Appropriation of Dreams
By
Rudy Acuña
It has taken me a couple of days to get over Dump’s state of the union, especially the statement that “Americans are dreamers, too.” This is from an illiterate rich man who bought his way into college with rents his father gouged from the poor. A man who evaded military service and whose only dreams are wet.
The first record of my family members in what is in the United States date to El Paso in the 1760s and Tucson in 1776. I do not say this as a matter of pride but a matter of contrition because I realize that those ancestors were not always just and that their individual dreams often prevented others from dreaming.
I thank my parents for making me a Mexican which I believe helps me understand the dreams of others and partially makes me a better human being. Everyone has the right to dream — rich and poor– not only those who steal elections and use government as a means to accumulate capital to prevent others from dreaming.
I thought maybe Americans would be as fortunate as Segismundo en “la vida es sueño” and would realize that their dreams created nightmares for others. Then came the letter of LULAC President Roger C. Rocha, Jr of Laredo where discrimination has a history and I woke up. This is an enabler of Dump who brown noses him in search of a chamba and the ability to rob others of dreams.
I have no recourse but to recall Segismundo’s words:
Yo sueño que estoy aquí
destas prisiones cargado,
y soñé que en otro estado
más lisonjero me vi.
¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño:
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.
They awaken me to the reality that the Dumps and the Rocha’s of the world will never let others to dream. It took imprisonment in a tower for Segismundo to realize this. The Dumps and the Rochas must be taken down so others can dream.