{"id":276,"date":"2010-03-15T13:55:19","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T13:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/mexican-stoicism-american-optimism.html"},"modified":"2010-03-15T13:55:19","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T13:55:19","slug":"mexican-stoicism-american-optimism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/mexican-stoicism-american-optimism.html","title":{"rendered":"Mexican stoicism, American optimism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a melancholy meditation on the deeply flawed character of Cesar Chavez<\/a>, Richard Rodriguez offers this:<\/p>\n

The speech Chavez had written during his hunger strike of 1968, wherein he compared the UFW to David fighting Goliath, announced the Mexican \u00adtheme: “I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally \u00adnon-\u00adviolent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be \u00admen.” (Nearly three decades later, in the program for Chavez’s funeral, the wording of his psalm was revised–“humanity” substituted for “manliness”: To be human is to suffer for others. God help me to be human.) <\/em>
\nNothing else Chavez would write during his life had such haunting power for me as this public prayer for a life of suffering; no utterance would sound so Mexican. Other cultures in the world assume the reality of suffering as something to be overcome. Mexico assumes the inevitability of suffering. That knowledge informs the folk music of Mexico, the bitter humor of its proverbs, the architecture of its stoicism. To be a man is to suffer for others. The code of machismo (which in American English translates too crudely to sexual bravado) in Mexico derives from a medieval chivalry whereby a man uses his strength to protect those less powerful. God help us to be men.
\n…If you would understand the tension between Mexico and the United States that is playing out along our mutual border, you must understand the psychic tension between Mexican \u00adstoicism–\u00adif that is a rich enough word for \u00adit–\u00adand American optimism. On the one side, Mexican peasants are tantalized by the American possibility of change. On the other side, the tyranny of American optimism has driven Americans to neurosis and \u00addepression–\u00adwhen the dream is elusive or less meaningful than the myth promised. This constitutes the great irony of the Mexican-American border: American sadness has transformed the drug lords of Mexico into billionaires, even as the peasants of Mexico scramble through the darkness to find the American \u00addream. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a melancholy meditation on the deeply flawed character of Cesar Chavez, Richard Rodriguez offers this: The speech Chavez had written during his hunger strike of 1968, wherein he compared the UFW to David fighting Goliath, announced the Mexican \u00adtheme: “I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-morals"],"yoast_head":"\nMexican stoicism, American optimism - Rod Dreher<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/mexican-stoicism-american-optimism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mexican stoicism, American optimism - 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