The Dance for Power

The book, Boricua Power by Jose Ramon Sanchez, talks about the struggle for power as a dance between two or more agents. He said that it cannot be compared to a gun because not everybody is afraid of death or is willing to do anything for their life. Dance is more of a way that you can express your wants and needs through interpretation and manipulation. Power is not something that is solid. You cannot just go out and state what makes something powerful. It is more fluid than that and ever changing. The key is keeping your partner interested in you. He alludes to a girl who is lusted for after a powerful man. The girl uses his lust to get what she wants only to have her own power taken away by saying too much. Power is something that people constantly try to attain in a capitalist society. The thing that people forget to notice is that the people in power need the people who are powerless to remain that way in order to keep their power.

The power of dance relates to immigration because the people in power need the immigrants to dance with them in order for them to turn a profit from the immigrants. If the immigrants decided to get up and leave the dance, there would be a shortage in labor by the jobs they create from their own work. Mexico (I used them because they are directly bordering the U.S.) and the U.S. need immigration more than the immigrants need either of the two countries. I say this because Mexico relies heavily on the funds that are sent back into the Mexican economy by the workers in the United States. The corporations in the United States need the cheap labor force. The immigrants have more power than really think but choose to keep dancing to the same beat given to them.