Photo: Left - Zorro/Diego de la Vega - http://www.the-reel-mccoy.com/movies/2005/images/Zorro_1.jpg
Photo: Right - Comandante Ricardo Montero - http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/e1/ent/zorro/montero225x300.jpg
In "Zorro," the recent telenovela, the mean Comandante of colonial Los Angeles gathers the local population and threatens to kill a person each hour unless Zorro shows up. The protagonist Don Diego de la Vega, in disguise as Zorro, arrives (of course) and thank goodness, no one dies.
The Comandante, named Ricardo Montero, is seen as a brutal individual, who orders torture, locks up people for years without charge, including a pregnant woman in a dungeon for months and later orders her infant son killed. Towards the end of the series, his soldiers start saying that he has gone insane.
This Telemundo series culminates with Montero falling into a river while fighting Zorro. The Comandante is quickly eaten by pirranhas. Later, his lover finds a piece of his hand at the edge of the river... (I apologize for the gruesome nature of this story).
The telenovela interested me from the beginning, probably because I watched Zorro as a child in the 1950s and 1960s. The timeline is about 1790. Zorro's Los Angeles is part of Spain. A violent, insane military commander terrorizes the people. Zorro/Diego de la Vega, who is actually the son of a Spanish nobleman/general and an indigenous woman, comes to the rescue. After having trained in Spain - in art, literature, law, and swordfighting, he combines this knowledge with his indigenous background (he actually lived with the tribe until he was ten) and becomes Zorro.
After many trials and tribulations, Zorro/Diego brings peace to Los Angeles and marries his true love (who is also of mixed blood - 1/2 Spanish, 1/2 Gypsy).
Now that the series has been over for several weeks, I am thinking that in many ways Zorro the farce - is Zorro the true. Bringing the story to the present...
2007 - Los Angeles (i.e. the U.S.) has been taken over by the violent insane Comandante. People are tortured and imprisoned for years without charge. Ultimately, to get his way, the comandante decides to kill one person every hour - in the town square, so that all can see.
Such is the new "Enforcement Only" inititiative proposed by the Bush Administration. The Comandante has ordered people to be rounded up, imprisoned or banished - in order to get his way- so Congress will pass an immigration bill. Who says telenovelas are fantastic stories? Seems like reality to me.
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Editorial
Enforcement Only
All that's left of immigration reform
Sunday, August 12, 2007; Page B06
Washington Post
SITUATIONS SOMETIMES need to get worse before they get better. That's the best that can be said about the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, announced Friday...President Bush has decided to launch an enforcement-heavy initiative that will probably be as ineffectual as it is painful.
...The most disruptive of 26 provisions is likely to be the one that puts teeth into "no match" violations. "No match" occurs when the Social Security number provided by a worker fails to match a number in the Social Security Administration database. Until now, employers were alerted when an employee triggered a "no match," but there were no consequences. A new regulation gives employers about three months to either dismiss the worker or verify his legal status. No one should be surprised when this approach yields thousands, if not millions, of "no matches" that force employers to cycle furiously through workers, at a cost of time and money...
For complete article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/11/AR2007081101055.html
Disclosure: I have to apologize for posting this twice - it is also on bornintheUSA2008.blogspot.com
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