Pulling up the Ladder, in Latino Land

In the desperate drive to keep the United States strictly under the control of the descendants of northern Europeans, as opposed to more southerly peoples, and for no other reason, there's an interesting split in the American southwest when it comes to the issue called "illegal immigration," in a country that came into being through illegal immigration, if you look at history in an unpopular though accurate way.

The law people in Arizona brought great dishonor down on their dessicated and desertified state, by passing statutes aimed at shoveling as many Mexican job seekers back into Mexico as possible, under charges of being "illegal" immigrants.   These laws are supposed to go into effect today, though many of them have been blocked by a Federal judge.   So now there will be an extended fight in the courts that will be reminiscent of the American Civil War of the 1860's.

New Mexico, best known for having a lot of pueblos and for being the place where Billy the Kid went to seek his fortune, has the highest Latino proportion of any state, 45 percent, and as a whole the state looks with a jaundiced eye at the antics in Arizona, to which it is bonded geographically closer than a Siamese twin.   For instance, where Arizona has declared that it is illegal for so-called "illegal" immigrants to have driver's licenses, New Mexico allows that, and more.

Yet, New Mexico, for all its enlightenment, is cursed like every other U.S. state with having conservatives and Republicans, and there right now you can see how running for office as a Republican automatically immerses the candidate into vats of sheep dip and worse, and they come out dyed ever afterward with despicable.  And now even the Latino Republicans want to bring New Mexico into line with Arizona's Iron Curtain policies.

Among them, if he is still around, is one Latino Repub that I especially remember reading about, a few years ago.   Staunchly against someone of color who was running for office, he was quoted as saying that his ancestors were never slaves like rainbow or "black" people.  Instead the Latinos were always the masters.  By that I guess he means the Spanish, but that still didn't make his forbears an illustrious bunch, as can be seen in a reading of the Spanish conquest of the Southwest.

This also flies badly against the face of something said by the most distinguished of the first Republicans, Abraham Lincoln.   If you listen to a sort of cantata written by Aaron Copland, you will hear Lincoln saying in his own voice during the Civil War (smile!) something almost identical to the following:

As I would not be a slave, so I would also not be a master.   This expresses my idea of democracy.   Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

Ever since I first heard that record, in the 1950's ( I might still have it) that statement has kept booming in my ears.   Too bad that some people in New Mexico and even more in Arizona are so poorly schooled in ordinary human civility that they are completely unaware of that principle.