Mexico and America
I read this delightful little piece at "Gates of Vienna." Its simplicity of expression masks a poetic complexity. The author finds two Mexican immigrants re-setting the fieldstones that have tumbled from an old wall, and they stop, and they chat. Frost's neighbors at their task come to mind. But here are the neighbors of two nations -- America and Mexico -- meeting at the wall.
Some in our time have talked of literally building a wall between America and Mexico.
The story told at "Gates of Vienna" was not in the Sonora desert, however. It took place in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the littoral of the old Confederacy, near where the two nations that once formed the United States bled into one another.
Just the other night, unable to sleep yet, I reached down a book of John C. Calhoun's speeches. So far from being the slave-coveting villain he is now generally held to be, Calhoun was one of the most principled men in American political history. In the 1840s, when all the South and his own party, the Democrats, were mad to destroy and dismember Mexico and swallow it into an American empire, Calhoun warned them against this. Not only was it dangerous to America's future, it was fatally out of tune with its values.
At one point, debating a war appropriations bill in the Senate in February 1847, he rose above his own tightly reasoned rhetoric, and seemed to see even as far as our own times. Back then, America and Mexico were neighbors more in name than fact, with hundreds of uninhabited miles between most of their population centers. Still, Calhoun saw, with regard to Mexico:
He asked if we minded having so many Mexicans in America. I said the problem wasn’t the legal immigrants, it was the ones who came in illegally and were worked very hard for little money. “It robs them and it robs the country.”
His face got serious and he said he believed Mexicans could stay in Mexico if it weren’t for the corrupt government. “We have everything we need: oil, minerals, much good land. But the government doesn’t care to help us. They just take for themselves.” When asked if he liked Vicente Fox he frowned and didn’t speak.
Some in our time have talked of literally building a wall between America and Mexico.
The story told at "Gates of Vienna" was not in the Sonora desert, however. It took place in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the littoral of the old Confederacy, near where the two nations that once formed the United States bled into one another.
Just the other night, unable to sleep yet, I reached down a book of John C. Calhoun's speeches. So far from being the slave-coveting villain he is now generally held to be, Calhoun was one of the most principled men in American political history. In the 1840s, when all the South and his own party, the Democrats, were mad to destroy and dismember Mexico and swallow it into an American empire, Calhoun warned them against this. Not only was it dangerous to America's future, it was fatally out of tune with its values.
At one point, debating a war appropriations bill in the Senate in February 1847, he rose above his own tightly reasoned rhetoric, and seemed to see even as far as our own times. Back then, America and Mexico were neighbors more in name than fact, with hundreds of uninhabited miles between most of their population centers. Still, Calhoun saw, with regard to Mexico:
"Our true policy, in my opinion, is not to weaken or humble her; on the contrary, it is our interest to see her strong, and respectable, and capable of sustaining all the relations that ought to exist between independent nations. I hold that there is a mysterious connection between the fate of this country and that of Mexico; so much so that her independence and capability of sustaining herself are almost as essential to our prosperity, and the maintenance of our institutions as they are to hers."
