Reading "The Magnificent Seven" in Afghanistan and today's united $tates
The Magnificent Seven
Directed by John Sturges
The Mirisch Corporation and Alpha Productions
128 minutes
1960
2008 July
Yankees in 1858: " . . . and at the end of the month, instead of finding some advance towards peace and tranquility, we find their internal affairs more complicated than ever with new chiefs and new forces, shortly after any one is defeated, for their victories, as they call them, generally consist in causing the other party to run away, which is nothing more than changing his position; and as both parties live on the country at large, and this kind of game is more diverting than hard labor, these bands increase continually, and therefore there can be no hope of seeing order restored again in this country by the Mexicans of themselves. . . . One thinks that we ought to wait until the Mexicans ask us to interfere, but it is not probable they will ever will ask us, for they are not so partial to us, and are too fond of power themselves; and as to the confusion and disorder they live in, they are accustomed to it now, having had practice in it for half a century at least, so that it appears congenial to their nature. Another editor, at home, thinks that we ought to wait until Mexico falls into our lap like the matured fruit, by which, I suppose, he means until they are capable of appreciating our institutions, and become fit for annexation; but from the course they are pursuing now, and will continue to pursue if left to themselves, they will become more unfit every day for annexation. The Washington Union is the most unfortunate of all, for it thinks that these people ought to be left alone until they destroy each other, and that then we can come with the plow, the axe, and the hoe."(1)
Yankees in 1871: "Anarchy continues throughout Mexico, and the complications increase. . . . Wherever a party attains power it acts in a despotic manner. . . . . An American protectorate is seriously discussed. . . . Foreigners consider the only salvation for the country will be in placing it under the American flag."(2)
Yankees in 2008: "The War on Drugs may be fading from memory north of the Rio Grande, but south of the river, bloody battles are threatening to overwhelm Mexico's democratically elected government. The timid assistance package proposed by the Bush administration and pared down by Congress suggests that Washington doesn't grasp either the scale of the danger or its own responsibilities."(3)
This is a review of "The Magnificent Seven" only, not including its sequels.
In the united $tates, "The Magnificent Seven" is known as one of the better pre-1970s non-spaghetti westerns politically and is certainly one of the most popular. "The Magnificent Seven" continues to be culturally influential. At the time of this writing, there are more than five hundred Google News results for items containing "magnificent seven" in various contexts. In the recent Afghanistan movie "The Kite Runner" (2007), the friends Amir and Hassan watch "The Magnificent Seven" at a theater and know the movie's lines by heart. According to Khaled Hosseini's book, Amir and Hassan saw "The Magnificent Seven" more than a dozen times. In the movie, Hassan, the Hazara friend, mistakes Charles Bronson, the actor who plays the Irish-Mexican character Bernardo O'Reilly, as an Iranian, because of the dubbed voice's accent and presumably also because of Bronson's physical appearance. O'Reilly is one of the seven hired guns from the north who eventually join to help defend a Mexican village south of the (post-U.$.-Mexican War) border from Mexican bandits.
The most common anti-imperialist objections to "The Magnificent Seven" may be that it supports Euro-Amerikan interference in Mexican conflicts and politics, and intervention in oppressed nations in general, and that it normalizes white occupation of First Nations' land and Mexico. The movie's apparent glorification of whites who with a different movie premise could easily have been freebooters attacking Mexico or fighting on behalf of reactionaries reeks of Euro-Amerikan chauvinism. The idea of Euro-Amerikans' substituting for the Rurales and fighting Mexican so-called bandits driven out of Texas by the u.$. army (as Calvera, the bandit in "The Magnificent Seven" was) itself has reactionary connotations specific to the time in which "The Magnificent Seven" is set (vaguely in the late 1800s), but amerikans are so ignorant of their own history in relation to Mexico that the movie for many may support imperialism in a more general way.
The Mexican villagers in "The Magnificent Seven" initially seek to buy guns in the north to use themselves, but end up hiring white gunmen after Chris Adams (Yul Brynner) says that hiring people would be cheaper. "Nowadays, men are cheaper than guns." Mexican villagers are portrayed as hard-working, and courageous in their own way as struggling farmers, but simple, naive, backward and by themselves prone to giving in to enemies. Even the wise old man on the outside of the village who advises the villagers to fight and buy guns says of the farmers at one point, explaining to the whites why he doesn't want to go inside the village for protection: "Farmers talk of nothing but fertilizer and women. I've never shared their enthusiasm for fertiliser." The village is in the "middle of nowhere" (to use Chico's, the youngest of the Seven's, words). Hilario (Jorge Martínez de Hoyos), the main villager character, suggests that the land is ungoverned. The Rurales, the Mexican rural police during the late 1800s, is too weak to stop the bandits from attacking the village. (At the same time, Chris seems to take for granted the Rurales as being on the side of Mexican peasants, which is itself a distortion.) The bandit leader speaks of "so much restlessness and change in the outside world, people no longer content with their station in life." In the village, there is a character who acts as an appeaser and another man who futilely and rashly charges at the bandits by himself, demonstrating both the villagers' weakness and their need for outside motivation and leadership.
The movie's depiction of whites struggling over one First Nations man's burial in a cemetery, where whites (though "murderers, cutthroats and derelict old barflies") are buried, is often offered as evidence of the movie's progressiveness. Chris' and Vin's volunteering to take the body to the cemetery causes the Mexican villagers to think that Chris may be trustworthy, but the claim is that this is more than just a plot device or a parallel of Kambei's selfless act in "Seven Samurai." After millions of First Nations people had gone by 1960 (and after Euro-Amerikans had killed First Nations people on screen in westerns to pave the way for "civilization"), it is too little, too late, from MIWS's point of view. There is a larger land issue surrounding segregated cemeteries, but segregated cemeteries were not the most controversial issue pertaining to First Nations in the 1950s and 1960s. On the other hand, in 2008, there are still issues involving burial segregation and maintenance of segregated cemeteries. People would not know this from watching "The Magnificent Seven" today. Even more than in 1960, "The Magnificent Seven" suggests that racism is in the past, something from which progress has made been made.
The depiction of Mexicans as bandits forms a stereotype in westerns. The stereotype is closely related to the portrayal of First Nations people as bandits threatening Euro-Amerikans on the frontier. It is also related to the portrayal of the West and colonial North America in general as a lawless place up for grabs. Every group has its bandits, including whites, in westerns, but "3:10 to Yuma" (2007) and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (2007), two of the most popular recent westerns, are reminders of amerikans' willingness to accept white bandits as noble, conflicted or otherwise sympathetic characters. White bandits are complex or complicated, or impoverished and struggling, individuals, if not heroic. Mexican bandits in westerns, in contrast, are crazy, drunk, foolish, lazy, and ruthless, if occasionally shrewd.
The white bandit functions as part of a mythology of amerikan nation-building. The amerikan sees himself as having been born in the general lawlessness of the frontier. The bandit is part of the amerikan's historical self. White banditry becomes a sign of the propensity of whites for hard work. The white bandit is a kind of enduring rugged individual and fulfills an imperialist ideological function in representing Euro-Amerikan living standards as hard-won and deserved, the product of courageous, virtuous individuals who were once poor or struggling to survive and outgrew some morally questionable parts of themselves. (In the "ambiguous" words of Clint Eastwood as killer-turned-farmer William Munny, "I ain't like that no more.") For MIWS, western-inspired images of amerikans, while they may seem ridiculous to hipster urban amerikans today, are suspect in helping to justify, internationally, high u.$. living standards and obscure the international exploitation on which those living standards are based.
The qualities of Mexican bandits in Westerns, particularly where it is necessary to have whites appear as potential heroes for Mexicans, make the qualities of white bandits stand out. In "The Magnificent Seven," there is a strong contrast between the Mexican bandit and the Mexican non-bandit. It is uncompassionate bloodsucking bandits, unwilling to work, weighing down on fearful and defenseless peasant farmers, toiling, but on the brink of starvation. On the white side in westerns, the distinction between white bandit and white non-bandit is often blurred. (One of the seven mercenaries in "The Magnificent Seven" fantasizes about getting rich off of gold in the peasants' land. In one of the movie's scenes supposedly reflecting a questioning of the heroic archetypes of the western genre, some of the Seven make self-deflating comments that might also describe idolized outlaws. "It's only a matter of knowing how to shoot a gun. Nothing big about that." "Home: none. Wife: none. Kids: none. Prospects: zero.") One might think this difference, the blending of white bandits and white non-bandits (particularly in the form of adventurers, bounty hunters, contract killers, corruptible government officials, desperate people with families to feed, gold-seekers, mercenaries, Pinkertons with ugly traits, testosterone-laden cowboys, vengeful victims, and vigilantes) while Mexican bandits and non-bandits are sharply juxtaposed in some westerns, would favor Mexicans in some way, but white bandits end up in a less negative light than Mexican bandits. White bandits and other outlaws are directly compared with Mexican bandits in some westerns. In the Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood movie "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), for example, the Rojo family is depicted as bandits and rapists victimizing not only Mexican townspeople, but also the weaker gun-smuggling Anglo Baxter family. Clint Eastwood's character is himself ambiguous, more so than Toshirô Mifune's character in "Yojimbo" (1961), MIWS would argue. Perhaps the most famous anti-hero in western films, the Man With No Name has bandit qualities, but draws admiration. The bandit Calvera (Eli Wallach), in "The Magnificent Seven," will be seen in the light of characters like the Man With No Name. Within "The Magnificent Seven," Calvera suggests that he and the Seven are in the same "profession" (that which "deals in lead"). Apparently, the evil of this profession is mostly to be found in Mexican bandits, not white gunmen.
The ruthless Mexican bandit-victimized helpless Mexican peasant theme in westerns is historically simplistic in certain ways and allows the white savior to intervene. This is what happens in "The Magnificent Seven," the movie being one of the most famous examples. "The Magnificent Seven" raises the idea that whites once were like the farmers. Euro-Amerikans, then, are a force that can help Mexicans develop. Chico (Horst Buchholz) and Chris in a key moment have an exchange of lines that in a sense explains the farmers' sometimes wavering outlook as something that corresponds to their economic and social position; the farmers don't know that in the scheme of things they will be victorious. After having defeated their own Calveras, after being forced to fight and trained to despise weakness by "men with guns, men like Calvera, and men like you, and now me" (an awkward mutation of corresponding lines in "Seven Samurai"), the white people that the Seven represent speak from a position of advancement, a stage that the Mexican farmers haven't yet reached. "The Magnificent Seven" easily fits the neo-conservative, liberal-"left," phony-radical and other imperialist discourses of today legitimizing u.$. intervention in the Third World. Although, critical viewers may wonder about the economic relationship between Euro-Amerikans and Mexicans depicted in "The Magnificent Seven." The only jobs whites seem to have in "The Magnificent Seven" are in funeral services, traveling sales, grocery retail, bars and bar security (bouncing), occasionally chopping firewood, and mercenary fighting. The villagers sell their compact, transportable valuables and pay the mercenaries in money. It's a small sum. It's understood that what the mercenaries are mostly working for is room and board in the village. Even if the money were more, the underlying trade is not mercenary services for money. It is mercenary services in exchange for food and shelter produced by the villagers' labor. The money will buy products made south of the border.
"The Magnificent Seven" is famously a remake of Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" (1954). What is perhaps less obvious, to those focusing on superficial storyline, is that "The Magnificent Seven" replaces the class differences in "Seven Samurai" with national differences. In "Seven Samurai," there are Japanese swordsmen, samurai, and Japanese villagers. In "The Magnificent Seven," instead of white gunmen and white farmers, there are white gunmen and Mexican farmers. In Japan, there was a class difference between samurai and farmers. This difference eroded during the period of Japanese history "Seven Samurai" depicts. However, it is precisely class structure, interaction within it, and transformation of it, that "Seven Samurai" deals with.
Separated so much from the Japanese context, the choice of whom to depict in "The Magnificent Seven" may seem accidental. After all, while hired guns were often former soldiers, the Seven in "The Magnificent Seven" don't seem to have the stature of samurai or even lumpenized ronin samurai. Maybe hired gunmen were just an obvious equivalent of hired swordsmen in turning "Seven Samurai" into an amerikan movie. MIWS would argue that "The Magnificent Seven" reflects economic realities and, furthermore, not just the need to justify colonialism at the frontier (that is, the Euro-Amerikan settler frontier as it existed in the late 1800s). The theme of leaving the farm in a time of social turbulence, and returning to it in a time of stability or prosperity and settling down (Chris and Vin speak of people "settled down" in Dodge and Tombstone), can have a certain economic significance, but occupational changes surrounding "The Magnificent Seven" and during the time in which the movie is set are particularly interesting.
In the first place, even by the Mexican Revolution of 1910, after industrialization in Mexico, well more than half of the working population in independent/unoccupied Mexico was still working in agriculture.(4) But in 1870, only half of the employed population in the united $nakes was working in agriculture.(5) Much of the u.$. agricultural labor force was non-white. So, even in the late 19th century, when "The Magnificent Seven" is set, it would have made sense to see the Mexican as a farmer and the amerikan as increasingly a non-farmer, in a general way, not just in situations where frontier whites interact with Mexicans.
The cowboy image of amerikans as isolated people rounding up cattle, and the individualism associated with that even where cowboys worked cattle they didn't own, has a basis in reality. While westerns may exaggerate the glamour of cowboy work, the fact is that the work white people did was largely more of a petty-bourgeois, rather than proletarian, character. Even when it came to agricultural work, many whites worked their own farms or worked on family farms. Those who were employed for wages had wages much higher than those in other countries.(6) This remained the case even when the number of white wage-earners increased. This was partly due not to higher productivity, but to the exploitation of Black, Chinese, First Nations and Mexican people. Today, the Euro-Amerikan so-called proletarian is clearly an exploiter of laborers throughout the world.
Chris tells Chico, "Sure you hate them. Because you come from a village just like that one. You yourself are a farmer." Whites have left the "village" all right; they left it before they came to North America. If "The Magnificent Seven" were attempting to be a scientific movie and one were to look at the decision to use Mexicans as the villagers to John Sturges' "samurai," the replacement of 16th-century Japanese intra-national class differences with Euro-Amerikan-Mexican national differences would represent a kind of progress toward truth. There is in fact a class difference between Euro-Amerikans and Mexicans in most cases. National differences coincide with class differences. On a world scale, the vast majority of Euro-Amerikans are exploiters, and the vast majority of oppressed nation people are toilers.
In the late 1800s, less than half of employed whites were employed in agriculture. By 1960, there were only 5.5 million employed agricultural workers (white and non-white) in the united $tates and four million farms.(7) "The Magnificent Seven" was shot in 1960. In the 1940s and 1950s, there had been a massive decrease in the number of agricultural workers and farms. Furthermore, in 1960, some 30% of the agricultural labor force was still non-hired. The context of "The Magnificent Seven" was an actual distance of whites from the socialized agricultural labor that the Mexican farmers represented. MIWS is not going to get into what the exact relations of production of Mexican agriculture were; the point is that whites in the 1960 were, and also saw themselves as being, separated from agricultural toil. Today, most white farm workers are young, under 25, doing farm work temporarily.
The youngest of the Seven, Chico, bristles when he is casually called "campesino" and makes disparaging remarks about "dirt farmers" and farming as a whole as a mundane and unadventurous enterprise. "All they care about is their precious crops and the miserable dirt they dig in." It's tempting to attribute this to Chico's adventurous individual personality, but most Euro-Amerikans do see manual labor, especially for a wage, and farm work particularly as being beneath them and not worth much, and it's because they don't do them, not just because they aspire to have the good life. More moviegoers might have taken references to farming literally in 1960, but "the farm" in recent westerns has a tenuous connection to any labor that might produce wealth for society. The "farm" has become a symbol of virtuous white individual labor, but the vast majority of Euro-Amerikans today consume more than they produce, and most don't produce anything of value in a capitalist sense. Chico's sneering at dirt farmers might seem offensive to amerikan culture, which mythologizes the small farmer working their own plot of land, but bourgeois professions not requiring one to be tied down to a place were becoming more common after World War II. Not being "settled down" and not being happy with one's lot in life has meant wanting even more privilege and power.
In today's First World movies and TV shows, Mexicans are delinquents, domestic abusers, drug dealers, crime lords, gangbangers, smugglers, traffickers, and collaborators of whites. The one constant is that Mexican wimmin are still romantic interests in need of white help. The Spanish nobleman character Zorro notwithstanding, there is still no prominent Mexican Robin Hood character in First World culture. Since bandit horsemen no longer pose a threat in the white imagination and the treatment of Mexican wimmin has basically stayed the same, MIWS will go out on a limb and suggest that "The Magnificent Seven" has some merit today within the united $tates in one specific area. The idea that Mexican people should be allowed to go north to buy and do whatever they want that is legal for whites should be called "capitalism" in amerikan language, but would be controversial today. MIWS is interested in what amerikans in 1960 thought about "The Magnificent Seven" in the context of "Operation Wetback," which took place a few years before "The Magnificent Seven" was released. Unfortunately, in a sea of movies set in Mexico or with Mexican characters, MIWS suspects that worshiping of Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn drowned out any progressive message "The Magnificent Seven" might have had. And today "The Magnificent Seven" is mostly something of a cult classic in its limited current viewership and a source of memorable quotes used out of context.
However beneficial "The Magnificent Seven" might be within the united $tates, internationally the film with its neo-colonial message is reactionary. "The Magnificent Seven" is an example of a film that might be fine in some circumstances in the united $tates, but not outside, an inverse of the idea that a film shown with good consequences in an oppressed nation might have different consequences seen in the First World. The world isn't one big class or a homogeneous population. There are imperialist nations and oppressed nations, and the imperialist nations have exploiter majorities, while oppressed nations are struggling against imperialism. Yet, the myth of the Euro-Amerikan "masses" having the same interests as, or even living in harmony with, oppressed nation masses inside and outside u.$. borders is represented even in the thinking of "Marxists" and "communists" in the Third World at this time, not to mention the First World. One would not know from watching "The Magnificent Seven" that there is occupied oppressed nation land in the united $tates. There is just "the border," north of which there is "a free country" (as Chris says when he explains why he's fine with Chico's tagging along, before he officially becomes the Seventh), and there is no mention of the annexation of Mexican territory. It turns out that many so-called radical leftists have a "Magnificent Seven" view of the united $tates and draw from the exploited Euro-Amerikan working class myth in justifying the continued domination of oppressed nation people inside u.$. borders.
In "The Magnificent Seven," it seems that whites as a group are privileged, but that whites or at least individual whites can help the oppressed. The Seven are only a few individuals, and so it may seem that the movie doesn't deal with Euro-Amerikans as a group. The bandits also appear as individuals, interlopers on the fringes of morality and society, or decadent individuals thriving in an environment of upheaval. But, a vague impression that privileged whites can help the oppressed can result in various incorrect ideas, one of the worst of which is the idea that privilege isn't connected to exploitation or other oppression.
The samurai don't help the farmers fight other samurai in "Seven Samurai." The whites don't help the farmers fight other whites in "The Magnificent Seven." One important difference often unmentioned in comparisons of the two movies is that one of the samurai seven (the non-hereditary, aspiring samurai Kikuchiyo, played by Toshirô Mifune) makes a kind of self-criticism on behalf of all samurai for oppressing farmers, explaining why farmers would kill samurai. (Mifune's contradictory character combines outspoken criticism of the farmers with defending the farmers from their perspective. This is duplicated in "The Magnificent Seven" with Horst Buchholz's character, Chico.) Another samurai had wanted to kill all the farmers after learning that the village had killed samurai while resisting them. Kikuchiyo's rebuke and explanation and the others' acceptance of them are part of the movie's class reconciliation message. A analogous message is missing in "The Magnificent Seven," which puts a friendly face on whites, but does not refer to oppression of Mexico by Euro-Amerika in as nearly a strong way, despite Harry Luck's obsession with finding Mexican gold. Instead of talking about oppression of Mexico by Euro-Amerika, Chico, the character partly corresponding to Kikuchiyo, in an introspective moment focuses on gunmen/violence in general, not whites. Toward the end of the movie, in what seems to be a deliberately ambiguous translation of a scene in "Seven Samurai," Chico appears to explain both the outlook of the villagers and his own outlook as a gunman on continuing the battle with Calvera's bandit gang. By this point in the movie, it clearly is not Euro-Amerikan oppression of Mexico that is being dealt with. So, Chico's words "what do you expect us [referring to either farmers or gunmen] to be," regardless of how one interprets them, are not an acknowledgment of Euro-Amerikan oppression.
According to Eli Wallach, the actor who played Calvera, Mexican censors were involved in making "The Magnificent Seven" because of "Vera Cruz" (1954). MIWS knows only a few details about that, but one thing that "The Magnificent Seven" and "Vera Cruz" have in common is raising the idea of non-farmer whites' fighting for a cause, something better than personal wealth. Calvera himself asks, "I don't understand why a man like you took the job [helping the villagers] in the first place. Why?" Before Chico becomes the Seventh, Chris says, "It isn't food he's hungry for." People fight on one side or another for all kinds of reasons. By itself, there is nothing objectionable in the abstract about the idea of food and shelter enticing some whites, with potentially contradictory ideas about behaving morally and not doing the fighting for charity, to fight on the side of the oppressed. In the real world, however, the idea of parasitic or idle amerikans who are already rich fighting for a cause better than making money or "greater than self-interest" (to use John McCain's words), or for the "common good" (Barack Obama), is usually connected in some way to repressing oppressed nation people or otherwise reproducing imperialism.(8) Doing something for a cause could mean murdering people in Iran, Afghanistan and other Middle East or Asian countries under the pretext of intervening (as a benevolent outside force) in gender or "ethnic" situations or helping those countries' peoples to combat terrorism.
Returning to "The Kite Runner," it would be a mistake to see Amir's and Hassan's watching "The Magnificent Seven" as just a sign of a general amerikan cultural influence. Films like "The Magnificent Seven" generate support for u.$. imperialism in particular ways. The western drama provides a certain narrative on nation-building, and within that there are specifically pro-Euro-Amerikan perspectives.
Despite its promotion as a universal film by those including the White House, and imperialist criminals masquerading as communists, "The Kite Runner" itself supports imperialism in very specific ways.(9) The Bushes, who have endorsed "The Kite Runner," have a cowboy image, but that is not the only reason why "The Kite Runner" is relevant to "The Magnificent Seven." Amerikans are plenty willing to imagine ethnic and national conflict in regions targeted by u.$. imperialism (such as conflict between Hazara and Pashtun people in Afghanistan), but only a tiny minority acknowledge the existence of national oppression or differences within u.$. borders. The u.$. so-called left, one of the major forces confusing the oppressed internationally, denies or minimizes national oppression within u.$. borders. And, it denies almost the entirety of u.$. exploitation of workers outside u.$. borders; exploitation is dressed up as mere trade or exchange. All of this combined is connected to preserving the united $tates as a white-dominated or integrated imperialist entity. In "The Magnificent Seven," Calvera reveals that he has robbed a Texan bank, and maybe stolen cattle and robbed trains in the united $tates, but exploitation and oppression on the part of Euro-Amerikans stop at the border as the Seven ride heroically south of the border to save a Mexican village. In the movie's time period, Texas was annexed only a relatively short while before, but the most ignorant viewers will assume that everything in "Texas" somehow belongs to amerikans. Thus, "The Magnificent Seven" goes so far as to portray Mexicans as predators of Euro-Amerikans, and Euro-Amerikans as forgiving and noble people willing to overlook offenses and provide assistance. In "The Kite Runner," no attention is given to the role of international oppression in economic differences between Third World nations and the First World; at the same time, the movie points to the united $tates as a potential liberator of Afghanistan. In the First World, the belief that Third World people are attacking First Worlders and encroaching on their economic interests, but require First World leadership and have conflicts they can't resolve by themselves, is prevalent.
John Wayne does not star in "The Magnificent Seven," but John Wayne is the most iconic figure of western films and biographically is remembered as an anti-communist of the John Birch variety. Effete hipsters and the kind of people who might think John Wayne is for aging conservative bumpkins are in love with "The Kite Runner," but MIWS would argue that "The Kite Runner" is not fundamentally different from "The Magnificent Seven" in terms of any question of ideology. That said, MIWS doesn't expect anyone to make a movie that will convince amerikans of scientific truths about class and nation. It is possible, though, to have a movie that doesn't support u.$. foreign policy objectives. At this time, such a movie for the purpose of changing public opinion in the united $tates on Afghanistan, for example, doesn't need to put forward any big idea about the united $tates' history of national oppression. But it shouldn't build support for u.$. intervention by allowing amerikan chauvinism to dictate how situations in other countries are perceived.
Notes
1. Protectionists, correspondence of the New-Orleans Picayune (Mexico, 1858 November 18), item in "Important from Mexico," The New York Times, 1858 December 4, front page.
"The [Washington] Union also thinks that our Government has no right to send an armed force here to act as a police, and we say that we should, then, shut up and preach no farther Monroe doctrine, because other nations have treaties and commercial relations with this country as well as ourselves, and some of their people have more interest at stake here than ours have. For a long time past there has been no legitimate Government here -- treaties with other nations not observed nor compacts fulfilled; other nations, whose policy it is not to interfere here to-day, may change their minds and come here to-morrow. Circumstances oblige nations to change their policy, as we see it frequently done before our eyes. . . . If, therefore, we intend to carry out the Monroe doctrine, instead of preaching about it always, we ought to begin at once, now that Mexico and Central America afford us the opportunity of doing so, and not leave the door open for other nations to enter here whenever it may suit their views. . . . Delays are dangerous, and the sooner we set to work to regulate these people, and get them ready for annexation -- if it be possible -- the better it will be for us and for them also. We cannot annex to our Union seven or eight millions of what we call colored people, only in part civilized, without ruining our institutions; but we can send an armed force and then regulate afterwards a native force -- like the Sepoys in the East Indies -- collect their revenues, set the people to work, and by proper management they may hereafter become fit for annexation at some future time, and useful then to themselves and to us also; but left to themselves, without a new training, they will be a nuisance and an evil to us in time to come, provided other nations are willing to let them alone, which cannot be expected, because their subjects here are constantly applying to them for protection."
2. "MEXICO. : Anarchy Throughout the Country–Progress of the Revolt–Annexation the Only Remedy," The New York Times, 1871 December 20, p. 5.
3. "Mexico at the Brink," editorial, The New York Times, 2008 June 4, section A, p. 24.
4. Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo and C. Richard Shumway, "Research and Productivity in Mexican Agriculture," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 79, no. 3, 1997, pp. 738-753.
"At the time of the Mexican revolution (1910-17), two-thirds of the labor force was employed in agriculture and produced one-third of the GNP, but 97% of the agricultural workers were landless." (p. 739)
5. Patricia A. Daly, "Agricultural employment: has the decline ended?," Monthly Labor Review, vol. 104, no. 11, 1981 November, pp. 11-17.
6. J. Sakai, Settlers : The Mythology of the White Proletariat, 3rd edition (Chicago: Morningstar Press, 1989).
7. Patricia A. Daly, "Agricultural employment: has the decline ended?," Monthly Labor Review, vol. 104, no. 11, 1981 November, pp. 11-17.
8. Barack Obama, "Faith In One Another As Americans," Parade, 2008 July 6, http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2008/edition_07-06-2008/1Patriotism_Obama
"But each generation must understand that the blessings of freedom require our constant vigilance, and that true patriotism also means a willingness to sacrifice for our common good. For those who have fought on the battlefield under the Stars and Stripes -- for the young veterans I meet at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or those like John McCain who endured physical torment while serving our nation -- no further proof of such sacrifice is necessary. Those who have signed up to fight for our country in distant lands inspire me, just as I am inspired by those fighting for a better America here at home by teaching in underserved schools, caring for the sick in understaffed hospitals, or promoting more sustainable energy policies in their communities.
"In the end, it may be this quality that best describes patriotism in my mind -- not just a love of America in the abstract, but a very particular love for, and faith in, one another as Americans. The greatness of our country -- its victories in war, its enormous wealth, its scientific and cultural achievements -- have resulted from the toil, drive, struggle, restlessness, humor, and quiet heroism of the American people. That is the liberty we defend -- the liberty of each of us to follow our dreams. That is the equality we seek -- not an equality of results but the chance of every single one of us to make it if we try. That is the community we strive to build -- one in which we recognize we share common hopes and dreams, one in which we continue to insist that there is nothing we cannot do when we put our minds to it, and one in which we see ourselves as part of a larger story, our own fates wrapped up in the fates of all who share allegiance to America's singular creed."
9. "Interview of Mrs. Bush by Voice of America," 2007 September 26, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/09/20070926-3.html
"Q Okay, let me shift gears a little bit -- another part of the world, another part of the world that's in trouble. Well, you and I, we share something -- we share a love of books. We've talked about this before over lunch. We have a shared passion for a book called "The Kite Runner", which was set in Afghanistan. It's a wonderful novel about two boys who grow up, and their lives reflect the turmoil of their country.
"You've recently been there, to Afghanistan. You told me it holds a special place in your heart. And recently when we sat down at this luncheon with all the other women who cover the White House, we asked you to describe the most memorable event of your tenure as First Lady. And you didn't skip a beat. You said it was Afghanistan; it was cutting the ribbon at the American University.
"MRS. BUSH: That's right, the new American University that's being built there. And President Bush and I just had a showing of "The Kite Runner", the movie, which will be released, I think, in November at the White House theater. Khaled Hosseini, the author, was there with us, as well as a number of people from the U.S. State Department, who are directly responsible for working with Afghanistan. The Ambassador from Afghanistan and his wife were with us, as well. And then we asked the Ambassadors from the Netherlands and Canada, both countries who have joined us in Afghanistan, in the rebuilding of Afghanistan.
"But one of the people there is the new President of the American University in Afghanistan, Dr. Stauffer. And he said to me -- and I would have never thought of this -- but he said, you have a great legacy because you were there when this University was founded, when we announced that we were going to build this American University in Kabul. And it made me feel great, of course. I was really thrilled about that.
"But I also hoped that the people of Afghanistan know that American people are standing with them. All of these recent terrorist bombings with the Taliban are very worrisome to the people of the United States. I know the people of Afghanistan want to build their country, reject violence, and be able to live a normal life after these years of war that they've had."
Photo and caption, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/09/images/20070917_yg0l1668jpg-515h.html
"President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush welcome author Khaled Hosseini to the White House for a screening Sunday, Sept. 16, 2007, of the film adaptation of Hosseini's novel, "The Kite Runner," a fictional story of the friendship between Amir, a privileged boy, and Hassan, the son of his father's servant, in Afghanistan during the last days of the monarchy through the rule of the Taliban. Guests at the screening included: Vice President Dick Cheney; Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace; National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley; Ambassador Said T. Jawad of Afghanistan; former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, now U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad; former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald E. Neumann; and President of the American University in Afghanistan Tom Stauffer. White House photo by David Bohrer"
In-text embedded links
1. http://maoist.ws/reviews/movies/200805warmovies.html