For decades, millions of Latin Americans have struggled north to the United States to find work, dreaming of prospering and of buying a house. Now the “American Dream” is being destroyed for immigrants as well as Anglos.
At home in Latin America, the new, global oligarchy is ruining small farmers by flooding the market with cheap corn. And that is pushing immigrants north for jobs.
In the U.S., the same oligarchy is completely automating production. And it is pushing the U.S. working-class step-by-step into a poverty it has not known for generations.
Carlos Slim may be Mexican and Bill Gates American, but they are both part of the same intertwined global oligarchy. They sell in the same markets. They buy stock in each other’s companies. They attend the same global meetings.
Most important, they are driven by the same forces, particularly the technological revolution that is computerizing jobs everywhere and throwing millions permanently out of work. They need fewer and fewer workers to produce more and more.
For native-born Americans, the idea of being ruled by an oligarchy that controls both politics and the economy is something new. Since WWII, they have thought they were in a “partnership” with U.S. big business.
Losing their homes is also something new. And it is part of the painful lesson that North Americans are learning.
They are in shock. Their world is being turned upside down. They are losing the privileged life they thought was normal. The good jobs are gone. Wages are plummeting. They are losing their health care, their pensions, their very sense of self.
Yet there is a silver lining to the cloud hovering over workers in the United States, both immigrant and native born. Now it is possible for us to see we are brothers and sisters under the skin.
Now we can see we must unite if we are going to assure that our class – the working class – gets even the basic things we need to survive.
