I'm not following the developments surrounding the immigrant insurrection in L.A., but I would like to address anyone who doesn't understand why people waving Mexican flags would complain about being deported to Mexico.  I'm not the first person to say it, but since the comment sections of videos posted by conservative sources tend to be overwhelmed by declarations of aggravated incredulity, let me join the ranks of those who are trying to explain:

It's not a protest (obviously).  It's not even a riot (though it is).

It's an insurrection.

The reason this guy doesn't take the 2-hour drive to Tijuana and join his countrymen in doing something genuinely dangerous, such as standing up against the Mexican cartels, is not because he's stupid.

It's because he's a revolutionary, and wants to reclaim "Aztlán" for the indigenous tribes of Mesoamerica.  Because El Hielo (ICE) is significantly less dangerous than El Mencho, this guy has no problem diverting his life's purpose away from what looks like an obvious answer from an American mindset (go home and fix your own country), and toward the violent overthrow of a much softer, easier, law-abiding target.

Meaning America.

What else?

Mineral de Pozos, Guanajuato

I touched on it in the article "The Weight of Fire," but I didn't get into detail how "my Mexican friends sometimes let slip ideas that make me want to die at the Alamo."  After visiting a percussion workshop in Mineral de Pozos, where I took the picture above, I got into a discussion about American politics with my indigenous socialist bass player.  At one point, he expressed a real hope that "we'd be able to take back Texas and New Mexico," presumably for Aztlán.  Almost instantly, I turned into Peter Fonda from Easy Rider.  A giant American flag became spontaneously emblazoned on the chopper hiding deep within my soul.  I deflected my annoyance into spiritual matters, and turned the conversation toward God and heaven and hell, which is more important anyway.  But my thoughts were some anglicized variation of "de mis manos frías y muertas, cabrón."

From my cold, dead hands, you bastard.

My bassist told me that people south of the Rio Grande don't think of "America" as the United States, but as everything south of the Rio Grande.  "America" as Americans know it is just Los Estados Unidos.  The United States.  To their way of thinking, they are Americans, and we are estadounidenses, or simply gringos.  It didn't seem to have ever occurred to my bassist, who was far from stupid, that people who can't even take control of their own state (Guanajuato is the most dangerous state in Mexico, homicidally speaking), have basically zero chance of ever "taking back" something from people who carry guns to breakfast.  Take over Dallas?  To what end.

To turn it into Tijuana?

"It is the people who liberate themselves."
Che Guevara

"It is the people who liberate themselves," says Che Guevara in the photograph above.  He says he's not a liberator, and that liberators do not exist.  He says it's the people who liberate themselves, presumably by forming an insurrection against the world's only Constitutional Republic, so that the nonexistent liberators can take their orders from whatever tin-pot despots happen to survive.

Brilliant.

I'm not going to tell you not to take these people seriously, because they're serious.  They mean it.  They have no idea what they're talking about, but they are undeniably sincere.  What they're not, however, is honest.  They are neither honest, brave, nor true.  As a gringo who spent over 4 years in Mexico and speaks Spanish at an intermediate level, nothing bores me quite as fast as an Hispanic gringo who thinks he or she is hardcore because they speak Spanish.  The whole East L.A. cholo thing.  I'm not saying I would walk through Boyle Heights with my feathers on display, but come on.  I wrote the article "I See Americans" about how American those California cholos are, after only a year and a half in Mexico.  I'm not saying people aren't dangerous.  Everyone is dangerous.  But get real.  If you're in that smug, transparent crowd, know this:  Nobody thinks you're protestors.  Nobody thinks you have any guts.  If you had any guts, you'd stand up against the criminals in your homeland, instead of a bunch of "fascist" immigration police who will only send you back to your home country, where the real front line in the battle for freedom is.  You have no idea what fascism is.  Or rather, you do.  Which, presumably, is why you don't return to it.  If the definition of fascism is the combination of state and corporate power, what do you call it when the state and corporations are both controlled by criminal cartels?

Socialism, probably.

Mineral de Pozos, Guanajuato

Anyway, Johnny Cash said not to bring your guns to town, but at this point in American life, you might want to skip town entirely, and bring your guns with you into the next room.  As in, to breakfast.  "From my cold, dead plate of scrambled eggs," reads the sign above the stove.  Because this is America.

Thanks for listening.