The Mexican dream

30 years of blood, sweat and clichés in
the land of the dead indian and home of
the slave

remittances turned into cinderblock

walls and plumbing and iphones: a
family little by little forgetting what
their father looks like

working day in and day out, saving as
much as he can, saving money on rent by
sleeping underneath a freeway overpass in
the glimmering city of capital and porn
and alienation: not a choice but either way
money not spent is money saved – the
ethical american, the mexican immigrant
day laborer

30 years of blood means bar fights, street

brawls with fellow mexicans or
guatemalens, rumored to be taking his job:
imperialism turning his warm blood into
concrete; he is made stupid and distracted

the blood on the collar of his once-white
over-washed shirt, yellowed with sweat,
grayed with concrete

30 years of sweat means holidays are a
gabacho luxury and a strategic advantage:
that mexican immigrants don’t celebrate
the fourth of july or memorial day or cinco
de mayo and so they can do your yardwork
or slap on stucco or demo your decaying
home depot-bought shitty tool shed

30 years of clichés means we work hard
with dignity, day in and day out, send
money back to the family, for them, for
them everything, for me nothing: these are
clichés that kill

30 years of savings

30 years of non-existent 401-k
30 years of close-calls with ice
30 years of drunk tanks and fake names
30 years of here we speak english
30 years of taking jobs from someone
of non-existent social security income
of non-existent retirement benefits
of non-existent overtime
of non-existent 30-minute lunch breaks

30 years of working to live so one day you
can die

similar to most workers but distinct in its
brutality for the mexican undocumented
immigrant who eventually self-deports,

who goes to live rent-free on his land
passed down by his abuelos, in his final
days

there, he has a small house with paper-thin
walls and an aluminum roof, coveted by
his neighbors; on the wall there is only one
framed picture of his family, his wife who
has remarried, his kids, half who have gone
asleep and woken up dreaming the same
mexican dream, living the same mexican
cycle, drinking the same mexican coke,

claiming the same mexican work ethic,
celebrating the same mexican family values
created only by and for capitalism and
nothing else

he came to the u.s. to work and once his labor
is all used up he returns to mexico to die:
the mexican dream.

-By Facundo Rompehuevos