MEXICO (a poetryprose selection)

Let’s be honest
I went to Mexico to drink
Dos Equis, Corona
To act as all stupid Americans do
The depression was unexpected
As I glanced at the thousands of
Demonstrators on the front page of the LA Times
And headlines that Villaraigosa doesn’t always bend to his constituents
What a fucking joke
Those children knew the consequences
And their brave naivety
Struck me square between the eyes
As the Mexicoach carried my friends and I
(Reading as Berkeley girls do)
South with intoxicated 19 year old San Diego State women
Scorning all of us for our lack of Spring Break fever
It struck me square between the eyes
As the crumbling houses (if you could call them that)
Passed too quickly to count by our window.
In our Berkeley Bleeding heart hippie liberal way
Our sadness became quickly evident upon our faces
As we quickly agreed that the horrors of an untouchable government
That would build condos next to a home with no windows and no roof.

As we continued we blocked out the drunken tequila shots behind us and the abject poverty beside us,
And dove back into our Berkeley girl books hating the noise along the way.
I wanted to have a good time.
But somewhere between the numerous ass grabbing’s by Mexican and American men,
The dirt streets muddied by the storm,
The poor women trying (and achieving in) selling us fake Channel sunglasses,
The trip back to my friends’ homes (one that just sold for over $1 Million)
And the trip back to my parents 2 bedroom apartment (for 6, 5 without me) with a toilet that shifts, in a over caffinated white neighborhood I realized that it’s all my fault.

I’m not trying to give myself too much credit but
If high school aged young men and women can risk their lives protesting a racist piece of legislation that continues to ban Mexicans from a land that is rightfully theirs while I waste my Berkeley education on Corona, clubs and hotel accommodations it is my fault.

May be the Mexican landscape looks as it does because wealthy whites stole their homes, labeled them as other and tried to force them into a territory so could claim this fine piece of real estate called California so they could sell their homes for $1.2 Million dollars while a mother tries to scrape together $20 Pesos (max $2 US) to buy a taco for her son. If that isn’t racism what is?
So may be I didn’t create this system. May be I, as a woman of color, don’t have the power to effect change but I do have the autonomy (and a great Berkeley education to back me up) to choose not to participate in this system.

I'll do better next time, I promise.