Not long ago in its bumpy history, the U.S. decided to establish itself as the defender of the democratic system throughout the world, positioning itself against the breakneck expansion of Communism. It exported its democratic values explicitly in its international actions and implicitly through a motion picture culture based on the competition between good and evil, where the triumph of good implies the triumph of Anglo-American values.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” says the proverb. Before suggesting, encouraging, or imposing a supposedly just political system, we must first ask ourselves whether it really is just. In my judgment, democracy is the least bad of all the known political systems. However, pure democracy does not exist.

What we call democracy is a system that distributes political power more generally than other systems, but that expresses the will of the majority. Minorities are left out of this game. Because of this, one of the principal values of democratic theory is missing: equality.

Do we live in a country where everyone is equal? The United States Constitution does not refer directly to the equality of its citizens before the law. In fact, the word “equality” only appears in Article Five, referring to the equality of votes each state has in the Senate. It may be suggested in the Ninth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments, the last four referring to suffrage rights. However, in practice, there exists a clear difference, on one side, between citizens and citizens from other countries, and, on the other side, between Anglo-Americans and those of other ethnicity. A scale of rights has been established that thins out for people who are not Anglo-American citizens.
For example, on June 17, 2002 at 4:50 in the morning, a crew of eight West Chicago employees, including police officials and municipal inspectors raided the home of Hugo Romero, Araceli Romero, and Luz Reyna. They entered the house, woke up the family, and poked through their belongings, obeying an administrative order that only authorizes the inspection of property to determine whether it complies with West Chicago ordinances. As a result of the raid, the family received an infraction for having too many people in the house, it was ordered not to receive visitors, and it was prohibited to use the back door as an entrance.
As another example, one can consider Erlinda Valencia, who came to the U.S. and found employment in the airport as a baggage inspector. After the outrages occurred on Sept. 11 against the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, the rights of immigrants who work at airports were curtailed. People like Erlinda Valencia were held responsible for having allowed terrorists to travel in those airplanes. Their labor rights were reduced to wet rags. They could be excluded from belonging to labor unions and even from retaining their work positions.
Raids, the deportation of undocumented people, and the violation of Fourteenth Amendment rights have increased. Clearly, this amendment only acknowledges the rights of citizens. All those who are not can be the target of all kinds of vexations.

In view of this, the U.S. democracy is not a system exportable to any place in the world. Neither is Spanish democracy. In my country, immigrants coming from North Africa are treated poorly, although their rights to physical integrity, to the schooling of their children, and to medical attention are inviolable. Nevertheless, we are not pledging to implement our defective democratic system upon others.

For democracy to exist, equality must first exist. In the meanwhile, injustices are exported, and wherever U.S. interference in other countries’ political systems requires a justification, it claims that that it is “defending democracy.”

Translated by Mitchell Cowen Verter

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