“They took our jobs!”
“This is OUR country!”
“Build a fence and keep them out!”
All of the above are sentences that I have heard when Americans talk about Hispanic immigrants moving across the Mexico-US border. Some of these statements are even heard in A Day Without a Mexican, which looks (a little satirically) at what would happen in California if the Hispanic population of the state was to disappear one day. It is a striking movie, full of not only humor, but stark reality: for example, the film has freeze frames in which the audience gets a glimpse of some of the statistics from California. 88% of the state's agricultural workers are Latino/a, and 20% of the K-12 teachers are Latino/a as well.
Going to high school here in Goshen made me wonder what would happen if all people who were Latino/a in the state disappeared. I did some research, and found that there are almost 400,000 Latino/as in Indiana, and they make up 6% of the population. This is not as striking as California, but is still a large percent of the population. If everyone were to disappear, I believe there would be a very similar reaction to the movie we watched. Many people would be overjoyed to see the Latino/a population gone, but there would be others that would be devastated. Here at Goshen College, there is a Latino/a population that would be missed, because they contribute much to the cultural diversity of the college, and they are some of the most active students for social change. If the Latino/a students from GC were to go missing, I think many aspects of the college's progressive nature would vanish with them. I think about the DREAM Act, and how Latino/a students are the ones bringing it to the student body.
Not only would the college be affected, but there is a large Latino/a culture in Goshen and the surrounding areas. Many of my friends are Latino/a, and I know their families. If they were to vanish one day, I would be bewildered and affected by their disappearance.
If all the Latino/a population were to disappear, wouldn't that create problems for everyone? In A Day Without a Mexican, California's economy was falling apart because of no more Latino/a people working in the fields. Agriculture is a major part of California's economy. If all of the workers were to disappear, the entire country would collapse. California wouldn't produce the crops needed to support itself, and the country. Perhaps this is a leap, but I think there is a possibility this would be the result of an instantaneous disappearance.
This movie is a good starting point for a discussion on what Americans see as “Latino/a invaders.” I personally do not believe that Latino/as should be treated any different than others, but it is a grim reality we live in.
By comparing the movie and its impact on California to our own Goshen it can put this issue into a real, right here, perspective. Not only in the college do we have many Latino students, many of who we are all friends with, but the high school has a higher Latino population than white population. Just as it did in the movie, the economy of Goshen would collapse and Goshen College may not even exist. And this yes would create problems for everyone one. We all may have needed to find another College to attend. I wonder just how many cities would be left if there was no Latinos at all in the states. Would we still be the most powerful country? I think it would be interested to see a documentary of the effect it would have throughout the country.
ReplyDeleteIt makes such a difference, doesn't it, when Anglos actually know Latinos, go to school together, work together, and are friends with each other? That's when prejudice begins to break down. I wonder what the percentage is of Latinos in Indiana now, and what the percentage is in Elkhart County, in Goshen, and at Goshen High School. Positive interactions between Anglos and Latinos in Goshen have increased a lot over the past decade, due in part to the influence of the college, but this is something it's hard to demonstrate beyond the local community. Many professionals coming in Goshen choose to live outside of Goshen because there are too many Latinos in the school system here. I often wonder how we can transform those perceptions and make Goshen a remarkable model of intercultural cooperation and achievement. It's something to aim for.
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