When I was a child, these verbal and mental daggers hurt, and in ways I wasn't even aware of. Now that I am a grown man, have done more research and have learned more, I just get a bit aggravated when someone begins spouting this tripe back to me. I know they are just ignorant. I've been there. I want to have patience. But it's like "Man...still? I still have to deal with this?" And it's frustrating. As a child, I just slunk into my seat, eventually turning away. I only hurt myself by believing all the racist and ignorant ideas out there. But now it is hard to hear because I also know that every adult mouth that opens and spouts anti-Mexican propaganda—without knowing the entire, holistic, interconnected deal of why they say what they do and why they think what they do—is doing harm, not so much directly suffering it...although they suffer that same harm more than they know by participating in such ways.

I think of the Wachowski bros film The Matrix, where any one person on the street could suddenly shift into Agent Smith and become a danger. Every person who spreads memes that they have only absorbed through American media, or perhaps their Uncle who "once traveled to Mexico" or some other unreliable source is suddenly and instantly a unit and agent of the big, never-resting Ameriborg that exists to continue oppression against the Indian/Mestizo/Mexican.

For example, we hear so much selective complaint. We hear how Mexicanos are "stealing jobs," and "illegally entering the country" and trying to somehow rip off our Hard-Earned American Culture of Superior Winningness with their lazy (desert-hiking, deadly-heat braving) ways. But do we hear much about NAFTA and how the "Free Trade" Globalization squeeze is slowly killing the farmers livelihoods? Do we hear about the CIA and its secret dealings in shaping México? Do we read about how America's desire to steal corn profits and tinker with genetically-modified grain is endangering the birthplace of maize, and starving Mexicanos? Do we hear about how the ejido, which once guaranteed the campesino (mi abuelo) his livelihood, and how it has been stolen by the mighty powers that would see Mexico become America's ghetto? Nah, that's not really so zesty a story for the American. Too many oogy feelings in those tales.

Tell us some more about those Dangerous Cholo Gangbangers, the Vatos Locos, or the scary, decapitating drug smugglers who are somehow birthed from the rich, brown soil of México, itself! Wait up, let me run and get my eeezie cheezie microwavee popcorn!

Here is a little sonsing-sonsing that might help fill out the story a bit. Read it quick before your snack cools down. Do you remember Bush lifting the assault weapons ban? And how so many Americans were getting frothy over thier freedumz, their gun freedumz? How much do you want to bet these are the same, the very same Amerikaners who talk all kinds of fearful junk about the Mecksikinz, the dirty Mecksikinz, the violent and rapidly encroaching Mecksikins? Do you think their brains work well enough to figure out that a stretch of desert or a toll booth check can't keep these weapons out of the hands of those they fear? Do you think they see any connection between their freedom to buy assault weapons and looming violence from those South of tha Border? No. Like their world, like their minds, like the "solution" they envision for all of México's ills, they wall off these thoughts from each other. They strangle and starve and shut out any real awareness of their actions or desires, and separate them from consequence.

MEXICO CITY - The Mexican village of Zazalpa got a chilling lesson in American-made firepower recently. Homes, cars, everything was destroyed. Even the cows were shot. [...]

The destruction of Zazalpa is just one of dozens of unrelated drug skirmishes in Mexico with a common element: American guns.[...]

Combat-style rifles are pouring into Mexico, aided by the end of the U.S. Assault Weapons Ban in 2004 and an arms race among several Mexican cartels battling for control of lucrative drug routes. [...]

'There is a direct relationship between the flow of these weapons and the explosion of violence,' said José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, Mexico's deputy attorney general for organized crime.[...]

To help stem the flow of weapons, authorities in Mexico and the United States have formed police task forces, installed X-ray scanners on the Mexican side of border crossings and launched gun buy-back programs in Mexican border cities. But seizures across Mexico show guns are still getting in.

—azcentral.com, U.S. guns pour into Mexico Arms race among drug cartels, end of ban in America result in flood of high-power weapons over border, Jan. 16, 2007

Right.

Because you know what, bright eyes? WALLS DON'T WORK. POLICING DOESN'T WORK. The heavy-handed, stomp-the-gopher from the beautiful American Green Zone DOES NOT WORK. The compartmentalized Western approach to life does NOT WORK. And being blind to this simple philosophical truth is what is leading us all over the cliff. Yet we keep trying. Walls, Laws, Guns, Weapons, Troops, Bombs, Directives, Commands. Foolishness and the loss of true vision in the palms of Progress's hands.

The number of weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities has been rising almost uninterrupted since 2002 and reached 10,579 in 2005. The 2006 catch looks to be even bigger, with more than 8,200 guns seized as of June.

Ninety percent of those weapons come from the United States, Mexico says. [...]

Authorities say the flow of combat-style weapons increased after the U.S. 1994 Assault Weapons Ban expired in September 2004.[...]

'Now, there are more weapons available out there to the general public, and in turn those weapons find themselves in the wrong hands,' said Sigberto Celaya, resident agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Tucson.[...]

'They lifted that (federal Assault Weapons Ban), and now these weapons are being sold like candy,' Santiago Vasconcelos said.[...]

Gun-control advocates also complain that high-ranking U.S. officials refuse to blame the United States for the flow of guns to Mexico.

'I don't know where the weapons come from,' Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told Congress in February.

'Wherever the weapons come from, they're dangerous.'

Mexican officials call that a cop-out.

—azcentral.com, U.S. guns pour into Mexico Arms race among drug cartels, end of ban in America result in flood of high-power weapons over border, Jan. 16, 2007

Those darn Mexicans, being so polite. This Chicano (he ain't shy®) calls it a lie, and an action that insures this man's heart can do nothing but pump and rot, pump and rot. For now. One day—and judging from this man's very unhealthy aura, I doubt it will be too much longer—it will only rot.

I'll say this with no shame or fear that you may find me naïve (because to be naïve in a twisted system such as this is to be a bit healthier to my mind): if we did not supply the world with guns, nor allow them to be mass produced, or produced at all...people would not have them to kill each other with. They would not have them to approach your border with. If we did not aid, abet, and raise up dictators, we would not have to later kill them. If we did not foment unrest, we would not have to later fear it.

Just as it is shown that households with guns produce more gun deaths than households without them, this shape of thought seems a very simple one to grasp. But maybe it's just too subtle for the average American mind, steeped in the ideas of Rights to Bear Arms and Boston Tea Parties and such, you know—yummy, well-buttered, genocidal Thanks-for-grabbings.... These are not XTREME ideas, they are not glossy rock-em-sock 'em. They are not a giant Mickey Mouse roller coaster of fun. No, these truths so simple are more of a ripple, a curtain of breeze, seven soft notes of a young child's laugh....we upinhyeah are used to thinking in Technicolor®, full Dolby, machine-gun sound.