bodies in this mass grave were buried so close together—more than 250 skulls were found. This is one of more than 120 unmarked graves unearthed since August of last year over a large area in Santa Fe, a town in the Mexican state of Veracruz.
But Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, and his administration have acted as if this gruesome discovery has nothing to do with them—as if this mass grave is located in some faraway country.
Last year the first bodies were found with the help of the Colectivo Solecito, or the “Little Sun Collective” in English—a group of 150 mothers who refuse to give up looking for their loved ones.
“We haven’t heard of any declaration by President Peña Nieto,” Lucía de los Ángeles Díaz, the founder of the Colectivo Solecito, told me recently. “The authorities charged with acknowledging the severity of the problem have failed to act.”
Along with the administration’s silence has come no funding to help identify the remains.
In Mexico, it seems that every day is Day of the Dead.
Last year, a person unknown to Lucía handed her a map labeled with crosses. Following a hunch, she took the map up a hill near Santa Fe, where she came across some of the hidden graves.
Lucía hasn’t seen her son, Luis Guillermo, in almost four years. Luis, nicknamed “DJ Patas,” used to perform at the best parties in Veracruz. On June 28, 2013, as Luis was leaving an event in the early morning hours, armed men kidnapped him, Lucía says.
At first she had hoped it was an “express kidnapping”—where a victim is forced to withdraw money from several ATMs but is left alive to later share the frightening tale. Sadly, it wasn’t that kind of kidnapping.
Lucía refuses to believe that her son might be in one of those pits in Veracruz. Even though she has found no clues to his whereabouts, she reminded me about several cases of missing persons in Mexico who were found years later.
She didn’t cry during our discussion—for Lucía, this isn’t the time to cry. “We don’t question what we’re doing,” she told me. “We do it because we’re mothers. We fight, and keep looking until w
e find them.”
For tens of thousands of families in Mexico, the tragedy is redoubled: they can count on the authorities neither to find the lost ones nor to bring to justice the people who are responsible.
“It’s very unfortunate to have a government that doesn’t represent us, to have a government that isn’t accountable,” Lucía says, dressed in impeccable white, with a picture of her son on her lapel.
Mexico is a nation of graves. Peña Nieto’s administration has overseen one of the most violent periods in the country’s modern history. Since he took office in December 2012, more than 77,000 Mexicans have been killed, and more than 5,500 Mexicans have been kidnapped, according to official data.
Such staggering numbers seem to have numbed the Mexican people. As the shocking details about the grave in Veracruz started to trickle out this month, I expected to see mass protests on the streets of Mexico. I thought that the Mexican Congress would surely launch an independent investigation and that the president would go on national television to announce his plans to identify the bodies and punish the culprits. But none of that has happened.
Perhaps it’s understandable. Two and a half years ago, forty-three students from Ayotzinapa went missing. To this day nobody knows where they are or what happened to them. What can we expect, then, for Lucía’s son? In what sort of country does the discovery of 253 bodies in a pit not warrant action by the government? Such an atrocity can’t simply be accepted.
“It would seem we live in the worst of all worlds,” Peña Nieto said recently, “but we really don’t.”
Don’t we? Ask Lucía and the other mothers from the Colectivo Solecito.
“THE LAST SUPPER”
(From July 2017)
Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico—I’ve never had a meal like this and may never taste its equal again. It was, simply put, a one-of-a-kind experience that may be impossible to repeat. So let me share it with you the only way I can: through words.