Mexicans, gringos, dumb guys and politics

By Ken Herman

Wednesday, July 23, 2014 | 2:03 a.m.

Hey, you know what Dems stands for? Dummies endorsed by minorities.

Funny, right?

No. Just like it’s not funny to say GOP should stand for “gringos y otros pendejos,” which is what state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, said at the recent Texas Democratic Party convention in Dallas.

I wasn’t there, but my colleague Jonathan Tilove, who was, reported the line sparked “uproarious cheers and applause from the 6,000” Dems who heard it live. The phrase loosely translates as “Anglos and other idiots,” and video of Martinez Fischer delivering it shows a man very pleased with himself about the barb.

Martinez Fischer, a pugnacious sort, defended his words as targeted only at Texas GOP Convention delegates who ratified a very conservative platform. He said he does not view “gringo” as pejorative. To me, it’s one of those words that can be, depending on who’s saying it and how it’s said. The N word is like that. So is Mexican. We’ll talk more about Mexicans in a bit.

The “other idiots” reference, and the reaction it elicited, fits nicely into Herman’s Handy, Oversimplified Theory of Early 21st Century American Politics: Democrats think they’re smarter than everybody else. Republicans think they’re better than everybody else. (And Libertarians think everybody else should just leave them alone.)

Martinez Fischer said in his world (“I’m just a traditional, old school westside San Antonio Mexican”) “pendejo” means “somebody who’s dumb.” People who disagree with him, it seems, are dumb.

“Obviously,” he told Tilove, “folks are going to try to reincarnate the word to paint it in its most extreme interpretation, but I think the street interpretation of ‘pendejo’ being dumb is universally accepted.”

I don’t know. I don’t speak Spanish, but I understand pendejo can have some meanings uglier than dumb. And I’m not an old school westside San Antonio Mexican. And, come to think of it, neither is Martinez Fischer. He’s from San Antonio’s westside, but he’s not a Mexican. Mexicans, save perhaps for the relatively few who hold dual citizenship, are barred from serving in the Texas Legislature and cannot vote in the United States. Martinez Fischer is not a Mexican. He’s an American, and if a Republican called him a Mexican in a context similar to the one in which he called Republicans gringos, I’d expect him to take rightful, fact-based umbrage.

In his defense of Martinez Fischer’s one-liner about the GOP, Texas Democratic Party spokesman Manny Garcia mentioned Republican convention signs that said “Secure our border” and portrayed locked, white picket fences.

“They might have just as well said, ‘No Mexicans allowed,’ ” Garcia told Tilove.

OK, let’s talk some more about Mexicans, which can only be defined as citizens of Mexico. Under U.S. law, Mexicans (and all foreigners) need U.S. permission to enter our country. It’s not a no-Mexicans-allowed policy, but there are laws that govern such things.

Our current laws on such things are long overdue for a major overhaul. But they are our current laws, and it’s nice when neighbors respect each other’s laws. Back when I lived near the Texas-Mexico border, I did my best to obey Mexico’s laws when I crossed the Rio Grande. It would be neighborly if more Mexicans and Central Americans would do their best to obey our laws about entering our country.

Here’s the ugly fact, stripped of political correctness or diplomacy: We live near a crummy neighborhood. Many of our neighbors to the south have created nations so bad (a fact contributed to by illegal drug users in our country) that many of their citizens are willing to endure unspeakable hardship and horror to get into the imperfect but great country created to the north. Things are so bad for many people in those countries that it’s beyond reasonable to say folks who are unhappy with the status quo should stay there and work to better it.

I begrudge nobody the desire to find better lives for themselves and their offspring. I do, however, ask that they obey our laws, even if some of our employers ignore laws about hiring folks who come here illegally.

Here’s another fact, one that irks many Americans: We’re going to have to change our immigration laws because so many foreigners have violated them, leaving us no practical choice. I wonder what would happen if we started violating Mexican laws in ways that forced them to change their laws.

By reference, Martinez Fischer was chiding the Texas GOP’s hard line on immigration, including the platform’s opposition to “any form of amnesty ... including the granting of legal status to persons in the country illegally.”

Texas Democrats’ platform calls for “comprehensive immigration reform with an attainable path to citizenship.” That’s somewhat vague, but let’s please remember that we’ve long had attainable paths to citizenship. More than 7 million people have attained it in the past 10 years. It’s far from a perfect system and improvement is needed, but it’s attainable.

The final step in the current attainable path to citizenship is an oath in which new citizens declare, among other things, their willingness to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Is it just me, or is there something dissonant about that in the mouth of someone who violated the laws of the United States of America to get here?

Ken Herman is a columnist for the Austin American-Statesman.