Freedom
Almost a year ago, I started working for a private company that supplies Customs and Border Protection with a healthcare team. I work as an EMT inside the Border Patrol Station, taking care of illegal immigrants and U.S. citizens who get detained. I take care of children and adults with any medical complaint like a traumatic injury or previous medical problems. We have a Doctor on site to prescribe medications and long-term care treatment as well as emergencies. I have had my fair share of lengthy conversations with Border Patrol Agents and immigrants and concluded that walls DO NOT WORK. In The Tortilla Curtain, we can appreciate a very similar argument to what is happening in the country today; the only difference is that one is supposed to protect the country while the other is supposed to protect a residency, both from Mexicans. We have President Trump dividing the country more than ever, which has racism and hate crimes on the rise; stories like this show us both sides of the stories that remind us that we are not that different from each other.
I have been a massive fan of Johnny Cash since I was a kid. I remember my dad used to listen to his albums while working in the garage, and, just like any other kid, I wanted to be like him and do the things he did, which got me passionate about Johnny Cash's songs. His deep voice is the perfect tool to project the sadness in most of his songs and the sincerity in every single one of his lyrics. Folsom Prison Blues is a great song that goes into depth about what it is like to be a prisoner. I love the most about this song because it does not go into the apparent problems of gangs, violence, rapes, or drugs that are usually mentioned in movies or songs. Cash does a great job describing the pain and irony of being a prisoner while living in a so-called free country. Cash was very vocal about being unsympathetic to the prison system "I don't see anything good come out of prison. You put them in like animals and tear out the souls and guts of them, and let them out worse than they went in." Cash was notorious for being in and out of jail his whole life and getting the first-hand experience of how the inmates are. He would do multiple shows a year at jails and prisons completely free to give a little bit of joy to these humans who made a mistake. In his song, he talks about making the mistake of not listening to his mother's advice, which is why he ended up in prison, and from the inside, he can hear a train approaching, and he visualizes the rich folks inside. It was a time where train traveling could be a luxury, and he sings, "I bet there's rich folks eatin' In a fancy dinin' car. They're probably drinkin' coffee and smokin' big cigars. Well, I know I had it comin' I know I can't be free, but those people keep a-movin' and that's what tortures me". It is not the fact that they have it better than him that bothers him. It is the fact that all these people carry on with their everyday life without acknowledging that, in the meantime, his life is deteriorating in that rotten prison just like Candido. The latter had to see the Americans living their luxurious life without realizing how good they had it just for being born in the right corner of the world.
|
"Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash |
Arroyo Blanco Blues - The Tortilla Curtain- by T. C. Boyle |
|
I hang my head and cry |
In times of extremity, his father said, when you're lost or hungry or in danger, ponte pared, make like a wall. That is, you present a solid unbreachable surface, you show nothing, neither fear nor despair, and you protect the inner fortress of yourself from all comers." |
|
And that's what tortures me |
He was a criminal for daring to want it, daring to risk everything for the basic human necessities, and now even those were to be denied to him. It stank. It did. These people, these norteamericanos: what gave them the right to all the riches of the world? (206) |
|
Blow my blues away |
She looked at that coyote so long and so hard that she began to hallucinate, to imagine herself inside those eyes looking out, to know that men were her enemies- men in uniform, men with their hands reversed, men with fat bloated necks, men with traps and guns and poisoned bait- and she saw the den full of pups and the hills shrunk to nothing under the hot quick quadrupedal gait. (184) |