Mexicans, Strategic Bombing, and Censorship

[gopisback]

Its just another example of how Mexicans do not care for this country. These people are parasites, they simply come to this country to use us for our resources. From what the United States has provided them, they continue to spit in our faces. This is largely due to jealousy. But also, it does not help that Mexico is the most arrogant and corrupt government in the world today. They are quick to criticize and point thr fingers, yet when they need help they come crying to us. No different then the French might I add.
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[Billybob]

Reading (PA.) by Bomb Light

By Mike Davis, tomdispatch.com
September 22, 2003

The artist Marcos Ramirez (aka ERRE), whose Tijuana studio is a mere fifty yards from the nearest border patrolman, spends a lot of time staring across la linea at the strange culture on the other side. He likes gringos well enough, but sometimes is scared by our sublime ignorance of our own history (not to mention those of our nghbors).


For example, how many of us ever bother to think about the contribution of strategic bombing to the American Way of Life? As Ramirez points out, the air forces of the United States have dropped billions of bombs in the twentieth century and have killed, by the most conservative reckoning, more than two million forgn civilians. Most, of course, were Asians, including over half a million Japanese incinerated by two atomic bombs and in the B-29 firestorms that burned thr cities to the ground. Another million were Indochinese killed by B-52 carpet-bombing. There were also one hundred thousand or more Koreans in the Korean War, and probably that many Germans as well as surprising numbers of innocent Italians, Rumanians, and other accidental World War II-era Europeans.


We should add to this black ledger at l ten thousand non-combatant Iraqis in two Gulf Wars, a thousand Afghan villagers and maybe five hundred Serbs as well as a few Libyans and Sudanese. In the Western Hemisphere, Presidents Harding and Coolidge sent biplanes to bomb rebellious Nicaraguans, Dominicans, and Haitians during the golden age of Dollar Diplomacy. Later the CIA bombed Guatemala (1954) and Cuba (1962). We bombed Panama in 1989 and are still bombing rural areas of Colombia today.


There is, in fact, little of the earth's surface that we haven't at some time bombed, or, as the case may be, bombarded. Thus when Ramirez was recently invited to participate in "Mexico illuminated," a multi-venue exhibition (12 September to 23 November) sponsored by a consortium of arts institutions in Reading, Penn., he chose to illuminate yanqui history instead.


He won the approval of his sponsors and the Reading Redevelopment Authority to mount a public-art piece on a billboard next to the busy Bingaman Street Bridge. Imitating the green background and lettering of official highway signs, the proposed billboard simply lists ght cities bombarded or bombed by the United States, thr distances from Reading, and the appropriate dates.



Ciudad de Mexico 3202 km 1847
Veracruz 3040km 1914
Hiroshima 11194 km 1945
Dresden 4837 km 1945
Hanoi 13206 km 1972
Ciudad de Panama 3497km 1989
Kabul 10979 km 2001
Baghdad 9897 km 2003


Ramirez's idea was to let commuters puzzle out for themselves the meaning of the dates and the association between cities as disparate as Ciudad de Mexico, Dresden and Baghdad. He saw the piece as a "mirror" to help us analyze our own impact on the world. He hoped that Reading residents would become active participants in the dialogue.


They have ? with a vengeance. Even though the billboard has yet to be mounted, the local paper calls it "an eruption of outrage." Letters columns and radio talk shows have been inundated with angry denunciations of Ramirez's supposedly "obscene America-bashing." The city of 82,000 doesn't seem to be talking about much else.


One columnist claimed that Ramirez was trying to show "that the rest of the world hates the United States." A city councilwoman couldn't understand what the billboard had to do with art: "Art is art. But bombing is not Art." Meanwhile, an unnamed "patriotic group" vowed to buy a counter-billboard that would simply boast (vis-?-vis the bombings): "We're Glad!" Others made darker threats.


Then the display company refused to rent the billboard space to the organizers of Mexico Illuminated, issuing a non sequitur press release that "it proudly supports the men and women serving in the military." For a moment it seemed as if Ramirez was about to join that illustrious pantheon of Mexican artists ? including Siquieros and Rivera ? who have had thr work censored or destroyed by panic-stricken gringo patrons.


But the organizers have so far stood thr ground, promising to find Ramirez a space for his billboard. And some local politicians have had the guts to point out that the supposed "anti-American" message is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Angel Figueroa, a young Latino voice on the city council, calmly observes that Ramirez's billboard is merely "factual." "Everyone will have thr own interpretation." Ramirez, for his part, tells me that he is delighted that the "meaning of art" is bng discussed with unprecedented passion in American Legion Halls, bowling alleys and nghborhood saloons. At the same time, he is intrigued by the reaction to his historical Rorschach Test.


"It is amazing that a piece like this is so universally considered offensive. After all, the billboard only itemizes events that in thr time were celebrated as victories and praised as just causes. Are people outraged because a Mexican artist has bothered to highlight this history? Or do I percve an underlying shame?"


But Ramirez may have detonated something more than patriotic ire. Reading, a geriatric industrial city that has bled jobs and population for more than two generations, is in the midst of an extraordinary ethnic make-over. Within the next decade it will become the first Latino-majority city in Pennsylvania. Puerto Ricans and Mexican residents are already 40 percent of the population and have brought new vibrancy to the old red-brick town on the Schuylkill. "Mexico Illuminated" is an admirable recognition of that contribution.


But many conservative Berks county residents, including those who employ Mexican immigrants as service and agricultural workers, want only a captive labor supply, not a dynamic cultural presence or a new electorate. A recent study by the University of Michigan found that Reading was "the most segregated city in America for Hispanics." Likewise a federal judge ruled that Berks County had discriminated against Latino voters and ordered federal observers - like those sent to the Deep South in the 1960s ? to oversee last May's local elections.


Ramirez meanwhile is turning the backlash against his piece into yet more art. Using a computer, he has defiantly inserted his bombing chronology onto (a photo of) the Bingaman Street billboard. A wall-sized print of this montage will be mounted in the annex of the main exhibition at Albright College, along with documentation of the controversy. Viewers will be invited to register thr own reaction.


Nativist critics of Ramirez should be forewarned that they are dealing with a consummate magical realist. If they're not careful, they may end up bng part of the performance. Some years ago Ramirez famously erected a Trojan horse on the border between Tijuana and San Diego. When asked what was inside, he merely laughed. I suppose you ther get the joke or you don't.


Marcos Ramirez (ERRE) can be contacted directly at erre38@yahoo.com. He can provide images of the work discussed in the article.


Mike Davis is the author of "City of Quartz," "Ecology of Fear" and most recently, "Dead Cities: and Other Tales" among other works.


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NEVADA MARIJUANA DISPENSARY (http://nevada.dispensaries.org/)

[WantaghDem]

We already have enough of your posts to determine that you don't have the slightest idea what you are talking about on any given topic.

What we are not quite sure of, especially in light of your last post, is: are you a complete and utter moron without any discernible intelligence, or are you a racist lunatic without any discernible grasp on reality?

The question boils down to, I guess, are you stupid or just nuts?


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[Billybob]

Can you please stop for a second and think about what it is you're saying?

Not ONE thing you said can be proven or disproven. Your post consists entirely of assertions, and some wild ones at that.


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NO2 VAPORIZER (http://no2vaporizers.com)

[gopisback]

Some examples:

-Mexico refuses to extradite criminals who flee to thr homeland when committing crimes here; especially if they face the death penalty in the United States

-Mexico aids and abets criminals by showing thr nationals how to circumvent US law

-Mexico moans and wails when the border policy of our country is trying to be enforced; meanwhile thr own borders are locked tight as they use the same policies we use.

-Mexico did not support us in Iraq and voted against us numerous times in the UN

-Mexico demands that its citizens be given dual citizenship

-Mexicans now want us to provide Social Security benefits for thr nationals

Now lets list what the Mexico has provided us:

Great, well that settles that!

Take, Take, Take, Take, but no give...

They cant control thr own country so they have the audacity to place demands on our country.

Is this enough? My fingers are hurting.


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[Billybob]

Mexico isn't demanding anything. By now, all of America should know how corrupt and all around unpleasant the Mexican government can be (I could tell you first hand stories...). That's why people flee to the United States; they percve it as bng better than the country they were born into. Economically, at l.

But, since you ARE ignoring the fact that American businesses intentionally hire immigrants (so they can be paid less), AND you ignore the fact that American corporations are moving thr operations overseas like rats fleng a sinking ship, I welcome you to blame immigrants, since I assure you they'll never be allowed to defend themselves.

America is not an exclusive club. Do you really think the constitution starts and stops at our borders, and anyone not lucky enough to be born here (or have the resources to become citizens) is hurting us?
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Glass Weed Pipe (http://glasspipes.net/)