Maid In Texas
How The U.S. Sparked A Refugee Crisis On The Border
In eight Simple Steps
Who Will Clean Up This Immigration Mess? By Tony Diaz art by Austin Smith
The current wave of children from Central America has its roots in six decades of U.S. policies carried out by
In the old days, a Klansman would order his slaves to iron his white hood and robe the night before a cross burning. Today’s racist orders his undocumented maids to iron his camouflage pants and shirt the night before picketing on an overpass. It would take an entire semester of ethnic studies to explain all the ironies of this Texas minute in immigration. Maybe that’s why Mexican-American studies is under attack as well. But don’t worry. We as border crossers have seen this all before and can tell you how to survive this oppression. When I say we, I mean the Librotraficantes. And when I say “crossed borders,” I mean the Texas state line, the New Mexico state line, and the Arizona state line. B a ck in 201 2 , wh e n A rizo n a f a n atic s p ro hib ited Mexican-American studies, we organized the Librotraficante Caravan to smuggle the books banned in Arizona back into Tucson, all the way from Houston. Now, it looks as if we’ll need folks from other states to lend us a hand as Texas oppression season gets hotter, and hotter, and hotter. And if you’re not certain of what’s going down, let me make it crystal clear. We are experiencing a Texassized version of the Arizona Plan. In 2010, Republican Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed two laws that will haunt the Republican Party for generations. First, she signed what has come to be known as the “show me your papers law,” the harshest immigration law in the nation, Arizona’s SB1070. That same year, she also signed Arizona House Bill 2281, which was used to prohibit Mexican-American studies. Arizona wasn’t always this rabidly racist. It only took a few sane people to sit out a few elections while far-right politicians tested political campaign platforms based on fear and hate. Their tactics worked, and crazy people won small office after small office, then more and more offices and posts, until one day all the sensible people were surrounded. That was the political climate that culminated in SB1070 and HB2281. The cast of characters who rose to power during that tyrannical wave will come to be known as either the Republican dream team or the GOP Nightmare, with Jan Brewer at the helm, and, to her far right, fellows like Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Think it can’t happen in Texas? Think again. Texas Republicans want to adopt the Arizona template, so here is the Arizona recipe, step by step:
members of both parties. Since the 1950s, U.S. policies have left a legacy of chaos and brutality in these countries. It’s these conditions the children are escaping.
1. US Overthrows Arbenz In 1954, the CIA aided in the
1954
overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arnez to protect the interests of U.S. corporation United Fruit Company. The results were decades of instability and more than 200,000 lives lost. 2. U.S. Fuels Civil Wars The U.S. organized and funded El Salvador’s war with the FMLN left-wing guerrilla movement while also funding counterinsurgency efforts in Honduras, which became a staging ground for the Nicaraguan Contras. Death squads flourished, more than 75,000 people died and civil society collapsed. 3. Refugees Flee Central America for the U.S. With wars come refugees. The young people who streamed into the United States from
1980's
Central America in the late ‘70s and ‘80s had deep experience with violence, and they arrived in US cities that were being ravaged by the crack epidemic. 4. The U.S. Launches the Drug War as Cities are Hollowed Out
AZ Republican Tactics
In the mid-’80s, a bipartisan
1. Blame Immigration for every single thing that is wrong with the state. 2. Make Latinos the bad guys—without ever directly talking about them, just kinda hinting at them by say... talking about the border... or implying there’s an invasion... from someplace... nearby, to the south... 3. Get older Anglos to fear brown children. In Tucson, high school students were villainized. Texas has oneupped Arizona by fearing even younger kids. 4 . Fe a r b o o k s . I n A rizo n a , th ey ba n n e d M exic a n American Studies. Texas has used trickier means to sabotage ethnic studies.
coalition implemented draconian drug penalties. The total U.S. prison population surged from 330,000 inmates in 1980 to 1.57 million in 2012, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics -- making the American prison population the largest in the world.
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