Three Offensive Walls

On Aug. 15, 1961, the authorities of the now-defunct German Democratic Republic began the construction of the Berlin Wall, abominable no matter how you look at it. In that manner, they tried to prevent the free movement of people between the communist East and the capitalist West.

That wall lasted less than three decades because in November 1989, a tidal wave of people, if we may call it that, tore it down.

However, bad examples spread fast. The United States has literally erected another Iron Curtain on its southern border, which it shares with Mexico, to prevent the “coyotes” [smugglers] from successfully crossing over with undocumented Central Americans, who arrive clandestinely in the U.S. looking for what their governments or states are incapable of providing: decent work and security for them and their families.

Throngs of hungry people take the risk of crossing the border, despite the risks of facing death, or being the target of discrimination if they achieve their first objective. They are the economic exiles of a system that values the profits of large corporations and has forgotten that human beings produce those riches.

The U.S. government is especially responsible for this situation: not exactly the current administration, but those administrations that supported armed invasions against countries that are trying to build their futures outside of Washington’s tutelage.

If armies of displaced, hungry, poorly educated, or nearly illiterate people are heading to the U.S. in search of an opportunity, it is also because they are persuaded that it is the land of opportunities, without considering that if they adequately made use of their countries’ wealth and if there were governments that sought a better distribution of income, things would be absolutely different. It is something that does not require proof.

Another wall, as ominous as the other two, if not more so, has been built around the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, in North Africa, where hundreds, if not thousands, of desperate people arrive in search of the better tomorrow that their countries are unable to provide. This is the direct result of a nefarious process of European colonization that led to the current disaster, in which states have been formed without the minimum criteria of political, cultural, social or economic unity.

Spain, as a member of the European Union, and the U.S. are trying to sweep the dirt under the rug and are refusing to understand reality. The welfare, great or small, and the accumulation of wealth these countries have generated is, in great part, the result of exploitation, if not the pillaging, of the wealth of countries, whose citizens they now set out to expel with an enthusiasm worthy of the best causes. The moment has arrived to support real and achievable projects that create jobs and generate welfare in those nations devastated by hunger and misery. We must remind those in power that all people have the right to better their lives, and especially, the right to build their own future.