Chicago - The United States remains a country of slaves, the priest Alejandro Solalinde said on his way through the city of Chicago.
"(This country) cries discrimination. I have visited it many times, but had never understood so clearly its systemic and structural problems," he told La Jornada after visiting Latino immigrants and African Americans communities on his caravan.
"I have traveled through Texas, New Orleans, Chicago, especially in Montgomery, Alabama, and I understand the great suffering of our brothers of color that still do not get justice and equality. They have had us believe that blacks and Latinos have agendas with different interests, but that isn't true. We need to create the new United States of America with a heart in which everyone fits," said Solalinde, standing next to Jonathan Luther Jackson, son of historic civil rights leader, Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Willie Barrow and other African Americans leaders gathered in the church of the Rainbow Push Coalition.
"I will return to Mexico to explain the danger of privatization of social services. There is a very clear polarization between the 1% and the 99%. I have traveled many times to the United States, but now it is very different. It has changed my perspective, never have I seen such racial segregation and poverty resulting from privatization and neocolonialism ...," said the founder of the Brothers on the Way shelter in Oaxaca.In several Masses that he celebrated, Solalinde asked Mexicans to mobilize themselves, to rebel and "not get off the bus of freedom and justice, as if we were Rosa Parks (the African-American who refused to be racially segregated by Alabama public services)." He explained that the... Latino world cannot continue "leaderless" and local leaders should stop their attempts to impose their projects and ideas on others.
The priest asked that whites who are "aware and supportive" of Latino issues be included, "to found a new, multicolored and religious United States". Spanish original