Happy Birthday Bennie!


As Americans we are intimately concerned with the culture and history of our neighbors to the north and south. That's why on this 21st day of March we join with our Mexican brethren to celebrate and honor the birthday of Benito Juarez. Happy birthday Bennie! Which brings us to today's quiz question:

Benito Juarez? Who the hell was that?

He was a
A. Mexican Bandit
B. Mexican President
C. Mexican General
D. Mexican Priest
E. All of the above

Ok, that was a trick question. Let's face it, except for The Brady Bunch, the disco craze, and that British moptop group that grandma used to listen to, most Americans are only dimly aware of their own history, let alone Mexican history. It's a little much to expect them to know who Benito Juarez was. Here's a brief summary.


Benito Juarez was a Zapoteca Indian born in 1806 in Oaxaca region of southern Mexico. Although born into poverty, in 1831 he graduated school with a law degree and quickly began a career in politics that was to take him from local judgeship to the Mexican presidency in 1861. Upon finding the Mexican government broke he suspended debt repayments to major European powers inviting the invasions of 1862 and 1863 which forced him from office and put Maximilian on the Mexican throne.

After Maximilian's execution in 1867 Juarez was once again elected president of Mexico and served in that position until his death in 1872. During his life, however, Juarez became known not only as a great Mexican patriot but also a great reformer who sought to secularize and modernize Mexican society. He seized church lands, supported equal rights for the Indians, built railroads and schools, and drafted laws which guaranteed basic freedoms for all Mexicans. His birthday is celebrated each year in Mexico and he is remembered as one of Mexico's greatest heroes.

There, now you know a little about him, and as you can see he doesn't really look like Paul Muni at all (that's a movie joke). On second thought, maybe just a little.

Anyways, after Juarez's death came the dictatorship of Porifiro Diaz and the invasion of Mexico by foreign business interests. You know, corruption and bandits and lawlessness and all those things we associate with modern Mexico today. Not that any of that was Juarez' fault, so why not celebrate his birthday just the same.

Speaking of Mexico, the Murky News had a story just today about drug gangs that are shooting up the city of Nuevo Laredo. It's a big problem that's been going on for quite some time. Presidente Fox promised to clean up the town and sent a General and troops from the PFP (Federal Preventative Police) to restore order, but unfortunately the General has mysteriously disappeared and once again we are hearing stories of police corruption on both sides of the border.

The American response to all this violence has been to scold the Mexicans about thier drug problem and build a wall. Actually, we haven't built the thing yet but we're getting ready to. The wall is seen as a concession to those Americans who see the border problem best solved by sending 12 divisions of armored infantry down to the border and shooting Mexicans on sight. Cooler heads have prevailed, however, and the wall is seen as a better solution, and less bloody too. Many Americans feel let down by all this and find the idea of less blood disappointing, but our brave leaders in Washington have been looking at the demographics and have come to realize that pretty soon there's gonna be more hispanics in this country than white folk. Not a good time to go hating Mexicans, it's said, and so they have turned to hating Arabs instead. (In case you weren't following the news a couple of weeks ago, it's ok to hate Arabs now. Congress has made it official).

So there you go. We're gonna build this wall and that's gonna take care of all our border problems. No more illegal immigration and no more drug wars. And it's not as if we haven't chided the Mexicans on this. "Holy cow" we've told them, "if you'd stop having all those illegal drugs over there then we wouldn't have to be spend all this money buying 'em". Of course now we've got this wall and I guess that means there won't be anymore drug problems in America. Hallelujah. If the Mexicans wanna go on murdering each other then that's there business. Just leave us out of it.

Actually, we're not building the wall to keep the drugs out. I just made that up. Wall or no wall, we want our illegal drugs. No, we're building the wall to keep poor working people out of our fields and office buildings. This part I'm not making up. We're gonna build this wall and then no more illegals will be crossing the borders and that'll free up jobs so that all those laid-off factory workers and customer service reps can start living in migrant camps and picking our strawberries. Congress has got this all figured out.

Well, not quite. There's also the problem of illegals who are already here, but Congress has a solution for that too. They're proposing legislation that would make it a crime to assist an illegal alien. I'm not sure what they mean by "assist" but I assume it would include things like food and water and a place to sleep. That's what some Catholic preists think, anyways, and let me tell you they're not too happy about it. They feel it is their duty as christians to give comfort and aid to the needy and they're threatening civil disobedience if this law passes (it'll pass). So now Congress is faced with the prospect of jailing priests and bishops as well as illegal aliens if the law is enacted (it'll be enacted).

Oh brother, what a mess. And to top it all off who do we see at the front of this charge to criminalize comfort and aid to the needy? Who is that standing shoulder to shoulder with these anti-alien neocons? Why it's none other than Lou Dobbs(?), that's who. Yeah, no kidding. That Lou Dobbs. Guess he just hates it when someone gives a working man a drink of water.

Well, what can you say. It is the pressing social problem of our time, this immigration thing that is. Nothing else comes close. Take this article I was reading in the New York Times, for instance. Apparently, someone has done a study of different socioeconomic groups in America and found that of all the different groups they studied only black males are failing to progress up the economic ladder. Whites, hispanics, asians, even black females are all gaining ground, but black males are going in the opposite direction. A greater share of them are unemployed, a greater number of them are going to prison and a greater number of them are dropping out of school.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. This whole black-white thing is so sixties. Well, maybe, and I don't claim to have any answers. But it is a problem. Inner city poverty and crime and drug use and all the rest of it does have an effect on society. It would be nice to find out why black males, exclusive of every other socioeconomic group, are falling behind and dropping out of society. But then again what is any of this compared to the immigration problem. I'm sure the crew cleaning our offices every night is much more of a problem for society than poverty, crime and overcrowded jails.

Yeah, let's build a wall.