I have been reading a book about Mexicans that live along the border with The United States, near San Francisco. All of these people live in a garbage dump and search around for the essentials to survive. The story is told through an American citizen (about college aged) that goes down to Mexico to help out.
The author portrays this to be a real sob story, and how nobody is at fault for the situation that all of these people are in. All of these families that live in this dump are very poor obviously, yet all of these families are very large anywhere from 6- 10 kids, and some of the children (the average age is about 15 years old) even have their own children. I ask why, if these families are so poor, why they continue to have children that they can't feed without assistance. And it isn't like all of the families ever lived comfortably and had a lot of children in that time, and just ran into some hard times. These families have been stuck in poverty for generations, yet they have families that are so large, that the parents can't feed them.
It angers me that people get themselves stuck in this rut, and when they realize that there is nobody to blame but themselves, they start crying about it and don't do anything. One family (who had just had yet another child) father can't find work in the field that he WANTS. Beggars can't be choosers, as the saying goes. This man now stays at home, watching the mouths that he can't feed because he doesn't WANT to work in the jobs that are available. He needs to get to work, doing whatever jobs come by, to try and make life better for his family.
People no longer seem like they want to work for anything anymore. They want to (and do) take the easy path and have everything they have handed to them. In this book, all of the people in the dump live off handouts given to them by hard working people. The author says "how Mexican people are reluctant to accept handouts" That line really confused me. These people wouldn't need to accept handouts if they worked at what they needed.
Another thing that came up in this book was that several families were going to illegally cross the border into The United States. The man helping the poor families was a native to the region, but lived in the United States. The man did not attempt to stop them from going to the country that he presently lived in from becoming leeches on it.
This man had strong feelings for Mexico, and thought of it as a better place than The United States. While his family is from Mexico, and you should love the country that you are from, your loyalties need to stand firmly planted in one place, and you need to pick and choose carefully what that page is. This man lives in The United States, and uses the resources that it has to offer. If he likes Mexico so much, why doesn't he just move back?
The horrible living conditions in the area that this man is from can make some think twice about saying things like I said above. It is sad to hear about these kinds of situations, especially the ones that can't be helped by the people in it. The author of this book's father (who was born in Mexico, but moved to The United States and became a citizen here) was traveling back to Mexico. When he lost control of his car (or the corrupt police pushed him off the road, I am unclear exactly as to what happened exactly) he drove off the side of the road and into a town, where the locals searched him and his car for anything valuable. He was knocked out because of the crash, and it took a very long time for his family to track him down. By the time that they got him to a hospital, he was in very bad condition. To add to the problem, the hospital was not equipped to handle his injuries and he died. The line is very blurred when it comes to things like this, but the needs of others can't be put before the needs of our own.
It is sad think that these things happen, but people need to make up their minds when it comes to these things. Like I said above, loyalties need to stand in one place, and in one place only. As the saying goes "If you sit on the fence, you get poked in the ass"
No comments:
Post a Comment