Mexican Carlos Fuentes, one of the best-known living novelists and essayists in the Spanish-speaking world, has written this scathing article about Arizona Law SP 1070 for the newspaper El Pais of Spain. Mr. Fuentes criticizes U.S. politicians like John McCain for flip-flopping on immigration, warns of the dangers of the road Arizona has embarked upon, and attacks Mexico’s government for leaving its people in a situation that forces them to flee.
For El Pais, Carlos Fuentes writes in part:
If you’re dark-skinned; if you sport a big Zapata mustache; if you’re a woman and cover yourself with a shawl – then don’t even think of living or even visiting the North American state of Arizona, which has officially declared itself racist. And it is a racism that is clearly aimed at the Mexican and Latin American population in the form of purely racial “profiling.” Because tell me, do you really believe that police in Arizona are going to detain a White person with blond hair and blue-eyes? Of course not; that would open them up to be sued, because the law prohibits detention based on a person’s physical appearance. Unless of course one is dark, or dark and mustachioed, or dark with a mustache and speaking bad English. Or wears a shawl.
In other words: the new law discriminates against groups of people based on physical appearance, arbitrarily eliminates the need for due process and creates a caste society, interrupting processes of integration and making intimidation the basis of an uneasy social coexistence. “We’re just enforcing the law” repeat the interviewed police officials. The same has been said by all perpetrators of racist, discriminatory and ad hoc policies directed at particular groups in society. “It’s the law.” … Why detain a person who looks “Latino”? To ensure that their papers are in order, which creates an obligation for all brown-skinned people to carry an ID, as has been required of all persecuted groups – such as the Jews of Nazi Germany.
Now pursuing a repressive and racist initiative that denies the senator’s own record, today John McCain is a mere opportunist who wants to defeat the arguments of his primary opponents by being “more Catholic than the Pope.” Sarah Palin, a promoter of lies and intolerance who has been desperately recruited by the senator, has offered her stellar support.
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