And Yes, the People Voted

 

And Yes, the People Voted

by Thelma T. Reyna

 

 E pluribus unum.  A little phrase, three words carved on U.S. coins, three modest words scattered throughout our history—recited, repeated, painted, engraved—onto things patriotic, in places representing us, on the Great Seal of the United States.

E pluribus unum.  “Out of many, one.” On November 3, in perhaps the most consequential midterm elections in our nation’s modern history, voters proved the spirit of this sentiment true.

 Yes, the people voted. Standing in radiant sun or cold climes, in lines deep and long, like ribbons silken and rich, tying a priceless gift together. Across America, ribbons stretching down city sidewalks, parking lots, parks, school lawns.  All places where people stand and lives converge.

 And the people stood stolid, or leaned on canes, or one another, or rested in wheelchairs.

 For hours sometimes, the people stood in ribbons,  civic legs strengthened through marathon months of protests in defense of our nation’s immigrants, against the suppuration of autocracy. The people marched shoulder-to-shoulder in Chicago, battled brutal ICE kidnappers in Minneapolis, condemned Alligator Alcatraz.

 And yes, until the end of day, on November 3, the people voted. Against tyranny, corruption, and inhumanity. Against party sometimes, but for only one outcome.

 “Out of many, one.”   

 Yes, indeed, the people voted.

 

#####

Chicanonautica: An Election-Invaded Road Trip

by Ernest Hogan

We had already done the early voting thing. This election was on our minds more than usual on this annual Aztlán/Sasquatchlandia search-for-America jaunt.  My notes were more chaotic than usual. The following was adapted from my mentions of politics.

Back in the Phoenix Metro Area, you could hardly tell there was an election going on. Not many signs, no graffiti . . . if it wasn’t for the media and gas being over 6 bucks a gallon you wouldn’t know Trump was president.

When we arrived in NorCal, by way of Barstow, Emily said, “I’m glad we’re traveling though Liberal Land.” And “We’re entering the Zone of Fabulosity.”

In Crescent City gas was $4.89 a gallon, but in Gold Beach it was $6.99. Glad we were in her brother Mike’s Prius Hybrid.

We passed through Newport, Oregon, in time to drive, honk, and wave through the No Kings Protest. Yeah, fabulosity.

A lot of flags were at half-staff. Oh yeah. School shooting. Another one. Remember when they were a big deal?

Next morning, in the breakfast room in a Comfort Inn, we caught up on the news. Yeah, there was an election going on. Some of the local races were heated, especially for sheriff. They vote totally by mail in Oregon.

There were some election signs by the highways. A black helicopter hovered over a field on our way to Tillamook. Then a red one zoomed over Lincoln City.

That night I had a dream: A fragment of something I probably shouldn’t write. Young revolutionaries surf something they don’t have the bandwidth to understand, unzipping the timespace reality code. Somehow it was my fault. They left messages in lockers–I’d open them and torrents of 3x5 cards would pour out. Do they still make 3x5 cards?

After the dream I came up with a universe-eating, Groucho-headed Buddhaoid and a tsunami of post-consciousness.

In Washington some signs about the sheriff races, some yard art, a plastic headstone: STILL WAITING FOR HONEST GOVERNMENT.

Not much Halloween yard art–economy? Not feeling celebratory?

A road sign on the way to Aberdeen near Shelton declared IN MEMORY OF THOSE KILLED BY ILLEGAL ALIENS. It was paid for by some gal running for Congress.

Then a handpainted sign: VOTE FOR MIGUEL, with an old-fashioned peace symbol.

There were firework stands that were all closed.

We found Bend to be a fun, hip, arty town. It was the place where the school shooting took place.

Antique Alley, in Prineville had a TRUMP 2024 THE RULES HAVE CHANGED sticker on the door. It was Americana gone berzerk. Everywhere you look was a surrealist composition. Hopi Kachinas. Faux Mayan masks. Wild West and Confederate nostalgia. Mysterious artifacts of cultures and technologies past. Ammo autographed by John Wayne. Whither went thou, America . . .

Just out of John Day, a town named for a guy who was robbed and stripped naked by Native Americans on the Columbia near the mouth of John Day River was another handpainted sign: MAGA!

In Ontario, not far from Idaho, gas was $5 a gallon. There were lots of weed places near the border. Like going from a free state to a slave state. Will the new Civil War be over marijuana?

There were more political signs. Also, something called “faith-based banking.”

Local TV news told of a movement to make English the official state language.

A cloud shaped like a flying saucer followed us into Utah. When I reached for my phone, it disintegrated. Extraterrestrials, or maybe AIs trying to influence the election?

Utah didn’t seem much different from Idaho at first. The kids look more neoGoth/hip than Mormon. A son and dad had matching Marilyn Manson caps.

In the Grand Junction, next to the Red Roof Inn, there was no sign of the “Hispanic” evangelist/politician holding a circus–with tents! Guess he couldn’t get a hold for Trump's coat-tails.

In a small town there was a handpainted sign on a little house: VOTE FOR TRUMP PLEASE.

We kept running into guys in camouflage. It was hunting season. A thrift store had a whole rack of cammies. Restaurants had signs WELCOME HUNTERS.

A modern Elmer Fudd would wear cammies–would he join ICE? Is Bugs Bunny the American Pink Panther? Be vewy, vewy quiet–I’m hunting . . .

In Montrose, we pick up some of Don Gilberto’s incredible burritos. Maybe next time Emily and I will split one–they are gigantic. Also picked up the Edición Especial Ontoño 2026 of Enterate Latino.

In this part of Colorado there are more cannabis stores than Starbucks.

St. George was pleasant in a disturbing way. Learn to enjoy the dystopia–or maybe I should say dystopia in progress. Construction is installing Philip K. Dick conapts in every available piece of real estate. Your needs will be met if we can figure out what they are. Soon it will look like West Covina on programmable AI-designed hallucinogens. Franchises anyone? How about “botanicals?”

Back in Arizona, Prescott, we ran into another protest. Funny how most of the protesters these days are old folks like us . . .

We planned to have our final breakfast of this vacation at the Dinner Bell in Prescott but there was an official note on the door explaining that they were shut down–permanently. Another victim of Trumponomics. So, we did the Wild Iris instead. 

Near the end I told Emily “I’m afraid to say it, but I’m feeling optimistic.” 

After a while she said, “Me too.”

Once again, we were coming home to a world transmogrified . . . or rather in the process of transmogrification. The process will go on for a while, maybe to 2028, and beyond . . .

Ernest Hogan, Father of Chicano Science Fiction, is once again merrily running amok, having visions of new worlds.

Support the 17th International Children's Poetry Festival Manyula

We’re fundraising for the upcoming Children’s Poetry Festival in El Salvador (Nov 23-27) organized by Jorge Tetl Argueta with Rene Colato Lainez.

Funds will go towards tote bags, gifts and snacks for participating children.

Thank you for your support, https://gofund.me/d7ec6de55

Support the 17th Children's Poetry Festival Manyula

The International Children's Poetry Festival, Manyula, has been held in El Salvador every November since 2010. Bilingual published authors and poets from the United States and El Salvador conduct presentations and writing workshops for Salvadoran children and youth.

The children that attend love to read books, write stories and dream big for a better future. Unfortunately, many are from rural areas where their parents work hard to provide for them and often there is not enough money to buy books or school supplies.

 

This Children Poetry Festival brings hope to more than a thousand children in the country. They are exposed to children's books, poetry and author presentations. Each child receives a festival tote bag with school supplies and gifts. A delicious lunch is also provided during the Fiesta Educativa.

 

Your collaboration will help us to organize and make the 16th International Children's Poetry Festival, Manyula possible.

 

What We Need

 

The 17th Children's Poetry Festival is fundraising for $2,000. This money will help us purchase the gifts that each child will receive. including books, supplies and snacks. Children will be grateful for your collaboration.

 

Please consider making a donation in any amount.

 

The Impact

 

The 17th International Children’s Poetry Festival, Manyula will help children to discover the world of poetry. The festival will give children’s books, poems and a wonderful experience with the literary world. We encourage children to dream big as we promote the importance of education.

Veterans Days 2026: Loco, A Kid From Basic

November 11 marks the end of WWI and this is Veterans Day in the United States. Becoming a Veteran is straightforward: serve in one of the country's uniformed military traditions. Michael Sedano served in the United States Army from January 1969 to August 1970, along the Korean DMZ in an Air Defense Artillery Batallion, for a period atop the free world's highest missile site, Mae Bong, Bravo Battery Seven-Five. This is a memory from Basic Combat Training at Ft Ord, California. An earlier version appeared in October 2020. https://labloga.blogspot.com/2020/10/veterans-day-2020-loco.html

Loco

Michael Sedano

January 1969: Ft Ord, California. These soldiers have been in the Army 9 days.

I took an instant like to the way this vato ate his food, con ganas and gratitude, like until four days ago, he didn’t know where his next meal was coming from. 

 

“Te voy a decir una cosa, loco,” he started his observations, with an air of confidentiality. Always something bright, funny, none of the bitterness so many of us voiced. I agreed with him more than I could say, but te voy a decir una cosa. I didn’t like that he thought I was crazy. He kept calling me loco. I called him on it. “No me dices ‘loco.’”

 

He laughs and explains. Órale, loco, it’s not me, it’s you. This is how we talk. Then slowly, the huero ‘splains it, ‘Loco’ no es loco, es como fren, vato. 

 

Seven months later some Sergeant tells me to watch those Koreans shoveling brass ammo casings. I stretch across one of the mounds of .38 cal brass in the humid morning. The shovels remind me of shoveling steel mill slag, scrape-scoop-lift-toss-land. Scrape-scoop-lift-toss-land. I sleep.

 

I sit bolt upright. What did that Korean call me?

 

“Hey, chingao!”

 

My ears don’t deceive me, “chingao.” I rise with attitude. The Korean laborer is smiling and laughing. The Sergeant is headed my way and my new-found friend is giving me a Lifer-alert.

 

“Oh, you Metsican G.I. ‘Chingo’ fren, you fren, chingo.” 

 

Loco fren. This kid whose name I don’t remember doesn’t make it past the third week of basic training. May he be living well.

 

Rose was the first to go, week one. He gets on the bus in Santa Barbara covered in his father’s tears. Desolation gave way to anger at being drafted and fuck yous at anyone around him on the bus to Los Angeles. I wonder why he didn't just refuse?

 

Sullen getting on the bus, five days later, unshaven and wound up tight, Rose stands in front of Company A-3-1 in morning formation. We stand stiffly at Attention. Rose stands alone facing the Captain who leans out his window, taunting Rose for looking like shit, wrinkled and unshaven. Rose refuses to dry shave. He’s wearing the same green fatigues and field jacket we all wear but Rose gives them a disreputable look that you know there’s something wrong with that guy.

 

We Double-time away from the ugly scene. Rose standing in the middle of the company street and that Captain glowering out from his office window. They deserve each other.

 

What was the vato’s name, Loco? In the Army you read people’s name on their shirt, you don’t have to know a person by name. Loco's probably eighteen, maybe younger if he lied to get in. He really likes the chow. We do K.P. together. 

The kid with no name chatters with energy, disarming, like un locutor del radio, but one who’s totally freaked out. This kid has been yanked out of his Spanish-speaking internal colony to be violently immersed in an English-speaking world where I’m his ally and buffer. 

I have to listen hard, translate unpracticed Spanish through grad student ears. Once I travelled in realms of gold and now I’m asshole deep in pots and pans and this vato from East El Lay is making it funny. Loco.

 

The drill sergeants like him, the kid has that effect on gente. Even the Cubano who likes to push my face into the mud with his boot takes it easy on Loco. 

 

The second lieutenant, a fresh out of ROTC dud, smells blood. Loco makes an easy target, mystified by the hubbub, physically slight, an inconspicuous trainee, no threat. We’re a couple weeks into basic training. We’re getting strong, but P.T. is still challenging. I’m grateful for respite when some guy’s getting chewed out for doing it wrong. 

 

These guys mess up a lot, but a lot of the chewing is equal opportunity ritual. When it’s your turn you take it and speak silent oaths. Mostly, harassment has good nature behind it, classic are you laughing at me? Outrage with a smile “Position of a dying cockroach, Ho!”

 

Out the corner of my right eye I see the LT stride over and stop at Loco’s spot. We’re in the front-leaning rest position for push-ups. Drill Sergeant calls “exercise!” ROTC observes the body at his feet. “1,2,3, one! Drill Sergeant. 1,2,3, two…”

 

2LT bends and shouts into the kid’s ear, “Straighten your back!” When Loco doesn't adjust his posture, the lieutenant yells a little louder, “straighten that back, I said!”

 

The kid doesn’t move his espalda but keeps pumping out those push-ups, counting out, “1, 2, 3, three, Drill Sergeant!” 

 

“I said ‘straighten that back’!” Loco’s thin arms tremble with the upward push. Army push-ups use four counts. The fourth push-up represents the sixteenth straightening of the arms. The kid who devours his chow doesn’t have big muscles that flex like elastic bands. His arms shake and struggle to extend. The young Lieutenant is not satisfied. 

 

“That’s not straight,” the officer declares. ROTC grabs Loco’s right wrist and pulls it out from under.

 

Mexicans are tough, you know? We can take it. And all Loco says is something like a surprised “ahh” as his left shoulder suddenly tears apart inside. Loco doesn’t even writhe. He tries to resume push-up position and collapses with another soft “ahh”. The lieutenant’s boots back away and out my sight. “…Ten, Drill Sergeant!”

 

The kid with no name goes through the rest of the day with the platoon. At chow the next morning the kid whose name I cannot remember doesn’t eat with much gusto. That cabron lieutenant chingared this arm so bad, Loco moans. Get on the truck, I tell him. No, I can make it. Get on the damned truck. I read his name and say it. Loco.

 

Outside on the company street, Drill Sergeant marches us away. Behind us on the spot where Rose stood that morning, waiting for the “sick, lame, and lazy” truck, Loco must have saluted us farewell.

 

I like to think there’s a comfortable house on a cul-de-sac in Montebello, the Beverly Hills of East LA, where a 100% service-connected disabled American Veteran lives after a career as a bilingual 5^th grade teacher. I imagine the teacher’s friends call him “Lefty” because he has a useless left arm that he alternately calls Lieutenant Pendejo and My Golden Ticket Home. 

That's what I think shoulda happened to Loco. 

Ft. Ord now Cal State University Monterey Bay

“Cempaxóchitl” by Xánath Caraza

“Cempaxóchitl” by Xánath Caraza

         

Xanath Caraza

          

Ámbares que iluminan los campos

Amarillas luminarias que llevan de la mano

Es tu abundancia la que rebosa de alegría los ojos

Los conmueve e inunda de pinceladas amarillas

 

Xanath Caraza

Color del ciclo eterno del cambio

Cuatrocientos pétalos abundantes

Notas musicales en el pentagrama de la vida

Puntos extraviados en los senderos de regreso

Como antorchas que muestran las huellas olvidadas

 

Elvira Barbosa

Ambers illuminate the fields

Yellow luminaries that they carried in

It is your abundance that fills everyone’s eyes with happiness

It touches them and overflows with yellow brush strokes

 

Xanath Caraza

Color of the eternal cycle of change

Four hundred abundant petals

Musical notes in the pentagram of life

Lost points on return paths

As torches that show the forgotten footprints

 

“Cempaxóchitl”, poetry fragment, is part of Conjuro by Xánath Caraza.

 Images of the Day of the Dead Poetry and Narrative Celebration 2026

Xanath Caraza

 

We Called them Essential Workers

Tzotzil Mayans, most have worked in the U.S.

I was fifteen years old when “they” killed President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Like most Americans, I grieved, more because he was an Irish Catholic, and the Irish nuns and brothers who educated me talked about him in damn-near saintly language, same as my Mexican-Democrat working-class family, my dad a “union man,” who said he’d have no healthcare, pension, or vacation days without the AFL-CIO. 

 The son of Mexican immigrants, my dad was the fourth natural born U.S. citizen in his family, two of three boys Army veterans during WWII. My guess is none of them really understood the politics of the day; although, not much has changed. Republicans promote small government and states’ rights, cut personal taxes and funding for social programs, while Democrats promote a strong federal government, raise personal taxes, and start social programs. Not much has changed. What the people want doesn’t seem to matter. What do you expect when you only have a two-party system -- or, I stand corrected, we used to have a “two” party system? Now, the progressive party has morphed into a “big-tent” party straddling the “middle,” while, according to pundits, the conservative party has been hijacked by a “cult-like” figure who refuses to go along with the “program” because he says the election he lost was stolen, and the diehards of his party follow him wherever he leads them, his main gripe: immigrants, murderers and rapists are running rampant and destroying our country. 

In fact, he said he saw on television, so it must be true, where Springfield, Ohio immigrants “are eating the family dogs and cats.” Okay, now, I, and many Americans, can deal with an immigrant-bashing political campaign strategy. It’s been going on for years, and there is an argument to be made, but objective scholarly statistics show immigrants, illegal or otherwise, commit fewer crimes than most citizens. American employers recruit them. They work hard, earn less than U.S. citizens, pay federal taxes, but they can’t receive tax refunds at the end of the year, contributing billions of dollars, over the years, to the U.S. economy. 

 It wasn’t until 1966, when I served in the military with Americans of every color and religion, I realized America, culturally, was, much more unique than I was led to believe in my sheltered corner of Los Angeles, a neighborhood sandwiched between Santa Monica and Westwood. When I arrived in Vietnam, that’s when I realized how many different types of people called the U.S. home. I made friends with guys from everywhere, places I’d never heard of, like the Ronny La Beet, a black Virgin Islander, with a French accent, Jerry Lugo, a Puerto Rican New Yorker from the Bronx, Jack Brun, a homespun Arkansan, who played the Gomer Pyle role, and Bobby Simmons, a bible-reading black kid from Alabama. I met a very blonde haired, blued eyed, Joe Bel-Air, a suave Californian from Sante Fe Springs, Jonathan Bolan, a hippie, always with a book in hand from Indio, California, and Bobby Elliot who scolded us guys from Southern California for calling San Francisco “Frisco.” 

I had friends, like Alex Mayo, a reservation Indian from Utah, and a Montana cowboy, Big Tom Waylon, and West Virginia and Pennsylvania coal miners’ kids, like Wayne Podleski and Nick Samuels. Of course, there were many Mexicans, a bunch from L.A. and from Texas Rio Grande Valley, a few who spoke better Spanish than English, both citizens and permanent legal residents. The Army didn’t care. We were fodder, anyway. Talk about a multi-cultural America, just turn to the modern 1960s U.S. Army. 

 Nobody questioned the legal status of kids from Mexico who came across the border to volunteer. Hell, Puerto Rico wasn’t even a state, and some kids from the island spoke no English. No problem. The government lowered the language requirement to draft them, and they died, in large numbers. Filipinos filled the ranks, especially NCO’s who’d fought in WWII. Guys who came from Guam and the Dominican Republic shed their blood when many Americans refused to go, claiming all sorts of deferments, like Donald Trump’s bone spurs and Dick Cheney’s many deferments because he was a married man, and Bill Clinton's college deferment. 

Hollywood gave us the impression the U.S. was a “White,” Christian country, since it created the myth of the perfect "leading man" and "lady," even though Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Indians, Confusions, agnostics, and atheists made their home here and served in the military going back to the Revolutionary War. In 1700, in the harbors of Boston and in New York, ships brought in sailors and traders from around the world, including Russians, Syrians, Africans, and Chinese. In Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby Dick, the whaling ship, the “Pequod” carried hunters from around the world, like Queequeg, the Southsea native islander, an important character, who befriended the protagonist, Ishmael.  No doubt some of them stayed behind and made their home here.

This multi-ethnic, multi-religious representation of the real America isn’t an anomaly. In colonial and revolutionary America, there was no concept of "White" or even "European." Before 1800, many countries, as we know them today, hadn't even been formed. Italy became a country in 1861, Germany in 1871, and Ireland in 1919. Early Americans viewed each other as different "people" or "speakers." Those from England thought Germanic people dirty and lazy. All of them looked down on Celts and Slavs because of their poverty and dark skin, even considering them "Black."  

When I talked to my dad about it, kind of jokingly, about all the characters I met in the army, he said it was the same during his time in the military in 1944. He said he met guys from everywhere, and of all colors and ethnicities, a polyglot of languages and religions. Today, I assume, its ditto for the men and women serving around the world. It’s no secret the CIA has always recruited from university anthropology, foreign language, and literature departments, seeking agents with an appreciation and understanding of other cultures. How can we spy on other countries if our agents can’t speak the languages or know the culture? 

This is the real America, but you’d never know it listening to politicians who rail about the “browning of America” and the foreigners poisoning our culture, which, ironically, is made up of many cultures. We’re not “browning.” We’ve always been brown, blacks, red, yellow, and white, from the time Dutch and English pilgrims meandered about the shores of Plymouth, trading with the native people, who numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, if you consider from ocean to ocean. If not for the Iroquois Confederacy, the "strangers" from faraway shores would not have lasted a winter here. 

In an essay titled, “Savages, We Call Them,” Benjamin Franklin describes how early Americans requested that Indian chiefs send their young braves to study at American universities. When the braves returned to their people, the chiefs said, “They were good for nothing.” They’d lost all their customs and forgotten how to live off the land. In fact, the chiefs said it would be better if the Americans sent their sons to be schooled by the Indians. At least they’d learn how to survive in nature.

If you’ve never left your home or travelled the country, you wouldn’t really understand what Woody Gutherie meant when he sang, “This land is Your Land/ This land is my land.” I’m not sure there are many homogenous locations in the country, anymore, “all one color.” Even an in Ohio Amish country, the locals mix with various immigrants who have moved in to neighboring towns to do the work the locals won’t do. Drive down through the Rio Grande Valley and, though it's dominated by Mexicans, there are plenty of Irish, Germans, Syrians, and Chinese who have been there for generations. 

Maybe in places like Pine Ridge, South Dakota, it’s all Lakota, but in towns across the South, from the Carolinas through Georgia, Kentucky, and into Texas, Arizona and California, places like Orange County, and Monterrey Park, so many people from so many places who call themselves “Americans.” They work hard, pay their taxes, and, yes, their sons and daughters also die in our wars. Maybe that’s why New York, L.A., Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco are such strange places to many migrants who first come here, where the “browning of America” is more evident. They are places where the newest ideas blossom, from technology to music and cuisine. 

Who would think of putting African percussion to American jazz but a Cuban conguero sitting in with Tommy Dorsey or Louis Armstrong? Combine a German accordion, electrified by Les Paul and Leo Fender guitars, and toss in a few country voices, and you’ve got the Texas Tornadoes, but our communities are often so segregated, many Americans don’t view the U.S. at its core, a country of immigrants, making it easy for politicians, of both parties, to spread propaganda about how immigrants are “staining” our country, pitting people against each other. 

For me, the more I read and the more I travelled, the more understood. America was never all “White,” like many would have us believe, which brings me back to JFK. I recall, after his assassination, Malcolm X said, “The chickens have come home to roost.” If Malcolm wasn’t an outcast before the statement, he sure was after it, in many circles, but I was intrigued. What did he mean? Some might interpret it as “You reap what you sew.” That’s like saying JFK deserved what he got. How could that be? Is that what Malcolm meant, or was his comment more nuanced, open to interpretation? Maybe it wasn’t really about JFK, at all. Maybe it was more about what JFK represented, as president, not as a man. He was the symbol of a nation, just like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and all the other presidents? Symbols are more powerful than the objects they represents.

Was Malcolm saying something deeper about the U.S., and not even talking about a man? I thought back to Smedley Butler’s statement, “War is a racket.” Butler, a Marine general, earned two medals of honor, wrote a memoir stating that, as a Marine, he was a “hitman” for U.S. business interests around the world, participating in the invasions of weaker nations, terrorizing and killing innocent people, all for the purpose of stealing their resources for the bankers and crooked politicians who ran our country, not unlike other powerful nations that colonized weaker people and their lands. 

Starting in Cuba, in 1898, after the country's liberation from Spain, Butler crossed to the Philippines to China to Central America, Nicaragua, Haiti, into Mexico in 1914. He helped lead the invasion of Veracruz. Why invade Mexico? Because after releasing seven American sailors from prison, the Mexicans received orders from the U.S. Navy to salute the American flag. The Mexicans refused the order. Butler's Marines attacked and slaughtered hundreds of innocent Mexicans, including old men, women, and children. Mexican civilians took up whatever made a good weapon to help fight off Butler’s Marines. The real reason for the invasion, U.S. National Security, to keep Mexico’s ports open to American trade, which would obviously assist American corporate interests. 

Butler, and other Marines who earned the congressional medal of honor for the battle of Veracruz believed it was one medal they didn’t’ deserve. My point isn’t that military conquest is right or wrong. Countries have been invading and conquering each other since civilizations began, and after any conquest, the decimated country is left with hungry people, often without homes and livelihoods. What do they do? Where do they go? 

Most, get on boats or take to the road and migrate as refugees to the countries that conquered them. It happened to England and France, brutal colonizers throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, their displaced subjects crowding into cities and the countryside. Since the late 1800s and into the 1900s, even, today, in the 21st century, whether through direct invasion or proxy wars, General Butler’s arguments still seem to be true, “War is a racket.” 

During the 1910 Mexican Revolution, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans left their homes and settled in the U.S. Even though, the U.S. didn’t fight in the revolution, directly, its policies helped fuel the war. On one side, American mining interests poured money into the federalist government led by Porfirio Diaz. On the other side, American bankers supported the rebel forces of Francisco Madero. Without U.S. intervention and subsequent upheaval, maybe migrants, like my grandparents, would have stayed home on their ranches where they said they were always happiest. 

After our conflict in Santo Domingo, Dominicans headed to the U.S. in droves. I heard one sportswriter explain to his American readers: the reason so many Dominicans, Cubans, and other Latin Americans fill the ranks of major league baseball today is because they picked up the bats, balls, and gloves the U.S. Marines left behind after they invaded and occupied those countries. Our support of wars and coups to stop the spread of communism in Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala destroyed economies and people’s livelihoods but was it really about communism or about clearing the way for American companies, like United Fruit? 

Where do the people who lose their land go for relief? They come here. Today, many Central Americans cross the treacherous Darien Straight to reach our borders. After our wars in Southeast Asia, Vietnamese and Hmong came here as “boat people,” refugees. Iranians arrived here by the thousands after we assisted in overthrowing the Shah in Iran, which gave us the Ayatollahs. In 1990’s Mexico, Clinton pushed through his NAFTA plan, which, which experts say, helped U.S. corporations more than it helped Mexican farmers. 

A steady stream of Mexicans began heading north to the U.S. border once their farms couldn’t complete with U.S. agriculture. They’re still coming. Now that Gaza and the West Bank are decimated, where will the Palestinian refugees flee? If history holds true, most will come here to join their relatives who fled, years earlier, during the 1980s Israeli, Arab wars. 

Unlike General Butler who claimed wars were fought for profit, I am saying, wars have consequences, and they leave behind refugees who need to survive. Track the route of refugees and where they migrated during and after our wars abroad. Many came to the U.S. After WWII, German and Italian refugees came to our shores. It’s always been that way. Many refugees who have no personal contacts in a country will spend their lives working in the worst, most dangerous, low-paying jobs, until they gain a foothold, integrate, and become citizens. 

Corporations, in need of low-paid workers, often welcome the first generation, but many Americans demonize them, believing they are taking American jobs, and in some cases, like in construction and the service industry, they are. Politicians use them as political pawns, scapegoats, claiming they are the problem, instead of the country's poor economic policies. Who knows how immigrant workers, whether migrants, refugee or asylum seekers, we buried after the covid pandemic, giving them a sense of dignity by hailing them “Essential Workers,” when we needed them, then placing them in ICE’s hands when we didn’t. 

So, I wonder, when Malcolm X claimed, after JFK’s death, that the “chickens have come home to roost,” did he blame the president’s death on our country’s political machinations, sinister plans that go way beyond what any of us could ever imagine?