A ghost-like specter is haunting the United States: the specter of the “bad hombres.”
Now political powers have entered an alliance to exorcise this specter, which they claim is bringing crime, taking away jobs and even interfering in the electoral process. But the “bad hombres” specter, just like all ghostly creatures, is a fiction intended to create and spread fear.
If you do not know what I mean by “bad hombres,” it is a term that some political leaders, specifically President Donald Trump, are using to describe our Mexican neighbors along the United States’ southern border. In Spanish, a language otherwise neglected by the new administration, the word “hombres” means men.
According to a transcript obtained by the Associated Press, President Donald Trump used the phrase “bad hombres down there” to refer to the Mexicans along the southern border during a phone call with Mexican leader Enrique Peña Nieto.
This phrase is going mostly unnoticed because of the normalization of the president’s repeated attacks on the Hispanic community (he already called undocumented Mexicans “bad hombres” last October) and because of the fact that the Mexican-U.S border is plagued by the power of drug cartels.
However, referring to the Mexican population along the border in such a demeaning manner is oversimplifying the humanitarian crisis in the U.S.-Mexico border. Most people in border cities are not cartel members, and many of them face extreme hardship and hunger after escaping the crime and poverty of many Central American countries.
The term is also truly insulting, not only for Mexicans, but for the whole Hispanic community. Shouldn’t we know better than to be using insulting terms for ethnic minorities that dangerously evoke other names used for, just to give two examples, African-American and Jewish people?
Calling Hispanics “bad hombres” is a wrong appropriation of a language and a culture, intended to dehumanize the community in front of the whole American public. Apparently they are not men–they are just “bad hombres.”
Once they are dehumanized, it is much easier to use them as a scapegoat for any of today’s problems. Why is manufacturing on the decline? It is not because of technological improvements or the challenges of a globalized world market. It must be because of the “bad hombres.”
Even those of us who do not believe in ghosts should acknowledge the existence of this specter of the “bad hombres” in today’s political climate.
It haunts many of the government’s decisions, along with other specters like the “threat” of Muslims immigrants. But let’s please remember these presences are not actually real. They will only come to life if we believe in them.
Francisco Hernandez is a junior international studies major from Valencia, Spain.
