(Page 14 of 20) - A Clarification of Racism in the Contemporary Anti-Immigrant Movement authored by Bandhauer, Carina.

Bandhauer

One woman said:

I don t think September 11

is the end; I think September 11

is the beginning

and it s all down hill from there because I don t think there s enough patriots and
I don t think there s enough people that will stand up and be counted. The
firemen in New York and what s happening right there, but in the United States as
a whole, I think [September 11

shocked everyone] and they all said Huh! Isn t

that terrible. And then [everyone went] right back [to their regular] business and
that s what we all did. (W2; CCIR, 2002)

Only one activist out of 21 interviewed felt optimistic about the outcome a Mexican American
woman recruited into the California Coalition for Immigration Reform. Though not willing to
give up on their battle, most were very pessimistic and envisioned riots at the very least, and
most probably war with Mexico:

I know their attitude, it s  we re taking over.   When you get your leaders telling
you that, that s their attitude, this is going to get so bad before it s over. So bad.
&  [W]e ve received greater support [since 9/11], more interest in this and greater
rationale for patrolling the border, but at the same time, the other side has come
on even stronger. & [T]his thing is going to come un-corked on us. Taxation
without representation. They want the vote! Okay, they want Spanish as official
language. They want bilingual education& . Somebody s going to set it off like
Rodney King. I ve suggested it probably will happen in some big incident along
the border. This is the scenario: & I envision a situation and it s almost there,
where the Mexicans [the Federales] are chasing some drug lord who didn t pay
them off and &  they see all of this happening, so they just take a rush across the
border, there s nobody there. The word gets out [in] Ciudad Juarez, because El
Paso s mostly Mexican anyway, so they rush across the bridge and occupy El
Paso. There are a million and a half people in Ciudad Juarez. They just walk
across the border and they just say,  we re not illegal.   All of the sudden you ve
got Mexican TV helicopters over here, taking pictures, it s on all over the news.
The president orders &  in a division of Army and Marines to get these people
out& . What would happen in Los Angeles? You d have 2 million Mexicans
march on Los Angeles. & You d have demonstrations all across the country,
then you d have TV cameras, right, and then they see some Mexican get shot,
killed, maybe a rancher or somebody is coming across the border into his ranch
and that Mexican may have a weapon or something, or he thought he did and he
shoots and kills the Mexican. They d burn down Los Angeles. Right? I think it
could happen. Okay? So all this is on Spanish TV, radio and then, &  we don t
have the troops [to combat this]! You ve got 4 million [Mexican] people here [in
Los Angeles] who can set up a perimeter and say [to American troops],  You re
not coming in.   THAT S!!! What we ve gotten ourselves into. (Spencer, 2002)

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