Mexico is celebrating its Independence Day today. I'm watching it on YouTube, the livestream of an empty Zócalo in Mexico City, where the president spoke and said "Viva México" several times from the balcony, and rang a bell. He's wearing a purple suit, but doesn't resemble the Joker. His wife waved at the audience which does not exist in person, but presumably is watching the livestream. There are fireworks and a model of a Mayan ruin, which they're using as a screen on which to project a history show. The cathedral is also being used as a giant movie screen. The Zócalo in Mexico City is a large open place, but there is literally nobody there. Now Lila Downs is singing. I'm a fan, actually. Great singer. Only Mexican girls can get away with wearing a flower in their hair larger than a speaker cone. Or, nobody does it as well as they do. Purple suits, pink taxicabs, huge hair flowers... Mexico is very colorful.
Lila Downs has some Illuminati imagery in some of her videos, but seems to keep herself intact. She does push a feminist agenda, but I think that's because it's a newer thing down here, and they're not aware of the damage it will cause in the long run. Also, it's a much more violent country than the U.S. in terms of regular, recurring kidnappings and murder; I watched a video a few weeks ago of a girl working behind a counter at a store in León, and the CCTV footage shows two masked guys walk in the store, wave a gun around, and drag the girl into a car waiting on the street. She's fighting for her life, and it takes them the better part of 10 minutes to get her in the car, but finally they succeed. There are guys trying to fight them, but the one guy just points a .45 in their faces, and even though they're armed with chairs and doing what they can, they know the guy will shoot them in the face, and they are powerless. There is one gun store in the entire country. One. Mostly used by military and police. Mexico is a very violent place. Which of course is not a secret. Seeing cops riding in the back of a truck with a mounted .50-caliber rifle is a common occurrence. Security guards and/or cops with assault rifles and shotguns are a common sight at toll booths on the freeway, or at major stores like Office Max. I saw my first murder victim here, about 50 feet off the freeway, surrounded by yellow tape and Federales. He was wearing a U.S. Army T-shirt, which was stained with blood. There were a crowd of onlookers behind the tape. It is not a pleasant thing to see. There's nothing "interesting" about it. It doesn't put a good spin on the rest of your day.
If you're interested, here's a video about the "Terror School" of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. You have to be signed in to watch it:
The reason for this article is to ask a real question, which is also rhetorical. I am enjoying the Independence Day show, but feel NOTHING. This isn't my country. These aren't my people. I have no historical or family connection to any Spanish-language country, at any time in the history of the world. I feel nothing, though I'm enjoying the show. Maybe I'll go into the Centro of this town I'm in tomorrow to see if anything is happening. Probably I won't. If it was walking distance, maybe. But probably I won't.
Is this how ungrateful, brainwashed Americans who hate America feel, while they're living in America? Is it possible to have absolutely NO sense of gratitude, love, pride, anything, for the country of your birth? I have to take that back. I actually have a lot of gratitude, and am very grateful to be here. And I do have a heart for this place. But it isn't my home. Even if I live here the rest of my life and never cross an international border again, this will never be my heartland. I will always be an "extranjero," a gringo, an outsider. It's a relief, compared to the institutionalized racism against white men that exists in the U.S. today, but it isn't mine. I have a heart for this place, but it isn't my heartland. La tierra de mi corazón es los Estados Unidos. Soy un americano sin vergüenza ni culpa. But as an American, I feel no sense of pride toward "La Patria." I respect it, like all foreigners everywhere in the world should, but it isn't mine. I don't feel anything about Mexican Independence Day.
If you have been brainwashed into thinking you are better than everybody else because you hate your country, whether it's America or not, the best I can do is pity you with the pity of a thousand endless chasms of incredulity and disdain. I have no idea what your problem is.
Love it or leave it, they say, and they're right. I didn't leave America because I don't love it; at this time in my life I happen to be genuinely interested in Latin America in general, especially Mexico, and would be here anyway, even if this was a great time to be in the U.S. But it isn't a great time to be in the U.S., because of spoiled, ungrateful nitwits who need to manufacture their problems, in lieu of having real ones.
I tell Mexicans sometimes, one of the things that's an odd relief about the culture here is that it has real problems, and doesn't have to invent them. This makes for a more relaxed and grateful culture, perhaps unexpectedly. Mexico doesn't have time to worry about how many gay people are in their cartoons. Their grandmothers are standing on freeway on-ramps selling paper flowers, and guys who apply for security jobs can get kidnapped and shipped to "Terror School," and if they don't become sicarios the cartel will kill their family.
That's a real problem. The pervy-men-in-women's-bathroom laws, or the number of gay muppets teaching 4-year-olds to masturbate at the library, or the ratio of diversity hires to qualified applicants, is not.
Or rather, it is. In fact those are horrifying problems. But all of them have been chosen. Mexico doesn't choose its problems. It doesn't have the luxury.
It also has a cool flag. An eagle standing on a cactus while subduing a rattlesnake. It's like the Gadsden flag.
Long live Mexico.
