De
La Torre article, continued
He burst
into his shack and went straight to the sleeping mats on the dirt
floor. “Despierta mi amor, wake up my love,”
José told his wife as he gently shook her. “A messenger
just warned me that la milicia, the militia, will be coming
for us. I fear we will disappear! Apúrate, hurry up,
we must leave this moment for a safer land, far from the reaches of
this brutal dictatorship.” There was no time to pack any belongings
or personal mementoes, nor was there time to say goodbye to friends
and family. In the middle of the night, literally a few steps before
the National Guard, José took his small family into el
exilio, the exile. They would come to a foreign country, wearing
only the clothes on their backs. Even though they could not speak
the language, nor understand the strange customs and idiosyncrasies
of the dominant culture, at least they were physically safe. Salvation
for this poor family was found south of the border.
Over two thousand years ago this family arrived in Egypt as political
refugees, fleeing the tyrannical regime of Herod. Over forty years
ago my own father came home to his wife, my mother, with similar news.
Because of his involvement with the former political regime, he was
now a fugitive of the newly installed government. If caught, he would
face certain death. They gathered me, their six-month-old son, and
headed north, arriving in this country literally with only the clothes
on their backs. Like Jesus, I too was a political refugee, a victim
of circumstances beyond my comprehension or control. My Jesus knows
my pain of being a foreigner in an alien land. Jesus understands what
it means to be seen as inferior because he too was from a culture
different than the dominant one. I have no doubt that Jesus wept as
a child for the same reasons I did. For me to see Jesus as a refugee
is more than to locate my story in the biblical narrative. Rather,
the story of Jesus becomes my story, as I move from my social location
to the biblical text. In short, I discover a savior who knows the
fears and frustrations of a small alien boy because Jesus also experienced
those same fears and frustrations.
Latino/as, even though they have lived for hundreds of years on the
land that would eventually become the United States, are still seen
as aliens, exiles, and outsiders - people who are marginalized because
they are perceived as not belonging. Many find themselves in the United
States because of the quasi-religious ideology of Manifest Destiny,
when the United States conquered foreign lands, as in the case of
northern Mexico and Puerto Rico. The presence of these Mexicans and
Puerto Ricans in the United States is a direct consequence of this
country’s aggressive territorial expansion. They awoke one day
to find that the borders had moved, making them aliens on their own
lands. Others are here as a result of gunboat diplomacy, as in the
case of people from Central America and the Caribbean. During the
twentieth century, all these nations were invaded at least once by
the U.S. Marines, whose mission usually involved overthrowing the
country’s government (even when elected by the people) to impose
a government more willing to protect U.S. interests. Territorial invasions
and the exploitation of the natural resources by U.S. corporations
led to conditions that eventually fostered their immigration to the
imperial center. They find themselves refugees and aliens in the country
responsible for their being here. Even their descendants are not spared
the indignation of being seen as foreigners, regardless of how many
generations have inhabited the land. Their Latino/a physical features
or Hispanic surnames make them a race that doesn’t belong.
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