Special Labor Dia Edition 

Dear Mexican: I’m a naturalized citizen born in Ciudad Juarez (the most dangerous city in the world, thanks to the drug cartels) but I work for la migra. I get a lot of shit from some of my family members because they feel I shouldn’t be doing this job. I always tell them that it’s better I got the job rather than some racist gabacho who might otherwise “mistreat” the aliens that come to the country. I know I wouldn’t mistreat them. Should I quit my job and make my family happy, or keep my job and do it in a humane manner? —Migra Mexican

Dear Gabacho: I must’ve answered your family’s question in 2008, when someone called you and the 52 percent of wabs who make up the Border Patrol a bunch of hypocrites. My answer then, was this: “It’s easy for Mexicans to dismiss these agents as vendidos, but let’s not pretend the U.S.-Mexico border is a playground on the level of Xochimilco. Lot of bad people inhabit la frontera—drug-runners, coyotes, Guatemalan aliens who invaded Mexico first before setting their beady eyes on the United States—and no one is better than a Mexican to deal with scum, mostly because we deal with it daily in the form of our governments.” I still stand by that sentiment, but would ask you to be in the juego, not of the juego. Calling the undocumented “aliens”? You know better than that.

Dear Mexican: As you’re probably well aware, most American conglomerates have set up shop south of the border. Without naming names, how is it that they get away with, in most cases, charging more for the same product, yet pay these employees a fifth of what the same employee makes doing the same job up north? Why doesn’t Mexico say, “Hey, you want to sell products here for the same price or better than you sell it for back home? Pay the same wages you do up there”? If Mexico were to force these companies into this agreement, there would no longer be the draw to narco-trafficking jobs that pay 400 American dollars a week making human soup, %uFFFDqué no? Why is Mexico allowing itself to be bullied by its big next-door neighbor like this? —%uFFFDA La Mecha!

Dear Wab: On one issue and one issue only can Know Nothings and Aztlanistas agree on, and that’s the destruction the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other neoliberal policies wrought on Mexico. Before its implementation, Mexico was largely a statist economy, with heavy subsidies and protections for industry and workers. That created a stagnant business environment, however, especially when compared to the free-market fustercluck we run up here, so Mexico’s peso policies didn’t stop its residents from going to el Norte. But once globalists on both side of the border implemented NAFTA on Jan. 1, 1994, the relaxed regulations (coupled with a devaluation of the peso) destroyed Mexico, unleashing the flood of migrants we have today. The problem with those maquiladoras you mention is that they’re merely following the free market—they can pay less in Mexico and charge more for products than in the United States because of our uneven economies, but they can also pull out and relocate to countries with even worse salaries than Mexico and screw everyone further. This is all a long way of answering your question: Mexico can’t do a thing because we’re so close to the pinche United States—except invade.

Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net, myspace.com/ocwab, facebook.com/garellano, youtube.com/askamexicano, find him on, Twitter, or write via snail mail at: Gustavo Arellano, P.O. Box 1433, Anaheim, CA 92815-1433!