One of the books I took along on my recent trip to Guatemala was the Tempe Public Library’s copy of Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography by the Mexican-American writer Richard Rodriguez. He’s a tremendously gifted writer and a lot of what he has to say in Darling is provocative, but one paragraph in particular stopped me in my tracks:
If you would understand the tension between Mexico and the United States that is playing out along our mutual border, you must understand the psychic tension between Mexican stoicism – if that is a rich enough word for it – and American optimism. On the one side, the Mexican side, Mexican peasants are tantalized by the American possibility of change. On the other side, the American side, the tyranny of American optimism has driven Americans to neurosis and depression, when the dream is elusive or less meaningful than the myth promised. This constitutes the great irony of the Mexican-American border: American sadness has transformed the drug lords of Mexico into billionaires, even as the peasants of Mexico scramble through the darkness to find the American dream.
What he’s saying here, if I’m catching his drift, is that the American Dream – at least in its prevailing forms – leaves a whole lot of its devotees (and yes, beneficiaries) deeply discontented. Even so, the allure of the dream lives on, and scores of men, women, and children continue to risk life and limb (quite literally) for the slim chance they might get a taste of it.
If anyone tells you that immigration on the American continent is easy to understand, and therefore easy to fix, don’t believe them. Paradoxes and contradictions permeate the American Dream just as they characterize every person, regardless of nationality, who continues to pursue it.
Header photo via agonistica.com
