An Orderly Life in Amarillo
Jose was sitting in the corner of a coffee shop, waiting for a job interview next door when we accosted him with questions. From across the room, he looked like a native Texan. His accent betrayed a childhood lived in the cloistered oasis of a gated community in Guatemala City.
“I had a wonderful upbringing in Guatemala City, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect childhood. My father owned 5 businesses, we were very successful, and my family lived in a gated community. There were a ton of kids there and we all played together all the time. Even though there was tremendous unrest in the country at the time we were very sheltered from it. There woud be tanks that rolled through the streets of the city sometimes but as kids, we were more thinking how cool the tanks looked than that we were in any sort of danger. And the tanks would never come into our community so even then it felt like a problem out there, not something that really affected us. ”
Jose considers himself American above all else. He has lived in the States for 18 years and been an acolyte of America for long before that.
“I remember when the kids in my community would go on vacation, there was always this checklist of things you had to do for it to be successful trip. It was superficial and silly really but we had our list, you had to go to a Hard Rock Cafe, or Disneyland, or Disneyworld, or Six Flags. It was always the American touchstones that we needed as kids.
I remember being jealous of my cousins that lived in America for the longest time because they got movies earlier, they had all this culture at their fingertips.
It was little stuff like this when I was young but as I grew up I still felt America was a very good country, with many opportunities. I loved how stable and safe it was, and the economic opportunities were much better. Back in Guatemala, your success was based on who you knew, if you were well liked. I hated that because I wanted myself and other people to be recognized for their talent. I felt America had that much better.”
Jose dreamt about coming to America and getting a 4 year degree in finance and working in investment banking but his financial sense held him back from taking on the debt for the degree.
“My goal had always been to have an orderly life, to live according to my conscience, and the Bible, and to have things be stable and orderly. That is what freedom means to me. The right to an orderly life according to Christian principles. I hate debt, and having to depend on others because it means my life is out of order. I’m relying on money from my family for the moment while I find a new job and I can’t stand it. I want to be stable and not dependent on anyone or anything else because it’s not an orderly way to live.”
Jose's political leanings defy the traditional dichotomy of American politics. He believes America is a Christian nation, one founded in faith, that should still be guided by faith in most if not all of it's pursuits. He feels economic inequality is a defining problem of our time.
“I can’t help but sympathize with Occupy Wall Street, and I usually don’t like protesters. Like the protests in California where they broke windows and damaged cars, I hate that. It’s disruptive and disorderly. But Occupy Wall Street had a point with inequality. Back in Guatemala that was what damaged so much of the country. Not just there but all across Latin America. I don’t think we can ignore that. ”
At the same time though, Jose complains about the overregulation of the American economy in recent years.
“It’s so hard to open a business here these days. Just to open one you need like 9 permits and forms and it costs money for each one. I understand the need for there to be standards that people have to adhere to but how does it make sense to have to go get a $950 certification to be a nurse’s assistant when you’re going to go make $8 dollars an hour? When will you ever be able to make that investment up. The cost of regulation is out of proportion to the return that people get on it.”
As an immigrant himself, he has split opinions on immigration.
“I think we are a country of law and order, we need people to follow the laws. But I’ve been here legally, going through the process to get a Green Card now for 18 years. There’s no reason it should take this long. I don’t think people should be able to cut in line, but the government should be able to make the line faster with computers and better processes so we can take in good people in legal ways, faster. I hear people say that immigrants take their jobs from Americans but I’ve always felt that America is where quality matters most. The best people rise to the top. So wouldn’t you want the best people from other countries too to come in and try to open a business, contribute, hire people, and make the country better as a legal person? I think The government should be able to speed up the process with computers and increase the number of people that can come in so America can maintain order and law but also have good people here able to contribute and open businesses like they want to.”
At one point in the conversation, Jose said he doesn't like promiscuity and homosexuality because they are against the bible and his concept of orderliness. He also said that he had a number of friends who were homosexual that are lovely people. He insisted he was an open minded person despite his stance on this. After we finished our interview, I sat with him for a while and spoke to him more at length about his feelings on the topic. We talked about the difference between sexual deviance and romantic love, his understanding of sin, the prohibitions of Leviticus, and the concept of changing what we can, and loving what we cannot.
“To be honest, aside from my feeling of how foreign homosexuality is to me, I’m mostly just afraid of going to hell. But I’ve sat with Jewish friends and done Bible study. And they told me that hell doesn’t exist at all. That shook me to my core a bit because there was biblical evidence for what they said. I started to question a bit, not what the bible taught but how to interpret things. So when you talk about how it’s not just a sexual act, but a relationship of love, it makes me think that I may be interpreting this part of the bible in the wrong way. I think I needed to have this conversation. We are all made in God’s image and it is our job to try to perfect that as much as we can, but you’re right, if this is something that cannot be changed, then we should love each other and try to live towards perfecting our decisions every day, not changing things we cannot change. I think I needed to hear that.”
Jose has a complex set of tensions in his identity, but it's a credit to his character that he's willing to assess and rethink his beliefs to come to what he feels is the most loving truth. His insistence of his open-mindedness may have been the truest thing he said in the course of our interview. That willingness to listen and reconsider is impressive and a model for how the country may be able to move toward each other.
