(Click here for Spanish) My friend, a high level executive in a multinational corporation called me excitedly the other day: “Next Monday I will be going to Mexico for the first time. My company is sending me to meet some suppliers. What do you suggest? What should I expect?” I had to stop and think for a minute: my friend is a biochemical engineer, also a ceramic artist. He is an American southerner, with all that that implies. He travels frequently for his job, but only to Europe and Asia, but has never been to a Hispanic country.
I decided to open his eyes little by little so as to not to scare him. Practically all Americans have seen from childhood stereotypes of Mexicans in the movies: a short Indian dressed in white, with a poncho, sombrero and a Pancho Villa-style mustache. He is usually a drunkard, a bandit or a Don Juan, a “Latin lover.” Few have ever met a Mexican like a pure scientist knew, who was a mathematician that Princeton University employed just for prestige, to publish from there his mathematical formulas, understandable only to about fifty other mathematicians worldwide.
I told my friend: “When you get to Mexico City make sure they take you downtown. You will see a skyscraper built as an inverted pyramid, larger at the top and sitting on a small base.” “Really?” he exclaimed, just as I expected. “Mexicans are a very creative and ingenious people,” I said. And I continued: “Remember that when Hernán Cortez arrived there he ran into the Eight Marvel of the World: a city larger than any in Europe at that time, built entirely upon a lake. “A lake?!” he said, almost shocked. “Yes,” I continued. “A good deal of the Valley of México used be a lake, in the middle of which the Aztecs built their capital city.
“And remember,” I added, “When your airplane touches down on Mexico City, you will be landing on the second largest city in the world, after Culcutta.” By now my friends’ surprise would have been comical if it were not that I was carefully educating him, and a teacher always respects the students the Lord sends him. The sad thing about my friend, is that he is an educated man of noble character, who holds an enviable position, but lacked the knowledge necessary to appreciate a great nation such as Mexico. His education and his social environment, culture and media had not equipped to be a respectful neighbor, not even of the country next door. But, can I blame him if the only Mexicans that he has ever met in his region were those who mow lawns, build or repair houses, humble workers with little education? They are only partial ambassadors of a great nation.
I remember another friend, pastor of an influential church in Dallas, who went with me to minister to several dozen businessmen in Monterrey, Mexico. The Holy Spirit convicted this brother to tears, as he confessed his prejudices. ”When I was introduced to Dr. so and so,” he said referring to a Theologian who graduated from one of the best seminaries in the U.S., “I was surprised and said to myself: ‘Look! ... An educated Mexican!’ And when I saw that all of you had cell phones I thought: Rich Mexicans!”
How sad it is to be so ignorant, yet so powerful! And how noble it is of our Hispanic people who, knowing that many perceive us so poorly, we treat them nevertheless with love, gratitude and patience, educating them about things which their own background has not given them the opportunity to know. Millions of Hispanics who immigrated to this land show an attitude reminiscent of a poem of my childhood:
A careless foot stepped on a flower.
And she, devoid of rancor and of revenge,
Responded by giving it her fragrance.
Hispanic brothers, let us forgive, educate and bless those of our neighbors who do not love us and even fear us because they do not yet know us. And let us tell them some of the best that the Lord has given to us.
Till next Wednesday!
