Passengers were reportedly stunned this month when a group of U.S. college students burst into chants of “Build the wall!” on a spring break cruise off the coast of Cancun, Mexico.
It’s just one example of a growing number of problems with increasingly “haughty” spring breakers, according to a Mexican newspaper.
The Yucatan Times couldn’t miss the hurtful irony of privileged young Americans calling for keeping Mexicans out of the U.S. with President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall while they were traveling in Mexico for vacation.
Several Mexican tourists on the ship expressed their anger about the chant, but “the Americans did not stop” and continued their “racist hymn,” the paper reported Friday.
“This is just one of the many blameworthy behaviors that young spring breakers have shown recently in Cancun that are described as acts of xenophobia and discrimination against Mexicans within their own country, which is (or should be) totally unacceptable,” the paper wrote in an editorial.
The Times pointed to the “growing number of complaints from tourism sector workers who point out that ... many spring breakers have been offensive, rude and haughty toward Mexican people.”
The ship outburst was recounted in a Facebook post by Peruvian Anaximandro Amable Bruga, who was on a honeymoon trip in early March with his Mexican wife aboard a “pirate cruise” off Cancun, which recreates a pirate battle at sea.
“I was with Suly, my wife (from Mexico), watching the show off the coast of Cancun aboard a boat,” Amable said in his post, written in Spanish (a rough translation follows below). “At the end of the show, a flock of Americans (maybe drunk, or not) began to [chant] ‘Build the wall’ louder and louder.”
The incident appeared to be a kind of turning point for Amable. While he has been reluctant to become engaged in heated debates about what’s going on in the U.S., he appeals in his post to Latin Americans to stand together against “these kind of harmful attitudes.”
“We weren’t raised to be anyone’s cute dog nor to put up with anyone’s boot,” he adds.
Tolerance is not always good, chingada madre!
As some of you, my friends, [know] I went with Suly, my wife (from Mexico), to a show aboard a galley in Cancun. It was totally cool. At the end of it, a flock of Americans (it’s not clear whether they were drunk or in “full” use of their faculties) started to sing the stupidest that vomited like this: “Build the wall.”
Now, I have always been tolerant of the countries of the world, and I’ve wanted to believe that human stupidity and ignorance is characteristic of a small group of people, particularly on this subject. Especially having so many family and friends who live in the United States who I’ve seen be proud of the country they migrated to ― I’ve always wanted to stay out of the discussion. But there are things that you can’t tolerate, like speech that incites hatred, or what’s worse, stupid hate ― as Mexicans would say ― as in, dumb hate.
You know that I disagree almost completely with the politics practiced by the United States government. Likewise, in these times we must be aware that half of the citizens of the country up north voted for a fascist who could very well be compared to Hitler and nazism. Realize, then, my dear Latin Americans, that at least that half considers that all who live south of Texas are Mexican. To them neither Guatemalans, Hondurans, Venezuelans, Colombians, Argentines nor Peruvians exist. There’s no difference. We are all regarded as Mexicans. That how arrogant they are. And with that same cretinism they praise and support the decisions of their new fascist president.
Latin Americans: We cannot be tolerant or even less mediators or flexible with these kinds of harmful attitudes, just like we can’t be tolerant with lies or with attacks against a person’s or a people’s dignity. No one told me about it: I lived it and it hurt and it bothered me and it filled me with rage, sadness and impotence.
Latin Americans: When you see a brother being insulted or beaten, don’t support the perpetrator, don’t join his beating by making fun of him, or insulting him or creating memes. Defend him because they are literally also insulting you. Feel it. We share the same story..
A government of that nature, .... must be repelled strongly, with all the tools that is our right to have at our disposal. Let us never again allow that anyone laughs in our face and, much less, in our own house. Because that’s not tolerance; that is to be dumb... [and] without character. And we, Latin Americans, weren’t raised to be anyone’s cute dog nor to put up with anyone’s boot. Long live a united Latin America!
This article has been updated with a more precise translation of Anaximandro Amable Bruga’s Facebook post.
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