"So Mexicans are Taking Jobs from Americans"

This poem seemed to me to be the most passionate. It wasn't about family or love, or lust like some of the other poems may have been but it was definitely the most passionate. And the passion that it turns towards to is the ignorance that people have and how they love to blame something and everyone else. People are losing jobs so instead of looking at the reason why they aren't eager enough to hold on to them is invalid, they want to focus on someone stealing them away from them. Of course, it isn't possible that the people that now earned these jobs are by any means worthy of them because then the people would have nothing to complain about. The line that had the most impact on me had to have been,

"The children are dead already. We are killing them,
that is what America should be saying;
on TV, in the streets, in offices, should be saying,
“We aren’t giving the children a chance to live."




Obviously they aren't killing the children, but on the inside they are. They are forcing the children to be working and to mature at an age much earlier than they really should. So they aren't killing the children, because they aren't really children to begin with. Their childhood was stolen from them. These people that think this is what is really happenings are the ones that live with all of the wealth. But,

" Below that cool green sea of money,
millions and millions of people fight to live,
search for pearls in the darkest depths
of their dreams, hold their breath for years
trying to cross poverty to just having something."

While they sit there and complain about what is happening around them they don't really comprehend what struggle is, nor do they really care.
That is why this poem is the most passionate. Jimmy Santiago Baca clearly thought that thisw was a subject that needed to be noted.