What do I want?
What do I want?
I want a border town here in Wisconsin.
I want to get back the two hours lost in this meeting and to be with my son before someone tells me to show them proof that we’re Americans.
I want las chavas (the girls) to keep on running around without explanation.
Most of all I want the woman who is without her child to know we are behind her and feel her pain but we cannot begin to understand it.
Yes, we must admit to the fact that no matter how we talk about the issues, we haven’t begun to understand the human reality that family bonds are being broken.
We skirt enough around the topic and the people who wash our plates, cook our food, clean our house, and although we make great overtures our politics is just talk and time is running out.
Estoy cansada de oír lo mismo “¿Que vamos hacer?” Pero no se va hacer nada, nunca porque “la seguridad” de ellos—los americanos—es más importante que la nuestra. Tanto que no importa cual trabajo tienes ni quien conoces, en fin el cambio es como agua, se ve pero no se puede detener.
I am tired of hearing the same thing, “What are we going to do?” But nothing is going to get done, ever. Because the “security” of them—the Americans—is more important than ours. So much so, that it doesn’t matter what job you have, or who you know, in the end the road of change is like water: you see it, but you can’t hold it back.
—Araceli Esparza, Madison, WI
