Getting Real...

April 14th, 2008 at 08:46pm B Jon Traylor 199

An old joke I used to tell often in my younger days is this: "Why do Mexican women swim the river and come here to have their babies?" The answer is : "Cuz Dr. Pepper costs 50 cents."
Sure, that was a silly, insensitive, perhaps politically incorrect joke to tell, but rooted in my rural West Texas upbringing, it was a funny joke to tell while processing cattle or throwing down some beers at a honky-tonk.
Yet, perhaps, in reality, it is very true.
I have a family member who brown-nosed his way into taking over my wife's extensive and very large family farming and ranching operation, due to a death in the family. Three years before, I chose to move to this valley and purchase a business in Aspen, thinking I'd probably end up back there running the farm and ranch with him when that day came. Anyway, his foreman, Abe, has worked that land for ten years now. He lives in a beat up ol' farm house on the farm with his family of four, a home he's actually made quite nice over the years. He lives in the U.S. for 8 months every year, working his ass off, making American money, which is worth much, much more than a peso. He is a friend of mine, a good man, a man who understands why I choose to not be associated anymore with a business of government welfare and subsidies and hand-outs (another story I should tell!)
Recently, on a self exploring mission of finding myself again, perhaps a turning 40 middle-age rennassiance (sp?)... I ended up on his "ranch" in Mexico. He is building a home that makes my 3/4 of a million dollar upper middle class home here in this valley appear as a dump.
If I were in his shoes, I'd most likely be doing the same thing. He is participating in a "free world" economy. (funny what NAFTA really resulted in...) Coming here, legally, working his ass off, being lawful, responsible, etc. He makes good money, cash money. He sends that money home to Mexico, weekly, deposits it into an account, and manages his dealings and future life there in Mexico.... all with American money, while paying a Mexican accountant who was educated at an American University (my alma mater, to be exact.... Texas A&M University.)
I actually admire him, because he is a human being, a person, a good person, a family man, a businessman.
He gets treated like shit often here in the U.S. because he is Mexican. Sure, welcome to the the United States of America. Yet, I treat him with respect. Albeit, I get back in my truck and drive away and wonder to myself... "what the hell is wrong with this picture?"
Perhaps I should just move to Mexico. Perhaps I should find me a place, and come here on a work visa and make all the money I can and take it back to Mexico to build my own mansion, to manage my own ranch. Perhaps some reverse psychology, reverse economics? Not sure, but that is reality, that is what is happening.
This is America? This is what I hope to pass on to my child and future generations? The land of opportunity? Opportunity for what? For others?
Building a fence along our entire southern border? What? You know how many towns and places unmentioned I've been to along our border? I've been there, many times. I used to buy cattle with my Dad in many of those blips on the map, with poor Mexican boys washing our windshield at every stop, with good lookin' Mexican women flaunting their tits and everything else into our truck, looking for a satisfying cheap American buck. We'd rob them of their cattle, for cheap, really cheap, and we'd put some "American" medicine and feed on them, and sell them at absorbent profit at American cattle auctions, within the American free-enterprise system, many of which were hedged on the Chicago Board of Commodity Trading. So, sure, perhaps we rob the Mexicans too, on a daily basis.
Perhaps its time we simply bring our foreign expenses and industrial military complex dollars back to our shores, and simply enforce the laws we have. Perhaps we can change the National Guard weekend parties into something more useful and substantial by guarding our borders 24/7.
I rafted and camped in Big Bend National Park last month. At least a hundred times during that trip, I looked at places in the terrain and understood just how freakin' easy it would be come into this country undetected. I also remembered just how much time and effort and lives and money we spent and still spend on guarding terrains such as that in other countries... i.e. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, etc.
I also was reminded of just how incredibly futile it would be to try to build a fence through that terrain. Are you kidding me? Have you been there and the hundreds of other places along our border like that? Put boots on the ground in those places, often. Pick'em up, send 'em home. In time, they just might think it ain't worth messing with the American military. In time, they might just start to refocus their efforts on their own country, and not ours, at our expense, at our cost, at our future. Enough for now. -- B. Jon Traylor

Entry Filed under: Carbondale, Colorado, Family, The West, United Post