A Holiday to Remember : This Cinco de Mayo Marks the Start or End of Many Dreams

Cinco de Mayo is generally regarded as a date for celebration, this year perhaps even more than any other. For today begins a process of legalization that may benefit several hundred thousand Latinos who have resided in this country illegally for many years.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much happiness; the occasion appears to be marred by fear, mistrust and uncertainty. I wonder if that is the case because we Latinos are an ungrateful lot, or if it is because the new immigration law is actually a sham.

According to Jorge Bustamante, unquestionably the most authoritative Mexican on immigration issues, the Simpson-Rodino law is another example of the “Mexico-bashing” that seems to be in vogue in the United States. Bustamante argues, convincingly, that undocumented Mexican workers are perceived and portrayed as a criminal element that is flooding this country in uncontrolable hordes, threatening “the American way of life.”

Coming out of the House of Representatives after the law was finally drafted, Rep. Edward R. Roybal (D-Los Angeles) told me how impressed he was with the prevalent anti-Mexican feeling: “You could feel it,” he said.

When the officials of the Immigration and Naturalization Service speak of the law, they emphasize the containment aspect. Regaining control of the border and closing the sources of employment are, to them, the raison d’etre of the law.

Predictably, the language used by some Latinos reflects a similar feeling. That is, that Anglos perceive us as a threat, and those in power will do anything that they can to minimize the positive aspects of immigration reform, like the legalization program.

The Latino community is already reacting to this tone. Many undocumented workers have already packed and left. There are shortages of strawberry pickers in the fields of Orange County, and restaurants report increasing difficulty in hiring dishwashers and busboys. One young Mexican woman who works at both picking fruit and cleaning houses told us that many fellow workers are returning to Mexico because “they feel that they are not wanted here and would rather go back voluntarily and not be kicked out.”

Outside the United States the scenario is no better. The new immigration law is hardly a matter of joy in Mexico.

Last November, as President Reagan was signing the legislation, I was traveling in Mexico. The sensationalist approach taken by the most of the media there left me in a virtual state of shock. Immigration reform was basically characterized as another attempt at mass deportation. To strengthen that view, much of the media coverage put the law within the framework of an ongoing campaign against Mexico.

I was asked questions relative to the new law, and my answers provoked mainly two feelings among Mexicans: shame and despair. On learning the size of the Mexican community in the States, both documented and undocumented, a friend of mine said, “What a shame!” Another, more pragmatic, said, “What do we do with all of them if they are expelled? Where will they work?”

In a painfully paradoxical way the Mexicans felt that having their countrymen back in their own country at this specific time of economical trouble was an open act of U.S. hostility.

This week journalists from Mexico will descend on California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, ready to bear witness to the great deportation of Cinco de Mayo of 1987.

Thus it appears to me that Mexico is doomed no matter what happens. Doomed if Mexicans return, because there are no jobs waiting for them; doomed if they don’t return, because legalization and eventual citizenship here means that Mexico will lose them forever.

There is nothing to celebrate.

An even more paradoxical case is that of El Salvador. The main surge of the Salvadoran immigrant wave occurred after January, 1982, the cut-off date for legalization eligibility in the new law. In an attempt to address this problem, President Jose Napoleon Duarte appealed to Reagan to modify the law and grant amnesty from immediate deportation to Salvadorans here, who may number 500,000.

I wonder: How can the head of the government of one country plead with his counterpart in another to adjust the law for several hundred thousand people who fled the first country primarily because of the atrocities commited by their own government? It boggles the mind.

I don’t see how Salvadorans can celebrate this Cinco de Mayo, a holiday that has become a unifying factor for Latinos in Southern California.

Who, then, will celebrate today, and what is there to celebrate?

My guess is that many of those who have been living in the shadows for so long and now are given the chance to become legal--they will be happy. For the first time, some of them will be able to walk in the street without fear of la Migra. And that, after all, is the minimum that a person can ask for: to be able to live and work without being harassed and persecuted.

Perhaps we should all be happy. We Latinos are not an ungrateful bunch, and many of us are making an extra effort to make sure that the law is not a sham.