Dry Humour on the Wet Coast

Like many young Hispanic men, I’ve spent a large portion of my life idolizing Ernesto “Che” Guevara. The Argentine doctor / revolutionary has had a large influence in my political leanings and the romantic notion of being a socialist hero has never quite lost all of it’s appeal.

Yeah, I’m more than a little left leaning by nature. I figure it has something to do with the fact that my lineage consists of half political refugee and half black-listed commie. There is a long tradition of Marxism on both sides of the family tree, and as the saying goes, this nut didn’t fall too far from it.

When I was speaking with a friend of mine earlier about the US elections, he brought up how the Latino vote in Texas would go for Hilary. And he’s probably right. That’s another problem I have about Latinos in English-speaking North America; finding an intelligent, charismatic leader is easier than finding a an uneaten empanada after a Chilean birthday party. The smart Hispanics tend to be the rich and they tend to be Republican; they have conservative values and want to keep their money. To hell with the starving masses, they worked hard to inherit those dollars and they’ll be damned if they have to fork them over to some nanny state, right? And the rest are the poor uneducated Catholic masses. They lack the information, motivation, and organization to become any recognizable force of change. If the Pope doesn’t tell them to pick up a book other than the Bible, there’s no hope for them. Maybe I’m painting with a broad brush right now, but that’s just the way I’ve seen it.

Here on the wet coast, I belong to one of the smallest, most disenfranchised, and balkanized minorities out there. The two BIG minorities are Chinese and south-east Asian; Indian, sheik and the ilk. Latinos here are few and far between. We really don’t have all that much in common, in fact, I’d go as far as to say that we don’t even like each other all that much. Chileans don’t like Argentines and Peruvians. Peruvians don’t like Ecuadorians and Chileans. Ecuadorians don’t like Colombians and Peruvians. Argentines don’t like any of the other South Americans. All the other South Americans don’t like Argentina. And Bolivia. But most of all, they all hate Mexico.

I don’t really subscribe to any of those prejudices. Although I’m a part of those camps, they really don’t accept me to begin with. I’m a light skinned Hispanic; my roots go back to Spain and there is no indigenous blood in me. I’m mostly seen as a European. They automatically treat me like I’m some sort of snob and keep me at arms length. Then there’s the matter of the Spaniards. Because my family went to South America, I lost all my rights at claiming any sort of Spanish heritage according to them. Their view is that I’m simply a colonist and no longer “pure” Spanish. Which is total crap.

But then I look at the life of Guevara. He saw a flawed system full of corruption and inequality and what did he do? He made it his life’s purpose to change that system to one that would raise up the meek and marginalized. There’s a quote where he says that the true motive of a revolutionary is love. Love for your neighbour. Love for your fellow man.

Of course the man was no Saint; he did go on to kill a bunch of people during his subsequent armed insurgencies. To him, the ends justified the means. At that line of thinking ended up getting him murdered by the CIA in some Bolivan jungle. Communist China is one of the worst abusers of human rights in the world. The CCCP crumbled under it’s own weight.

I just want to see a better world. One where the poor are given a hand up and the rich are cut down a peg and have to live a little more modestly. I’d like to see a world where health care and education is universal. A world where the pursuit if the arts is paramount. A world where people bring back the sense of purpose and community that has been lost. A world closer to the heart. (Just like that old Rush song.)

So what are the odds of this happening in my life time? I’d like to say they’re pretty good, but the realist in me knows that unless there is some huge change from the top down, it probably won’t happen. It can’t start from the bottom up anymore. Too many people see society as a giant pyramid, with the rich and those who hold power at the pinnacle. I tend to look at it as more of a table with many legs. We take all the brunt from the top down and never do any of the legs meet. Each fractured community is a pillar unto itself and unless by some miracle they all come together, they’re too easily cut off.

When I was a teenager and my head was still ablaze with fantasies ignited by the sparks of the Motorcycle Diaries and Geuvara’s other writings, I thought that maybe somehow I could have be part of that miracle. But the world is a different place that it was in his day. There are no more super powers. The world is not longer bipolar, but rather a schizophrenic pot of would-be dictators and snake-oil salesmen. Now to tour the coast of South America on motorbike is to ask to be robbed and held for ransom by desperadoes and drug-fueled guerrilla armies.

All I can hope for these days is to make some sort of different with the words that I write. I could plant to seeds of change in the subconscious of public opinion, one article at a time. After all, Marcos and the EZLN hold the Chiapas and Chavez is making waves in Venezuela. So there’s perhaps still hope, comrades.