A few observations from the beach and
nearby environs.
There were a lot of Latinos at the
beach. Way more than I noticed when I was there in 2016. I remarked
on this to my daughter and she said, “well, it's free and they can
all come.” That is a likely truth. I pondered on this and decided
that is a quality that most of us have forgone since we grew up.
When we were kids our families did the same things. We went swimming
in the creek, picnics wherever we could find a spot, gatherings at
our homes where the grownups would chat and kids would play into the
night. This is not a bad thing. This is something that we should
return to. I do not find it plausible to criticize those people for
being family oriented and thrifty. We should look inward before we
try to find fault with them.
It could be that some of the natives
find it uncomfortable to mingle with the Latinos given our fear of
anything different from ourselves. It is more plausible that they do
not unduly fear mingling with us.
I don't know where they came from.
Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc. It may be they've never had
access to a beach and enough safety to gather in numbers. We should
think about that before we criticize them for fleeing the danger and
poverty of their homes. We should think about our boundless good
fortune because most of us did nothing to deserve it other than be
born here. An accident of birth left those people with danger that
most of us would find intolerable and would flee also.
Much of the hardship in those countries
is a result of the actions of of our government to make available to
our corporations the natural resources of those countries. We have
overthrown elected governments and installed dictators who would do
our bidding. If you would like to have a few names just ask.
My daughter was amazed that the
children of the Latinos were playing in parking lots unsupervised and
walking down the middle of the streets. Now, this may be a little
overboard but one should consider that they came from places where
they lived in huts, didn't have enough food, girls were raped and
boys were drafted into the local gangs who ran roughshod over the
residents. This must seem like the Garden of Eden to them. What's
to fear? Unfortunately, give them a generation or so and they will
likely be just as unappreciative as the rest of us.
We could learn a thing or two from our
new compatriots.
