Latimer on Law & Politics

Curly Bill And The Illegal Mexicans

                                                  Curly Bill And The Illegal Mexicans

                                                 Give me your tired, your poor,

                                                 Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

                                                 The wretched refuse of your  teeming shore.

                                                 Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.

                                                 I  lift my lamp beside the golden door.

                                                 -Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus,"

                                            (As Engraved on Pedestal of Statue of Liberty)

              The state authorities in Arizona have gotten into the business of immigration law enforcement, with local police stopping anyone who looks like a Mexican and asking for identification. They are also asking that the federal government beef up enforcement efforts along the Mexican border, even calling for federal troops to help stem the flow of illegal Mexican immigration.

            When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in the summer of 2005, the holier-than-thou preachers on the so-called "Christian" right were intoning that it was God's punishment for the sinful ways of the people of New Orleans, for all that  laissez le bon temps rouler they had going on Bourbon Street.  It's funny, though, with all the wildfires doing so much damage in Arizona this summer, we don't hear them saying it's God's punishment for the distinctly un-Christian official policy of turning poor Mexicans away.

            The only real crime most of the illegal Mexicans commit is the unlawful act of undocumented immigration itself.  The vast majority of them are poor, uneducated individuals who come into America to seek a better standard of living and who are willing to work for it, taking menial jobs as agricultural workers or domestic help.

           Meanwhile, this is just one more example of how the  so-called "Christianity" of the American right always seems to serve Mammon more than God, with its embrace of the Republican Party -the party of Wall Street and the military- industrial  complex that Ike warned about. On the issue of illegal Mexicans, they ignore Jesus teaching: "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor."   Like the troubled young man who heard those words, they simply walk away from Jesus' true message. Matthew 19:21-22.

           Those who call themselves "Christian" while demanding tough immigration law enforcement defy Jesus teaching about welcoming strangers:

But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

Luke 4:13-14.  Perhaps it's not really a matter of forgetting for those so-called "Christians," but simply a matter of denial, not wanting to hear Jesus' words when he tells us that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. Matthew 19:23.   

             The irony and the hypocrisy in Arizona isn't really confined to the "Christian" right, either.  Today's Arizonans call for federal troops to keep all illegal Mexicans out, not just drug runners but simple peasant workers who take jobs most Americans don't want.  Like Aesop's dog in the manger, they aren't about to do any work as menial as picking  fruits and vegetables, but, simply to avoid some marginal extra burden on public services,  they ardently seek to deny the opportunity for thousands of Mexicans who gladly do that honest labor            

             It  was just 130 years ago, back in 1880-81, when it was the Mexican army that gathered on the border near Tombstone, Arizona, in an effort to keep American cowboys from crossing. Unlike today's illegal Mexican immigrants who come north to seek honest work, those cowboy "illegals" in the late 19th Century, went south to steal cattle from Mexican ranchers.

          They were rough outlaws, really, men who only worked as cowboys between forays into Mexico to steal cattle, or when they weren't robbing stagecoaches to steal the miners' payroll. Virgil and Wyatt Earp were lawmen who tried to bring those thieving American citizens to justice, with backing from the mining companies, Wells Fargo and the bankers, but it was those "conservative" ranchers who received the stolen Mexican cattle that drove Wyatt Earp out of Arizona. 

           With names like Curly Bill Bresnahan, aka Brocius, Jesse Evans, John Kinney, Joe Hubert or Jim McDaniels, and pale visages to match,  those cattle rustlers were  "illegal" American immigrants who made forays into Mexico.  But they would still walk  around Tombstone  today, unmolested  by the Arizona authorities who are so determined to prevent honest, poor Mexicans from earning a day's wage here in the United States.   

            Back then, party affiliations were the reverse of today.  The Republicans were still the party of Lincoln, the progressives of the day, while the Democrats were the cowboy yahoos from the Southwest, as well as unrepentant post-Civil War southerners.  That began to change when Truman integrated the armed services by executive order and Strom Thurmond led the Dixiecrat revolt, even running as a third-party candidate, for the "States Rights Democratic Party," against Truman and Dewey in 1948.

           Today, of course, the GOP has long since abandoned the principles on which the party gained national ascendance under the principled leadership of men like Lincoln. Former southern Democrats like Thurmond bolted to the GOP based on the Democrats' leadership on civil rights and integration,  and the post-Reagan  Republicans are the ones who today bleat about "states rights."  

           Curly Bill would feel right at home in today's Republican Party, and it's a better than even bet that at least a few of his descendants are among those staunch Arizona Republicans -along with the Evanses, the Kinneys, the Huberts and the McDaniels, who want to see federal troops  massed along the border to slam the Golden Door and douse the Lamp of  Liberty for  all those huddled masses of  "illegals" from Mexico.