"Machete" a powerful, if veiled statement on immigration

Anybody who knows me and my movie-watching habits and opinions will likely find it colossally strange that I loved “Machete.”

Graphically and gratuitously violent are not what I generally care for — and usually complain about — but “Machete” is both those things and I absolutely loved it. Probably because beneath it all is a very powerful statement about the immigration situation facing the United States.

Loaded for bear with plenty of machete and gun action and a cavalcade of Latino stars that includes Danny Trejo in his first leading role, Michelle Rodriguez, Jessica Alba and Cheech Marin, there is much more to “Machete” than meets the eye and I feel it was unfairly criticized by, well, critics.

The violence in “Machete” is not meant to be taken seriously and is often campishly comical despite the graphic nature of it. The movie overall is something of a satire, ridiculing the supposed solutions, both inhumane and asinine, to the influx of illegal immigrants who are just hoping for something better than what they had south of the border. Oddly enough, it puts a face on the people being condemned for just wanting to feed themselves and their families. Who in their right mind would protest a man/woman’s desire to do that?

There’s one point in the film, where a security guard questions the double standard of the people he works for, who want to ship the immigrants back — or kill them — while simultaneously having no problem hiring them to be nannies or gardeners. That doesn’t make any more sense to me than it did to him, but how many of us would agree that this is something of a truth?

I don’t have a solution to the immigration situation but I know the system isn’t working.  I think we can all agree that that needs to change and that the problem is that no one can agree on how to do it. That said, as I watched “Machete” I was reminded of something I heard Edward James Olmos say once. I don’t remember his exact words but the gist was that the solution to immigration matters would be to bring third-world nations, such as Mexico, into the first world. There’s a great measure of wisdom in that solution in my opinion. Yes, it would take time and money but I think I’d rather see us spend our time and money for something more compassionate and humane than electric fences and the like.

Frankly, it wouldn’t hurt all of us to think about it from the view point of the immigrants, either, and to acknowledge that they are human beings and not invaders or a sub-species, as some might contend.

Fellow citizens, Mexico may be south of the United States but her people – as well as Mexican-Americans, Latinos, Chicanos and other people of color — are not beneath us. They are a part of us and we would do well to remember that.