at least twenty-one countries and participated in at least twenty-six CIA led covert operations throughout the Caribbean basin to institute regime change, even when some of those countries, like Guatemala had democratically elected governments.
More important than territorial expansion during the nineteenth century, was the U.S. hegemonic attempt to control economies of other nations during the twentieth century. While empires of old, like Rome, relied on brute force, the U.S. Empire instead relies on economic force—not to disregard the fact it also has the largest military apparatus ever known to humanity. Through its economic might, the United States dictates terms of trade with other nations, guaranteeing benefits continue to flow northward toward the center and the elites from the countries who signed the trade agreements. Consider the consequences of implementing the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which destroyed the Mexican agricultural sector. Dumping U.S. surplus corn on Mexico (about $4 billion a year during the first decade of NAFTA)23 meant a 70% drop in Mexican maize prices, while housing, food, and other living essentials increased by 247%.24 In the first ten years of NAFTA, at least 1.3 million Mexican maize farmers lost their small plots of land unable to compete with cheaper U.S. subsidized corn.25 When Mexican farmers were squeezed out due to their inability to compete with U.S. subsidized corn, U.S.-owned transnational traders, like Cargill and Maseca, were able to step in and monopolize the corn sector through speculating on trading trends. They used their power within the market to manipulate movements on biofuel demand and thus artificially inflate the price of corn many times over.26 Worsening the plight of the maize campesino were the structural adjustments imposed on Mexico by the World Bank in 1991, eliminating all government price supports and subsidies for corn.27
These sufferers of neoliberalism are Jesús in the here and now. God chooses the oppressed of history—the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the alien, the sick, the prisoner—and makes them the cornerstone, the principal means for salvation for the world. In fact, whatsoever we do to these, the very least among us—we do it unto Jesús. And because the undocumented crossing the borders are usually the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, and of course the alien; because they are often the sick due to the hazards of their journey, and when caught by the Border Patrol become the prisoner; if we want to see the face of Jesús, we just need to gaze into the face of the undocumented. God does not appear to the Pharaohs or Caesars or Prime Ministers or Presidents of history; for leaders of empires whose policies cause death and migration are more aligned with the satanic than with the divine. God appears as and to their slaves, their vassals, and those alienated by their empires.
The undocumented attempt the hazardous crossing because our foreign and trade policies from the nineteenth through the twentieth-first century have created an economic situation in their countries where they are unable to feed their families. When one country build roads into another country to extract, by brute force if necessary, their natural resources; why should we be surprised when the inhabitants of those same countries, myself included, take those same roads following all that has been stolen. I am in the United States because I am following my stolen resources: my sugar, my tobacco, and my rum. To ignore the consequences of colonialism leads to the virtue of hospitality. For many from the dominant culture with more liberal understanding of the biblical text, hospitality undergirds how they approach and treat the undocumented. While it may always be desirable for all to participate in this virtue, caution is required least the practice of hospitality masks deep-rooted injustices. This virtue of hospitality, I argue, is not the best way to approach our current immigration crises.
The U.S. has an immigration crisis, yet a failure exists in recognizing the reason we come is because we are following what has been stolen from us. We come to escape the violence and terror the U.S. historically unleashed upon us in an effort to protect pax americana, a needed status quo if American foreign business interests are to flourish. An immigration problem exists because, for over a century and a half, the U.S. has exploited—and continues to exploit via NAFTA—their neighbors to the south.
To read the Jesús narrative through white eyes is to respond to the immigration moral crises by advocating hospitality. But hospitality assumes ownership of the house where Christian charity compels sharing one’s possession. To read the biblical narrative of Jesús from the perspective of the undocumented alien is to argue Latin American cheap labor and natural resources are responsible for building the house. My sugar, my rum, and my tobacco built it, and I want my damn house back. Due to U.S. sponsored “banana republics” throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century; Latin Americans holds a lien on this U.S. house’s title. Rather than speaking about the virtue of hospitality, it would historically be more accurate to speak about the responsibility of restitution.28 Maybe the ethical question we should therefore be asking is not “why” are they coming, why I am here; but, how does U.S. begin to make reparations for all that has been stolen to create the present economic empire? The Jesús biblical narrative forces us to ask: What does the U.S. colonial Empire owe Latin America for all it has stolen?
16. De La Torre, Reading the Bible from the Margins, 112–13.
17. Guardiola-Sáenz, “Border-crossing and Its Redemptive Power in John 7:53—8:11,” 151.
18. Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “Donald Trump’s False Comments,” Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/08/donald-trumps-false-comments-connecting-mexican-immigrants-and-crime/?noredirect=on
19. Hing, “Who Would Win an Immigration Debate.”
20. Latin for “the Roman peace”
21. John L. O’Sullivan is credited with coining the term “Manifest Destiny” in his 1839 newspaper essay, “The Great Nation of Futurity.” By synthesizing a romanticized ideal of nationalism with the economic ideology of unlimited progress, O’Sullivan ushered in a national myth which impacted American politics from 1840 to the early 1900s. Anglo-Saxons were believed to be destined by God to settle the entire North American continent; called to develop its natural resources and spreading liberty, democracy, and Protestantism. Besides justifying westward expansionism, Manifest Destiny’s racial overtones influenced the conquest and removal of indigenous people from their lands. Today Manifest Destiny is understood to be the ideology behind U.S. colonialism and imperialism.
22. Gunboat diplomacy, like big stick diplomacy, refers to the U.S. pursuit of foreign policy objectives through the display of military might, specifically through the use of naval power in the Caribbean basin. This normative 20th century U.S. international policy constituted a direct threat of violence and warfare toward any nation who would choose to pursue its own sovereign destiny by refusing to agree to the terms imposed by the superior imperial force.
23. Barrionuevo, “Mountains of Corn.”
24. López, Farmworkers’ Journal, 7–9, 41.
25. Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), Another America Is Possible: The Impact of NAFTA on the U.S. Latino Community and Lessons for Future Trade Agreements, Product ID 9013 (Washington, DC: Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, 2004), 4–8.
26. Bello, “World Bank, the IMF,
