The Hijacking of Mexican Immigrants and Dreams

By Barnard R. Thompson

Irrespective of which side one stands on matters of illegal immigration to the United States, most particularly migrant workers from Mexico, the “Nothing Gringo” call south of the border for May 1 is part sham.
 
Plus a portion of scam – with some coercion thrown in for good measure.
 
Monday, May 1, is the 2006 date activists and their friends have set for “The Great American Boycott” in the United States. A day when immigrants in the United States from all countries are being urged not to turn up for work, and not to spend money – part of a planned “day without immigrants” to show their economic weight and thus pressure the U.S. Congress to legalize the undocumented.
 
And now, in a demonstration of solidarity, cohorts in Mexico are calling for fellow inhabitants to boycott U.S.-owned business, lodging and service establishments in Mexico, along with franchises and products, on the same day.
 
But May 1 is Labor Day in Mexico, May Day, International Workers’ Day, and virtually every place and establishment will be closed. This is always the case, as Labor Day in Mexico is a national obligatory holiday when only those businesses that absolutely must be open are open, and then it is often with skeleton crews, a bare minimum of essential services, and for shorter than normal hours.
 
That is to say there will be few places to spend money, and even fewer to shop.
 
So the “Nothing Gringo on May 1” scheme looks suspiciously like a setup, a ploy to claim success for what is already destined to be a sure thing. A ruse it would seem to show solidarity with what could be a burgeoning movement in the United States, while at the same time claiming to send a message to the U.S. Congress.
 
And those behind the boycotts, work stoppages and marches will claim great success, while at day’s end migrant workers in the United States will go home (or after staying home) probably feeling satisfied, but too with maybe lost wages for the day or even the possibility of losing their jobs.
 
This as they follow the calls and instructions of handlers, in what may be merited cause with respect to migrant rights and justice. But immigrants too are being duped, for according to firsthand evidence, media reports, and Internet promotions it seems clear that current activities in the United States are being orchestrated by not just immigrants, migrant rights’ activists and sympathizers.
 
The movement is being hijacked, for the open source evidence shows that not only activists and labor unionists are using the immigrants insofar as La Reconquista separatists, anarchists, and Marxists, in both the United States and Mexico, have now inserted themselves into the mix, planning and conspiring.
 
May Day observances reportedly had their origin in Chicago’s Haymarket Riot of 1886, when police clashed with bomb-throwing anarchists and labor movement protestors. Police and protesters were both killed in the melee, and following numerous arrests seven radicals were convicted in controversial trials, with four subsequently executed.
 
In addition to labor unrest in the U.S., the Haymarket Riot was due to pressures many felt from economic depression, and repeated police action against striking workers. Feeling that the struggle between labor and business had reached the breaking point, anarchists stepped forward and publicly advocated violent revolution to bring down the capitalist system.
 
And at least some of these maladies are present today – but in Mexico and not the U.S. So out of economic hardship, need and the Mexican government’s inability to create enough promised and dignified jobs at living wages, the well-known “escape valve” of the United States is more important than ever.
 
If Mexico were unable to export working age men and women, with estimates of 11 to 16 million undocumented Mexicans being in the United States today, social unrest would seem to be quite probable. As well, the return of millions of workers to a land of unemployment or underemployment, coupled with economic problems and politics, could lead to anarchy and revolution.
 
There too is the needed money sent back to Mexico by those living in the U.S., remittances that totaled more than US$20 billion in 2005. What is more, in January and February of this year the total was up 27.6 percent over the same two-month period last year.
 
Hence without the escape valve, jobs in the U.S., and foreign revenue, regardless of the balderdash some try to force-feed listeners Mexico could be on its way to anarchist and Marxist dreams – or worse.