9/20/21

By Josh Rubin

We have managed to momentarily stanch the flow of refugees across the border at Del Río, Texas. We closed the bridge, yellow-ribboned the shallow crossing at the dam where families waded across. Border Patrol agents in vans and on horseback are rounding up families who penetrated the border, outraging and horrifying an America that fears the pictures and numbers coming from the television cameras that have finally been turned on.

What do they think, those newspaper and TV folk, when they say Haitians? Do their minds turn, as mine does, to the star-crossed fate of the slaves who revolted and took half of Hispaniola, now a failed state, pounded with winds, rains and quakes. Does the word diaspora resonate?

So now, as our new administration rushes to the the bottom of its leaky boat, and intones the word “humanitarian” as if it will save their souls, they mobilize their planes, buses, and coercive techniques to plug the hole. It wasn’t enough, was it, to work with Mexico to surround and trap more than 50,000 of these reminders of our guilt and our debt at the border with Guatemala?

The nightmare has broken through into daylight. The glare is painful.