Before the letter addresses the degrading and insulting characterizations of people fleeing the failed states of their homelands for a future in the U.S. in the May 3 letter “Immigration or Invasion,” some inconvenient truth is due.
Latin America’s failed states are a legacy of the U.S. obsession about communist expansion during the cold war.
That obsession accelerated in Latin America after the Cuban revolution.
Latin dictators who swore anti-communist politics had the coffers of the U.S. open to them.
The U.S. trained Latin military officers at Fort McNair in D.C. in counterinsurgency tactics that resulted in mass atrocities.
Those states created elite wealthy ruling classes, poor working classes and no middle classes.
The results were coups, civil war, cartels that dominate today.
The writer describes the refugees as wishers, whiners and wanters.
It is hard to imagine what skills are necessary for cheap farm labor to harvest our crops in back-breaking conditions.
What exactly were the skills that early European refugees and immigrants brought to America?
Some didn’t arrive with more than a few dollars in their pockets.
Maybe they were like my Guatemalan-born landscaper, who transformed my garden into a lush paradise.
He now runs a thriving business. I think the whiners sound more like the writer and are the ones who forgot how this country was built.
Bart Kavruck
Port Townsend
