The Hispanic Problem

I grew up around adults who told florid tales of life during the dictatorship of one US-sponsored-racially-brainwashed-dictator by the name of Rafael Trujillo. One female adult once told me in reference to a local neighborhood Haitian who had been accused of a crime: "They should do to him like they did in the Era of Trujillo, and meticulously pull out his fingernails with pliers." These same adults would probably see nothing wrong with an individual brutally grabbing a belt or stick and using it on their children for extended periods of time in response to offenses that don't even exist in the English language, such as failure to use proper pronouns.
 
However, when these immigrants move to the US, they magically leave these traits behind and adopt a love for US traditions and costumbres. The Wall Street Journal is praising Pinochet, so it stands to reason that the Hispanic problem is an American problem, exported many decades ago by America's aggressive foreign policy. And it used to be the case that the United States could claim moral, albeit hypocritical, high ground in denouncing the very same Latin American dictators that they sponsored, but now the proverbial tables have turned.
 
The kidnapping of President Evo Morales -- my personal apologies on behalf of free American citizens -- was a message from the security state cabal to the rest of the world: challenge us and we will kidnap you. Yes, there are innocent men starving to death in that Cuban base we inherited after blowing up our ship in order to declare war against Spain, innocent men who were kidnapped by Northern Alliance bounty hunters under nefarious reasons, and later beautifully "renditioned" from their abodes in Afghanistan to never be heard from again and to never face charges or the prospect of release.
 
But it is the case that not only are the Latin Americans learning, they are also awakening. It was the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz who so poetically quipped: "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States." One can only wonder what he would say today if he were informed of the cunningly-named Fast & Furious program by the Obama administration [regime?] to deliver military-grade kinetic weapons to cartels, to murderers, in order to "track" how those weapons killed.
 
The Dominican comedian Boruga entertained me during my youth with a history lesson of the Dominican Republic which I still have memorized in song. Boruga sings of Ulises Heureaux -- charismatically called Lilís -- the man who was our first half-Haitian president, and also dictator: "That negro killed people, just to watch them fall." When Obama got elected in 2008, I was overlooking the crowd on Old Campus cheering and singing praises of freedom. I remarked to my at-the-time partner: "They are cheering for their corporate-selected man, their Lilís."
 
Lilís precipitated the bankruptcy of the Dominican Republic, and that bankruptcy was used as justification for intervention by US forces in 1916. There is a Dominican proverb: "The world is round and takes many turns." The proverb doesn't translate as deeply, but maybe it will be the case that Latin America needs to intervene in Guantanamo, under the guise of spreading freedom and democracy. Perhaps, it may also be the case that American bankruptcy is coming to a Boruga song near you.