American Latina

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

I went to the mall the other day and as is my habit, I parked in the space reserved for pregnant women and cut through Sears to get where I wanted to go. As I was walking through Sears, I spotted a table with T-shirts celebrating Independence day. July 4Th ... um ... did someone forget this was Puerto Rico? I am pretty sure July 4Th is not Puerto Rico's independence. No, wait, we do celebrate the United States Independence because we are a territory of the U.S. and not yet independent. But this isn't about my political views. ( well, maybe, sort of, a little.)

Seeing the shirts reminded me of seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time. I skipped school one day just to go and view Lady Liberty, up close and personal. I have all sorts of tidbits still stored in my brain pan from that first visit. Things that would only come in handy should I ever appear on Jeopardy and one of the categories is "Things about the Statue of Liberty". But since that isn't going to happen, I am sharing a few of them here with you: It's actual title is "Liberty Enlightening the world", her tablet has July4 1776 engraved on it, her crown has seven spikes representing the seven seas and seven continents. The broken shackles lying at Lady Liberty's feet signify liberation from oppression and tyranny. The torch (as the title states) represents enlightenment. Since 1903 Emma Lazaru's poem "The New Colossus" (a part of which appears under the photo up top) welcomes immigrants.

We have this beautiful woman, filled with so much symbolism, given as a gesture of friendship between two nations and when I read the news, I do NOT get all warm and fuzzy about freedom and friendship and welcoming people from all over the globe. We all know that France isn't "our" friend now, for a while there, just asking for french fries was cause for concern. There's a war going on, the immigration debate is hot and heavy, a lot of censorship issues making people angry, still plenty of hatred and bigotry. The president is an idiot. And as the saying goes ... the rich get richer and the poor ... well, fuck the poor. Teenage pregnancy is crazy, "no child left behind" is even crazier. The young don't seem to understand the difference between fake violence and the real thing and most of their parent's don't either. Women are raped, brutalized and killed daily. A lot of people (kids included) have no homes and go hungry (often), The environment is not having a good day, suicide is on the increase, as is mental illness and Paris Hilton is still in jail, talk about oppression and tyranny.

I clearly remember the feeling of sheer wonderment and pride that I felt when I first saw Lady Liberty. That very first day I memorized the poem by Emma Lazaru and all sorts of trivial and not so trivial facts about the Statue of Liberty. As a child, I so believed in the symbolism and could point to examples around me that justified all for which she stood. As an adult I still believe in her symbolism, but it has become more difficult to see the examples as clearly as I did that day. I guess my rose colored glasses have many, many smudges.