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I wrote this for a contest offered by Vanity fair some time ago, maybe 2, 3 years ago and have made some edits with a lil help from...

Insert Country Here
By George Sandoval

What with our diverse cultural mix, the large influx of countless immigrants, even today, from all over the world with each seeking their "American Dream", how can you pinpoint, if at all, a common characteristic amongst Americans? Yet regardless of the fact that every American has roots reaching back to - insert country here - there does exist one thread which binds us beyond national (ethnic), religious and racial boundaries. Moreover, not only does this thread tie together the soul of America, it is quietly being infected through new generations from - insert country here - threatening to dissolve their respective identity.

I am a second generation - insert country American. Through my family's blood line runs a long history of challenges, pride, pain and triumph. My mother, who recently passed away succeeded in not only establishing a new life in the United States, but raising seven children. Alone. During a time when activists had yet to secure rights for women that today so very many take for granted and sadly have shown an all too willingness to relinquish. Yet, I myself posses no real history to speak of other than, in this context, getting there.

This was made very clear to me one day while driving back to the workshop from a job site with my partner, Frank-Alain. We had just dismantled and removed a roof from a 300 year-old structure that had fallen during a recent storm. We were discussing construction techniques during that period as we entered Blonay, a small village nestled beneath the Swiss Alps. I noticed and remarked upon several spires jutting above the tree tops. "That's the Chateau du Blonay", my friend offered in French. "The family still owns it and they still live here in town," he continued. Just as my next question, absently asked, "Which family?", a sign appeared to our left, requiring him only to point to the answer - Bienvenue a Blonay! (Welcome to Blonay) Like a sounding board, it reflected centuries of self confirmation; of who they were, and what their purpose was. It not only mapped their past, but gave charter to the future. It also made me realize the difference between the reward of having an identity and the price for getting one.

I can recall my mother yelling at me in Spanish "Speak English!," after having returned home from school one day while in the 3rd grade. It wasn't until years later after my first of determined attempts to establish residency in Europe that I came to understand her reasons for saying it. "I wanted you to loose your accent so that people wouldn't look down on you. So that you would fit in and have every opportunity that I couldn't," she said to me. Like her I had paid my coin of identity, lingual identification, in exchange for a better life, greater hope and possibility, and deeper meaning. I, like her, was willing to leave behind a part of who I was in exchange for a dream that I will always continue to chase.

Of the countless adjectives used to describe myself and my fellow Americans I must admit all apply: hard working, greedy, arrogant, lazy, proud, generous, gracious, kind, violent, indifferent, benevolent, and cool just to name a few. But the true definition of our character can not be found in these generalizations but in a deeper contextual understanding of our psyche. One whose development reaches as far back as the first settlers, shored with every wave upon wave of migrating dreams and whose redefinition can be traced to the criticisms of the Truman Doctrine - via containment of a perceived threat we isolate ourselves and as a result establish ignorance of the world and her cultures - ours - dissolve as we consume a homogenized identity of wealth, property, goods, and noterity.

The byproducts of developing economies, consumerism and consumption, have themselves become the new identity here in Amercia, and possessing these products have become the new vehicles of identification. This culture of Get can be found in practically every race and generation here in the United States, from the roughly the 70's on. Like any oversized organism it has exhausted its original resource, us, and is now exporting a civil and societal disease, consuming the consumers at will. However, unlike any other means of self identification it is not based upon religion, race, language or generation, but is championed by the false notion of progress as exonerated by the capitalistic goals of both political parties.

We've consumed the tenants of a great country, once virtue earned after the great wars of benevolence, sacrifice, and hard work, which were the inter-cultural threads binding the East and West Coasts, the Agricultural and Mechanized belts of a saddening nation when true terror existed outside of our borders - Hitler and Nazism. Our discord resonated and electrified our spirited past, shouting and hurting for hope, hope for a truly free world for our children. It's disheartening that these cords have dissolved within acidic nature of capitalism, eviscerating community from commonality, sacrifice from reason; detaching humanity, the same humanity that has brought nations together during moments of immense strife, binding peoples of distinct and even conflicting goals, during the most horrific wars. Wars! Where millions have died! Wars! Where millions have shed their skin, had it burned from their bodies, had it ripped with vicious tenacity by bullets and explosions alike. War! Where millions leave families - never to return. War! When millions, of bodies lay decomposing while sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sit and sat, and will sit, waiting, chatting, sipping tea, drinking water from a fountain, laughing with friends, all, all with the aching hope for their return.

And now, with criticisms pouring in from Europeans and the World alike, we turn our backs on the duty that befell them, had befallen them, will befall them as we hide in attempt to separate ourselves from the need of their death, which is our need - Accountability. The source of our accountability of any nation sis in the blood shed as sacrifice. All blood shed. Our identities as human beings, Americans, Chinese, African, Indians, Native Americans, Polish, Jewish, Russians, Mexicans, Japanese, and so painfully many others. All are our Identity, our identity that we have fought for, that we bleed for and should give our lives for.

No wonder we hide from what we've become. Anguished by the detachment we face. I met a man once, while still in Switzerland who insisted I call him "Nobody", a man I met in a bar who refused to give me his name. A man who was enraged by my speaking English as I stood there chatting with friends at Charlie's in Vevey. Through Spanish, French, and a dabbling of Russian and Italian, his, we came to realize we had very much in common. That like him, as an American wanting only reconciliation - peace. I found his peace came with huge debt.

He wanted to go home to his wife in Vietnam, a place where he had served as a sniper in the French Army. A country he had drawn blood from in the name of capital progress. He reminded me of many of my friends who wake in the morning hoping for a better day, hoping for a future for their respective families, willing to attach themselves to an ideal, and in return pay their coin of an identity, shedding his French roots that offered no hope. He reached into his pocket offering, insisting I take all his loose change - nearly 20 Swiss francs. "I don't need this, he said. I never want come back here." I never want to come back to Switzerland.

I love my country, but not for the politics that continue to give grief to so many people around the world, but for the people who populate it. Those who like my mother are selfless and need only be asked to help. Though we may be caught up in moving forward, we will always extend a hand to those who stumble behind. These people, our people, you people, everyone will find walking the streets of large cities and small towns alike. These people you will find coming from - insert country here.