Indocumentatos…

Arnoldo Kraus in last Friday’s Jornada. 

 (Sorry, about all I’ve had time for this last week has been a translation or two for the Mex Files.  I’ve been driving back and forth most nights to El Paso — 440 miles round trip — and am a little wiped out for any sustained work.  More as soon as I can get the phone bills caught up and get back on line). 

 Look up “indocumantado” in the dictionary.  You will be surprised at what you know and don’t know.  “1. Said of a person who has not received, or lacks, an official idenification documents.  2.  Those who have no proof or valid affidavit of residence.  3.  Said of a person without an opinion of value.  4.  Ignorant and uneducated.” 

Based on the evidence, it appears that the last one is the one governments have agreed is the most convenient to use.   The indications are that the last two definitions listed by the  Diccionario de la lengua española agree with the dictionary of tacit understanding between Mexico (The  “back yard” of the United States, as the late Adolfo Aguilar Zinser said) is provided by the treatment of our “indocumentados.” 

The recent deportation of Mexican activist Elvira Arellano (from the United States) exemplifies not just the imprecision of the Spanish language, but also the double morality of our neighbors and the ineptitude of the entire Mexican governent to humanize these people – and making it impossible to deal with the phenomenon of migration.   

At the same time that Arellano is awaiting deportation, the Mexican consuls in Brownsville Texas and Tucson Arizona announced that in the last year “more than” 224 Mexican nations died in those two states.  It is the inexactitude of “more than” that  is abominable, though, regrettably, understandable.  What do we mean when we say “more than”?  A hundred?  A thousand?   

From a moral point of view, it seems difficult to decide which of the two governments are more responsible for migrant deaths.  The Mexican government is coninually and perpetually incapable of creating employment.  The country continues to force out workers who maintain families despite being ill, malnourished, uneducated or from the poorest in the country.  It makes no sense that these workers generate the country’s third largest source of income. 

The United States, for its part, much as they hate to admit it, requires the workers who head for that country.  They are allowed to work, with the tacit complicity of the authorities, as long as the Latin Americans accept low salaries.  They are desperately needed, and green cards offered, to work …  in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Is it absurd to think the two countries have a secret agreement on the number of undocumented workers permitted each year?  Perhaps not.  

 Immigration reform will not be easy.  Here, we prostitute “reform” to fit the economic needs and times.  During the marches that protested Elvira Arellano’s deportatation,  Jesús Sánchez del Villa, whose undocumented son was killed in the War in Iraq, summed up the morality of the Bush government nicely: “It’s said that when we want to join the army to fight the enemies, no one will do anything, but at the same time they want to deport the three million fathers of children born here.  It’s inhuman.” 

The same thing can be said of our government.  We know millions of dollars come into Mexico from undocumented aliens, but no one knows the exact number of Mexican killed on their way to assume the status of “illegals.” So, it’s best to accept the dictionary definition “without value… uneducated.”

The Rio Bravo and the desert are realities, but Iraq is worse, and much more real.  Facing the deportation of more of our conationals, the question is which definition will be used by George W. Bush and which accepted by Felipe Calderón when they make an agreement.