Meet Your Neighbors: I'm So Frustrated Edition

I'm annoyed.

So Mexico is a big country. A diverse country. This can be a problem as we tend to think of everyone who isn't American as pretty much being exactly the same.

Canadians? They say "eh" and have milk in a bag. I don't know, whatever Five Iron Frenzy said.

Australians? Pick from one of three funny stereotypes: The surfer guy, the outback guy, or...no, that's about it. The cute accent guy? I'm beat.

Iranians? Either ruthlessly oppressing people, or being ruthlessly oppressed. Pick your poison.

Obviously we don't all think this way, or at least not all of the time. But for the most part we do generalize people into categories and then we make assumptions about people, countries, ourselves, etc., all based on those categories.

Back to today.

Today I was at the Migrant Resource Center (something that I haven't gotten to do a lot of in the past two months or so...desk jockey/tour guide woot!). But I was there today, and I met a man who we'll call Alberto. Alberto was traveling with some friends and family from Mexico when they were arrested by the Border Patrol. Pretty typical.

But that's where the problems start. The reality (which became a problem) is that not everyone in Mexico speaks Spanish. There are, literally, hundreds of indigenous languages. And unfortunately for a guy from a small village, he's on his way back to...wait for it...El Salvador.

So what happened? Well, being that the Border Patrol agents couldn't speak his language, and he couldn't speak either Spanish or English, they assumed that he was from Central America. So they started asking him questions about that. And, being confused, he just sort of made some responses that they took to be agreement. When his dad figured out what was going on (his dad speaks a limited amount of Spanish), he tried to convince them that his son was in fact from Mexico. But that didn't work out so well because he was not carrying any identification with him.

So as of right now he's on his way to Tucson where he will be kept until they send him to El Salvador...for the first time ever...where they won't be able to understand him either.

I'm not saying that the Border Patrol is responsible for speaking every language in the known world. But this is the type of stuff that happens when you try to combine a major humanitarian crisis with a bureaucratic system.

I called the Mexican consulate but haven't heard back. I hope for his sake that they can prove he's a Mexican.