America Wakes: Part Seven- Manolo Vasquez
Chapters
Because I believe it is necessary and because Lucas was kind enough to give me this segment of his film to do so, I have taken it upon myself to describe my experience while in the custody of the Texas National Guard. First and foremost, I want to make it clear that I was not harmed nor was I mistreated in any way during the extent of my detention. Though I still find it insulting and politically unjustifiable to be arrested simply for appearing foreign, I don't want to make the ordeal out to be anything other than what it was.
I have also made it my business to inform myself as to why my experience in Texas happened as it did. Many people, especially those who look in from without, would like to reduce that country's state of unrest to simple stereotypes. I will not be such an outsider. The modern version of Texas, which still has yet to adopt an official designation among nations as a republic or otherwise, was born under duress. On both its eastern and western borders new countries were coming into being in a very short period of time. To its north there was a great deal of strife, mostly resulting from the economic strain placed on what remained of the United States. In the ensuing instability of the Transition, thousands of people flooded into Texas for its employment opportunities in agriculture, aerospace and energy corporations, and for its relative peace in the Transition years. To protect its borders and to safeguard its newfound position as the economic powerhouse of America, Texas instituted new security measures, including the now-famous Checkpoint system.
This is why I was arrested at Checkpoint 16. Since before I was born, Texas has been struggling to stabilize its population and make political order out of social chaos. Though much of the blame, especially among the general population, falls disproportionately on the Mexican people who are refugees from the disputed Nuevo Leon region, the fact is that Texas has spent the better part of a century hopelessly divided. It was my bad luck that the protesters that day in Dallas were demonstrating for refugee's rights. Had we arrived two days later or a week earlier, one of us might have been mistaken for a sympathizer of the Districtist Party or the Northern Sedition Movement.
I was given regular meals at Fort Bellarm and I even had the opportunity to sit with some of the men and women of the TNG. Many of them are young, younger than myself and certainly younger than many of the soldiers we have met elsewhere during our crew's travels. It was a hard day for them but they kept each other in decent enough spirits. It may not be very journalistically objective of me to say so, but many of them seemed tired and a bit desperate. The unrest I had to experience for just a day was exhausting, but those young people in uniform have to deal with it every single day. More than a day without protests, more than new equipment and relief troops, the Texas National Guard needs a strong government. Perhaps in another decade or so when today's parties have all consumed each other they will have a chance to see one.
