To understand the illegal immigration problem on our southern border, we must first understand what is happening in Latin America. Why have millions of people left their homes, possessions, and families and endured hardships and perils of every sort in a bid to make a life for themselves elsewhere? Ask a South American refugee, and he’ll likely tell you the problem is socialism.
*****
A little boy of perhaps three, naked, teeth clenched, stiffened as his mother poured water drawn from a spigot over his soapy head.
“Eeeee!”
He broke into a jig, splashing about in the ever-widening puddle at his feet, facing the cold of this makeshift shower with the courage of a man who refuses to betray his country’s secrets as he is being waterboarded.
Then he saw me.
His jig stopped abruptly. Frozen, he seemed wholly unaware of his chilly torment. He simply stared. His mother, until that moment preoccupied with the task at hand, followed his gaze and, with a look of alarm, swept up her toddler and disappeared into the shadows of something like a garage.
I felt like I had violated some unwritten rule, but being that it was unwritten, I was unclear as to the precise nature of my offense. The scene was, to me, cute — the sort captured in the pages of National Geographic countless times. But it was hardly an intimate one, occurring as it did in the open air of a busy, dusty street of this barrio in northeast Colombia.
“They think we are with the [drug] cartels,” Néstor, my Spanish translator and a grizzled old journalist, said.
I looked back at the little nondescript Kia and its equally diminutive owner that had brought us here. He stood, arms crossed, trying to look confident, vigilant against any threat. But even with the sunglasses, he did not make for an intimidating figure. No, the car, his stature, none of it fit with that narrative.
“If we are with one of the cartels,” I said to no one in particular, “then we aren’t very good at it.” People watched us from doorways, windows, and walkways that substituted for porches. “If it helps,” I added, “we could always say we are a start-up cartel.”
I chuckled at my private joke, but Néstor, too far away to hear me, just shrugged as if to say, ¿Qué?
[Interesting Read]
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(4) Should New York Times v. Sullivan Be Overruled because of The New York Times?
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