The Collegian Online

Diego Lerma/The Collegian

Professor Luis Rodriguez-Abad says the North American Free Trade Agreement is contributing to illegal immigration.

Luis Rodriguez-Abad, a professor of sociology in the Behavioral Sciences Department, says Hispanics are still feeling the discriminatory impact of the Black Legend.

The Black Legend, a product of the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, was the vilification of anything Catholic. Because Spain was the “spearhead of the Catholic reaction against Protestantism,” it became the main target of the Black Legend, Rodriguez-Abad said.

“That view of Hispanic peoples did not disappear with the Age of Conquest, the Age of Colonization, or even the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries,” he told about 30 people Tuesday during a lecture in Salon Gardenia, “but rather, it remained in the consciousness, in the traditional culture of Anglo-Saxon peoples towards Hispanic peoples, and that we see in the recent treatment of recent immigrants, particularly immigrants from Mexico.”

Rodriguez-Abad said that the “U.S. democracy is defined by the will of the majority,” and that for “most of its history, the practice of this democracy has often denied rights to minorities.”

He said “it took the U.S. government 200 years to pass the civil rights legislation that made possible for minorities, blacks, Hispanics, to achieve the rights of citizenship, such as [the right] to vote.”

The professor said Hispanics are “heirs to the demonizing propaganda of the Black Legend,” and that they “have been targeted by nationalist natives.”

“In this effort to downgrade and exclude Hispanics, the fears of immigrants have been blended with the fears of terrorism and terrorists,” Rodriguez-Abad said, “Yet, no act of terrorism that I am aware of [has] been committed by the Hispanic immigrants, legal or illegal.”

He cited the North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminates trade barriers among Canada, the United States and Mexico, as the reason for illegal immigration.

He explained that NAFTA, by removing the trade barriers, floods the Mexican market with American products that provide a cheaper alternative to their domestic counterparts.
“And the victims of these economic changes,” Rodriguez-Abad said, “are precisely the poorest and most vulnerable people of Mexico.”

The professor also addressed the 700-mile border fence project approved by Congress last month. He compared the fence, which will be built on the U.S.-Mexico border, to other “infamous walls built to separate people,” such as the Great Wall of China and the Berlin Wall. Neither wall was effective in keeping people out and it is doubtful the fence will be any more effective, he said.

Rodriguez-Abad finished by saying that “intolerance from one side does not justify intolerance from the other.”