...because those who are thinking and seeing are aware that this is not about some OTHER people, but the application of all those American Ideals we claim to be invading other countries to preserve. Either these ideals are real and we make them true by applying them to the humans in our midst, or they are lies we are using to not only defend the mass-murder in and the hostage-taking of Iraq, but countless other self-serving and ultimately hypocritical ventures.

So where is this "America?" Show me. (Please.)

...and yet some people in America, too many, see a Latino and think it is all so simple as "Mexicans/Latin American Immigrants come here and spread their crime culture." It must not occur to them how we reap what we sow, how we all contribute to the reality that exists. But these people who default to seeing Mexicans (and Latin Americans) in this way have swallowed the Submerged American Bait and now see Mexico and All That is South of tha Border is a seething cauldron of crime and hot, murderous, rape-gang, killer infection that they NOW BRING HERE!!!11!!!!!1!!.

IT IS HYPE sold to us to enable the continuity of exploitation and hate, to keep the NEW SLAVES in their yokes. Don't buy it. Life is not so simplistic. Yet, boys will think it is, boys will grow into cops, who have grown up under the White Lens, think the same thing, buy the same hype too often, and they do their part to fulfill it; they arrest more Latinos, hassle more Latinas, charge more crimes when they done hasslin' because of it. Stats for Black and Brown go up, and people look at them and say "See? Darkies are violent and unlawful!"

IT IS A VICIOUS CYCLE. The colonization creeps on.

How can we lessen minorities falling into lives of crime? For one thing, we must stop seeing them as criminals. Let's try that for now. Something simple, right? Let's see where it goes, though.

...but too many in American Schools are not given real history lessons, that is, ones that would teach a being to evolve to thought that cared for life, and learned lessons from pain caused or experienced, a view that looked up into the sky and over the mountains rather than into a combustion chamber, or a punch clock, or a rifle sight.

SO MUCH could change if we taught the children true lessons. But Government doesn't want true lessons, and the lie is passed on and on and on. Government and the Corporate beast that is our culture—coupled with our own ignorance and inertia—produces drones and workers and soldiers, laying brick after bloody brick for the New Empire. Not thinkers or thinking humans. But you and I can do differently. We can have different conversations. And teachers can address this on their own, I'm sure. I know they must have a certain amount of lattitude. Though we see, too, when they are punished for having "liberal" minds! (Can you imagine? Going by the traditional definitions...a teacher without a "liberal" mindset? Only a madman could assert such a thing as positive. Literally. By definition. Only a madman could advocate teachers having closed minds.) And anyway, we are all teachers here and there. Let's do so consciously.

We need to reject the vague, defaulted notions of Mexicans. We need to see immigrants not even as "immigrants." We need to see they are humans, moving over the land. As humans always move over land. Animals move over land. Rocks don't even stay still. But we draw maps and want to crystallize Nature into a legend we can profit from.

...and doing so much cleanup in Katrina. But they are exploited by the employers like human chattel, used up for their ability to move bones and muscle and materials—

Not that the jobs taken by Hispanics are the envy of the industry. Milton Martins ... complains of backbreaking work and abysmal living conditions—triple bunks packed into a stench-filled salon in a downtown hotel. "It's a trash dump," he says. "This is human slavery in America." Even worse, he says, the contractor hasn't paid some of his co-workers in full.

—or they are posed as threats to blacks, so that all divisions are deepened—

"They're bringing in Mexicans and expecting us to work for the same money." [a black man is reported to have said at one of Ray Nagin's town meetings in New Orleans (by msnbc in the same article)]

—and everyone develops a feeling of loathing for immigrants who want no more than did any other peoples who came to this land since it was first bloodied and razed; even other peoples with histories of struggle are encouraged to turn their back on the lessons of their people and become the new oppressor.

What do you gain when you become the new oppresor? And what do you lose?

We all turn our baleful eye to the INVADER who wants to COME HERE and for some reason enjoy the same LIVES that we have!!!!!!!!! Lives that were made possible by so much pain, and still are! Women dying of cancers in "third world" countries putting our computers together! Children suffering adult work schedules and what would be inadequate safety and health conditions to put together clothes we import and mark way up! Talk to me of laws! Because laws allow many crimes to transpire.

But soon, everyone begins to harvest a low-grade resentment of people who are often not even encouraging their own kids to go to school anymore, because in the environment where immigrants do not have community support and are exploited economically, it is more important that everyone in the family work and everyone of course has to hide, ALL WHILE enable this country's profits and wealth and keeping the machine running AT ALL. And you and I with nice veggies! And clothes! And meat! MMMMmmMMMMM!

Double bind? Exploitation? "Come here and ruin our country?" Get real, fatcats! Take a look around, pharaohs and priests! Who is toiling at the base of YOUR pyramid?

...so perhaps some of your dreaded contagion could be prevented by kindness and a humane view upon humans added with how our histories entwine and our present moment gives us both room to now live, at the very least respecting each other's lifeforce and any threat to that. But first one would have to cleanse the contagion from their own heart and mind....

...which can be hard, I know, in a land that flood us with the Othering of Mexicans are dirty, thieving, lazy, criminal beings! I know. I was ashamed of myself growing up. That's the bottom line. I can write tons of words about it, stretch it out into a series or a practice of media analysis, even, but the short and sweet of it is that in America, it is Politically Correct to know that Mexicans are inferior. Period. That's why I told people I met, for years, that I was part-Italian, growing up. To quell that restlessness in their eye. To answer the spotlight beam from the throat. No Mexicans here, don't worry!

But that day is dying. And experiencing a transformation into a time when the White Supremacist standard no longer reigns over all our minds. And that is a good, good thing. For all of us. And together, with honest thoughts and positive memes replacing old ones, and dialogue, and positive representation, we can move forward. It takes all of us working.

Thank you for being here.

And thanks to my blogmigos, we represent. And spread the word. And reinforce. Those positive images and positive feelings are like rays of light creeping into a dank, disgusting cave we have been threatened into. What? You mean we are allowed to see Chicanos and Mexicans and Mexican Americans and Latin Americans as able, beautiful, important, hard-working, kind people, too????? We don't have to see all of them as criminals? whores? do-nothings? dangerous gang members? thieves? Is it really possible?

It is, and we are doing it every day. So thank you. There is no waiting for things to change. Here we are. Let's be the new day.

Download the [pdf] study here, from enespanol.discovery.com.