Blog to America

Dear America,

When I am asked about what I don’t like about you, I could recite a litany of attitudes, people and things that I do not like. But when faced with a white piece of paper and a blank cheque (yes, with a que) to write about this topic, it becomes much harder to do it because the answer cannot come from a moment of irrationality; it has to be thought out.

A few months ago a teacher asked us during a class what we thought of you. Some said they admired your power, your will, your way of life, some others said they didn’t like you, largely for the same reasons. I was the only one who actually said I couldn’t understand you, and I still think, after almost two semesters of teachers trying to explain to me what you are, and how you behave, that you have this aura of mystery that will never be broken.

I will not say that I hate your policies, even though I am Mexican and thus on the losing side of a wall that your leaders have decided to set up, but the truth is, sometimes my country has taken advantage of your weakness. I will not say that I admire you in absolute terms because I believe that some things can never be absolute. But I will say that I think you must have something other than a special permission from God to become what you are. You have people that take the world situation, analyze it, and work to your advantage (at least most of the time). You are a country where the majority of people wouldn’t be able to pin point Montana, let alone Iraq, on a map. And yet, in spite of what a lot of countries say about your people, you still manage to be on the winning side of most battles. That says a lot about you and the people me and my classmates make fun of.

So if it is a special deal you have with God, enjoy it. If it is a cultural thing we could all learn a bit from you. I am not saying you haven’t made any mistakes, or that we should learn everything from you. Nobody is perfect, but while the rest of the world laughs about the stereotype of the big-blond-burger eating American, you are still racing far ahead of us. I still don’t agree with the way you have treated my country, and a lot of others, for that matter. And I do believe that your biggest mistakes in foreign policy have come back at you, a boomerang with a vengeance. But through it all, you have found strength, and your people are slowly realizing that mistakes can be corrected, that leaders aren’t always right.

So your society shouldn’t be despised, since we could learn quite a few things from it. Being your neighbour by a long border makes everything that happens to you important to me, at a very personal level. And while I cannot say that I admire you in your true glory, I can say that if we only stopped to think about why you are “so great”, we would find many, many reasons to either prove or disprove your greatness. I am sitting on the fence for this discussion, but not before I say that perhaps we always make fun of the stereotype I mentioned above because that is exactly what we are becoming ourselves.

Alba


About the Author

Name: Alba
Country: Mexico
Gender: Female
Occupation International Relations Student

Labels: americans, border issues, female, foreign affairs, foreign policy, mexico, north america, religion, student