There is a ferment and political awakening along Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles for anyone who cares to look beyond the bougainvilla draped restaurants and roving mariachis. Long a haunt of tourists in search of “old LA”, it now seems to be a ground zero theater in expressing how Mexicans will choose to define themselves in the United States.
As these t-shirts demonstrate, there are many who will never accept that a Mexican can be illegal in a part of the world that is arguably a part of Mexico! If Americans want to begin the argument about how to defend the border, there are those who will answer back that the border “is not where you think it is”.
Just what is an American? Is it a citizen of the US or is it those indigineous peoples who lived here before the arrival of Columbus? And is it ultimately racist to define a citizen as one of a particular race, or is it actully a progressive thing to insist that obeying the laws and the Constitution of the United States, no matter what race or religion you are, is the defining fact in who can say “I am an American” in the United States of America?
Liberalism, which seeks tolerance and inclusiveness in everything, may actually kill it by obfuscation of the immigration laws. Conservativism, with its emphasis on punishment for violations of the law, may bring about civil unrest as it seeks to discover, then capture and prosecute those who are neither Mexican nor American, but simply here in search of a better paying job and prosperity.
Here in Van Nuys 