WHEN THE STATUE OF LIBERTY BARS THE WAY

By Leonardo Padura and - - Reprint | | Print |

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HAVANA, Sep 4 2007 (IPS) - It was in 1883 that Jewish American poet Emma Lazarus wrote the famous lines below the Statue of Liberty in New York: \’\’Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free\’\’, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author asks, What would this Mother of Exiles say today? The human flux, stronger than ever, is greeted with intolerance, selectivity, and, worst of all, xenophobia. As nationalism grows increasingly hard-core and furious, hypocritical governments are trying to regulate or even block outright a solution that would be so essentially human that no law or wall could ever completely stop. Today no one is speaking the words of Emma Lazarus, or engraving them on plaques. To the contrary, some even think that this much lauded Jew shouldn\’t have stooped so low. Who today cares for the tired and poor and huddles masses from other shores? What rich and powerful country is asking for the tempest-tossed to be delivered to its shores? The golden doors stand in darkness and no one will light them, and yet, even so, the poor and downtrodden still find a crack to squeeze through towards a better life.

”Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”, proclaimed the Mother of Exiles, as Emma Lazarus called her in the poem, which not only immortalised Lady Liberty but also eternalised the relation between the United States and the dispossessed and immigrants of the world.

The statue, inaugurated in 1886 and located on what was then called Bedloe Island at the entrance to the port of New York, would soon become one of the country’s most important symbols. From a metal plaque on the pedestal below the statue, the words of Lazarus initiated a dialogue with masses whose first words in this new world would be spoken on nearby Ellis Island, one of the primary immigration facilities of the US through which more than twelve million immigrants (outcasts and tempest-blown) from every part of the globe passed between Emma Lazarus’ day and 1954 when it was closed.

But for these lovely verses, Emma Lazarus and her writings (in which she also called for a Jewish Palestine for the scattered children of Israel) would be today only a footnote in history, as strange, curious, and difficult as the marvellous legacy praised in the verses of that wise and knowing Jewish poet of exoduses and diasporas.

What would this poet, so spiritual and impassioned, who dragged along with her the smouldering conflicts of race and nationality, of the walls that divided and still divide countries, or of the harsh remarks of her fellow Zionists whose cause she herself pleaded.

What would this Mother of Exiles say today?

Never before has humanity been so aware of the significance of the process of migration. Though as old as humanity itself and a part of its history, to the point of having decided humans’ ascent up the ladder of evolution, the processes of migration have been freighted with economic, political, and religious motivations and laws that regulate and even block it.

With certain states imposing onerous conditions on emigration and others trying to close off their borders and ports to immigrants, the human flux today, stronger than ever, is greeted with intolerance, selectivity, and, worst of all, xenophobia. Yet the essential reason underlying human movements remains the same as that which drove primitive man from the depths of Africa: the search for a better life, which almost always coincided with the need for food, clothing, and making a living.

As nationalism grows increasingly hard-core and furious, many hypocritical governments are trying to regulate or even block outright a solution that would be so essentially human that no law or wall could ever completely stop.

Hunger, the lack of opportunity, and the exhaustion that gives rise to fanaticism today drives great masses of people after the dream of a better life, or even just a possible life. The economic disparities that characterise the contemporary world have driven waves of migration from the poor South to the rich North — the only possible route, cut deeper and deeper into the earth. People’s desire for – more than right to – a better life is the compass that never errs and guides millions of men and women of the world today.

But in today’s world no one is speaking the words of Emma Lazarus, no one is engraving them on plaques. To the contrary, some even think that this much lauded Jew shouldn’t have stooped so low. Who today cares for the tired and poor and huddles masses from other shores? What rich and powerful country is asking for the tempest- tossed to be delivered to its shores? The golden doors stand in darkness and no one will light them, and yet, even so, the poor and downtrodden still find a crack to squeeze through towards a better life. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)