Some History

Commander Pancho Villa

As an American student I was filled with so much distorted garbage about American History that I have barely begun to sort that out let alone figure out the distorted garbage involving Mexican History. The basic history lesson for Oggy was, "America is rich and powerful because we deserve it. We worked harder. It's justice. All who stood in our way were destined to fall. Capitalism is mankind's greatest accomplishment." For the most part my teachers broke their own arms patting themselves on the back.

The specifics were more convoluted such as the cause of the Civil War in 1862, Vietnam War, Civil Rights, treatment of Native Americans, foreign affairs policy, etc. Those all were twisted to favor white Anglos. Even something as blatantly immoral and heinous as slavery was twisted to make America, "merely one of many slave trading nations." Like, we succumbed to Dutch peer pressure in 1795. Most noteworthy is the quasi-colonial period beginning around 1900 when land was usurped in Panama "for the good of the world" and continued unabated for a century with secretive insurrections, puppet governments, despot after dictator empowered by land-lusty Americans either privately or from an official platform. All of this was twisted terribly and ultimately washed away with a media-entertainment bombardment that began with The Beatles in 1964. That pretty much solved everything and guaranteed an apathetic, uninformed public. Why lie to someone when you can distract them with honestly irrelevant entertainment? How else can you explain a decade of war in Iraq based on manufactured lies, resisted uniformly, enriching a handful, killing thousands and eventually blamed on Iraq? Even the current drug wars are wholly the cause of a drug addled American populace. Isn't that disgraceful? All of Central and South America are basically trying to develop a sewage system to traffic their toxic shit into the mouths and veins of America...because we can't get enough of it. I'm embarrassed, not proud, to walk the streets of Mexico, knowing the locals all look at me as probably a junkie who is here to find the source of the cocaine, crystal meth, marijuana and hookers that I've been addicted to for my whole life. They DO NOT think, "Look at the law-abiding American, a symbol of morality and justice. Let us bow before him." No. They think, "This long-haired junkie must be really desperate that he can't wait for our drugs to arrive at his house in St. Louis." Or they suspect I'm a CIA operative blindly looking for weapons of mass destruction. America's legacy is abhorrent except in the mind of Americans. Coincidence?

So, we burn a house down in Guatemala and Nicaragua and then demand to see identification and triplicate visa applications before the person can leave the burning house. Proud like peacocks we point to one immigration law after another that "must be obeyed" and totally ignore a century of recklessly selfish pursuits, violations of international law, deceitful coverups, extortion, disregard of public good...that actually caused the refugee crisis we're now seeing. A century of playing the part of the villain and now we suddenly want to put on the dress and act like helpless bitches who are tied to the railroad. "Please, Mr. El Salvadorian, you are supposed to apply for a visa before you try to get off the land we seeded with landmines because we wanted a dictator who would guarantee cheap bananas." And then we're indignant when the El Salvadorian nods and continues north. Without a day of American History under his belt, he must think we're the dumbest people on earth to try to establish some kind of moral high ground where "Law" is the sacred and cherished objective of man...because he knows the basics that American students never learned...that "America" is a shiny package on a bag of shit. But it's better than the Central American land that was poisoned by Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and a century of distracted voters who took a giant shit on "law". He ignores all official requests just like we ignored their pleas for autonomy back when no one in El Salvador wanted to come to the United States. The chickens always come home to roost.

Elaborate Concrete Statue in Puebla

So, I've made some enemies and placated my own heartache. It's easy to be a keyboard cowboy, shooting from the hip at paper targets. I know it because I'm building my own concrete monument to the legacy of my disdain...and the graffiti I find on it every morning will not wash off.

As near as I can tell, Pancho Villa is considered a revolutionary war figure...but the revolution was in 1910 and involved Mexicans against Mexicans so I'm not sure why he isn't considered a Civil War personality. The Mexican revolution against Spain was almost exactly 100 years earlier and is called The Mexican War for Independence. Politically, these are the two main events I'm trying to unravel.