TW: Violence, shooting, election results, war

I hate using the word “illegal” as a label for a group of people. It is such a dehumanizing term. Something that is illegal on UMBC is smoking inside the buildings. An illegal item on an airplane is a whole bottle of shampoo or a weapon. No human being on earth is illegal. Earth is our home.

I have always been fearful living in this country, because while I love to imagine that we are moving towards a more loving and tolerant world, I always get rude awakening calls.

An issue that really baffles me, though, is the United States fervor to deport undocumented citizens, particularly those who look “illegal”.

What really angers me is that most Americans have no idea why we are here, apart from the reason that our countries, today, are violent places with little to no employment. But why doesn’t anyone ask, why are Latin American countries today, places that Latinxs run away from. Because who really wants to run away from their home. What turned our home into a gang infested, poverty stricken, and racist filled place.

My grandmother told me about the day she decided to run away to the United States with her children. Mi abuelita (my grandma) is a white woman. Her parents were from Spain. My grandfather was indigenous and black. He lived in a village.

One day, a group of government soldiers came. They rounded up all the indigenous men in the village, made them go down on their knees, and shoot them down one by one. If mi abuelito had been at the village, he’d be dead. Mi abuelita was safe from the violence because she was white. But to protect the rest of her family, she had to get her husband and children away from Guatemala.

These government soldiers were called, death squads. They were present in many countries in Central America, including El Salvador and Guatemala, in the 1970s and 1980s. The death squads targeted indigenous people. They killed them  by the masses. Can we guess who trained these death squads? Can we guess which affluent country in the North funded these death squads? Amerikkka.

The United States staged political coups in nearly all Latin American countries. All of which ended in disaster. They replaced elected presidents with military dictators who they could do business with. Or sometimes, the United States meddled with the election results, like in El Salvador. This caused a violent civil war there. My father still remembers seeing his first beheading at five years old on his way to school.

I can’t count how many family members I have lost due to the civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. I wish the psychological effects the war had on many of my family members could be reversed. I don’t know how many indigenous traditions and cultures I have lost. Although I wasn’t present during those times, because of the genocide, sometimes, I feel like I lost a part of myself.

An influx of Latinxs from different regions of Latin America to the United States correlates with a violent government in that country which the United States help set up. Once the United States sets up their preferred military dictator, according to their own economic interests, Civil Wars, “Dirty” Wars, death camps, and genocide ensues.The people in those countries must flee their homes and seek political asylum.

And even after those civil wars and death camps end, the shattered country that is left after is not a better place to live in. It is riddled with even worse economic inequality, racial inequality, poverty, and violence. My family members are survivors of these wars, as are many other Latinxs.

I will not say that Latin American countries were perfect before the United States involved itself in them, but they were a hell of a lot better before the United States decided to meddle in them.

If the United States really wants us out of this country, maybe they should stop fucking with our countries.