Cato Unbound: Mexicans In America with Richard Rodriguez

Cato Unbound, the weblog-magazine publication of the Cato Institute, is focusing this edition on "Mexicans in America" with the lead essay is by Richard Rodriguez. Richard Rodriguez's book "Brown" was the topic of a book review by Orange County Latino's Gustavo Arellano.

Rodriguez has a glittery wit and in his Cato Unbound lead essay described two very important cultural traits of the Mexicans and the Americans in two compact and amusing paragraphs:

Mexicans are a cynical people, you will find—sweet, but cynical. Their cynicism derives from the notion of Original Sin and the sense that humans fail inevitably. Mexicans are patient with this knowledge, charmingly so in some instances (lard, beer), dangerously so in other instances, as when Mexicans tolerate civic corruption. It is no coincidence that Mexican border towns have become the fiefdoms of drug lords.

Americans are a hypocritical people—nice people, but hypocritical. Americans prefer unknowing. They believe innocence clings to them by election. Americans prefer to ignore the correlation between our need for drugs and the creation of a vast criminal economy that stretches from Afghanistan to Bolivia to Tijuana.