Excellent piece¡ Nobody can understand the history of Mexico without understanding the history of their final indigenous rulers, the Aztecs. The Aztecs were cruel, ruthless and brutal. They built their civilisation on slave labor, superior organization and military power.
As a blue collar worker-by choice-of Mexican/Latino ancestry, I found this-”such a difference exists between the American citizen of Mexican heritage and the desperate refugee laborer” to be a definitive statement.
One of the first things the Spanish military did upon arrival was to enslave the Native American/Indian population, and mate with quite a few of the women, beginning the Mestizo ethnic group nearly all of us new world Latinos belong to. So about one half of my ancestors enslaved the other half from the gitgo, and created a really conflicted ethnic group.
To answer Cowboy Bob, Natives/Indians did not make the best slaves, by all historical accounts-they had already been indentured by the Aztecs for awhile, and used their fall to get the hell out of Dodge, if they could, or got killed for their defiance. Those ever-resourceful Spaniards promptly bought Black slaves to do the work, starting with the Caribbean islands, and creating another conflicted, racially mixed ethnic group. Hey, at least they were consistent...
By the 1700’s, my known family had moved into what is now south/southwest Texas, along with a lot of others of Basque-and-Native ancestry-family tradition says Basques had no liking for being close to the strict caste system and harshness of the Spanish government-so they got far away to do their own thing, ranching in a remote place like they still do. So my family and I are no different from any other American whose ancestors came here to get away from oppressive rulers a few centuries ago, and have been working, supporting families and serving in the military ever since. A high percentage of all Hispanics/Latinos choose military careers...
The illegal immigrant is not someone a person of Mexican ancestry like myself can relate to at all, other than to recognize that they have committed a criminal act by sneaking over here and likely didn’t come “just to work”-like the author says, there is a vast difference between them and the native-born of us...