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We are in Acapulco. We are in room 1066 of the Best Western Playa Suite Hotel right on the beach. The drive to this place from the airport was harrowing. I don’t know how the cabbies do it every day and live. Weaving in and out of traffic in their beat-up rust buckets, constantly laying on the horn, getting cursed at and popping the finger to everybody who cuts them off and drives just like they do.
When I dared to pry my hands away from my eyes and look out the window, all I saw was depressed area after depressed area. Garbage in the dirty streets. People living in hovels. Shops that desperately attempted to lure in tourists and failed miserably. Desperation and anger on the faces. As we rode past, I couldn’t help but feel like the ugly American that is painted in so many Steinbeck novels. No wonder these folks hate us. No wonder so many are trying get into the United States. They are hungry. Their children are suffering.
And where do the Americans stay in Acapulco? We stay in huge, sparkling, high-rise hotels right on the beach. We eat fine foods and drink excellent wines until we are stuffed. And the natives wait on us hand and foot hoping for a few tips in order to keep the wolf from the door.
When I spoke to a few of the hotel workers, I found out a couple of things:
1. Most of the resort hotels are owned by American companies.
2. The native workers work ten to twelve hour days. Some work seven days a week.
3. The average wage is $7 to $10 per day.
My room cost me over $100 a night. There must be 1000 rooms in this place. The place is full. That means that the hotel is taking in at least $100,000 a day just in room charges. Multiply that by 365 days and that comes to $36,500,000 just in room charges! (That doesn’t count the charges for room service, for bar tabs or for the meals at the restaurant.) And they can only afford to pay the native workers between $2, 548 and $3,640 per year. Tops. There is something wrong here.
I look out from my balcony on the tenth floor and I see all the fat, white people lounging in the chairs by the pool as smaller, brown people in crisp uniforms scurry around to wait on them. I hope that these fat, white people know that they are no better than the folks who must bring them their towels and their umbrella drinks. I hope these fat, white people know that they have been afforded opportunities in life that these other people have not, simply by accident of birth. (Don’t tell me that the ones doing the serving are where they are because they are lazy or stupid. They work harder than I ever have in my life, and they are just as intelligent as the people doing the eating and drinking.)
We Americans are affluent because of where we were born. As I’ve said before, we hit the lottery. It’s not fair, and we didn’t do anything to deserve it. It just happened that way. The luck of the draw. And, like the wealthy folks in the Steinbeck novels, we know that our affluence is just a house of cards that can blow down in a puff of wind. So we strive to protect it by keeping it all for ourselves for as long possible and keeping the others from obtaining it for as long as possible. We’re building a fence parallel to the Rio Grande to ensure their poverty and our wealth.
To immigrate legally to the U.S. takes about eight years. We have made it that difficult. Ellis Island is closed. There is no such thing any more as sailing into New York Harbor one day, and becoming U.S. Citizen with a sponsor the next. Eight years is an eternity if your family is starving, or if your little girl needs an operation, or if your spouse needs medicine to stay alive.
There is no Promised Land any more. We’ve closed the gates. It’s full. No room at the inn. Find yourself a stable somewhere, eat our table scraps, and shut the hell up. Be thankful for our generosity.
I suppose we should sandblast the following words off of the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired,
your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to be free,
the wretched refuge of your teaming shores.
Send them, the homeless and the lost, to me.
I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.â€
No sense in sounding like a country of hypocrites. We, as a collective conscience, no longer believe in those words.
We, as a nation, have changed our minds.
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