Lupe Valle ‘20
Contributing Writer
What is more inspirational than the Atlanta Falcons coming into the 2017 Super Bowl against the New England Patriots after securing only one Super Bowl appearance in their franchise history (in comparison to the Patriot’s four wins)? Perhaps the Budweiser commercial that manifests itself as a repudiation of Donald Trump’s prejudice towards Muslims and sybolizes immigration as a part of the U.S. as the American dream? The commercial depicts the hardships of travel and blatant racism that one of Budweiser’s founding fathers, Adolphus Busch, undergoes as he travels into and through the U.S. to St. Louis. As a result, Busch overcomes these obstacles with what is now a 13.4 billion dollar company commercialized on one of the U.S.’s most valued days of the year, the Super Bowl!
When I first watched this commercial and witnessed the difficulties that Busch endured, I immediately pictured my grandfather, Epifanio Velazquez crawling through the tunnels below the border of Mexico and the U.S. only to be discovered by I.C.E (if you don’t know what this is, I strongly suggest you look up everything about this atrocious agency and their relationship with Mexican immigrants) in the parking lot of Home Depot in San Diego, CA. This was just one of my grandfather’s seven attempts to cross into the U.S. to work and send money to his family in Sinaloa, Mexico. He later immigrated successfully, married my grandmother and earned his U.S. citizenship. Now he lives in Pittsburg, CA where he drinks about a 12 pack (maybe 24) of Bud Light a day. I didn’t need to watch this Budweiser commercial to know that there is a positive and direct correlation with immigrants and Budweiser; from what I’ve witnessed growing u, Bud Light is the beer that most, if not all, Mexican immigrants drink (from what I’ve witnessed growing up in California) when it is time to bask in the glory of a well-worked day.
This commercial seemed to act as a call out against our dear President Donald Trump and his preposterously xenophobic immigration ban, which resulted in 60,000 revoked visas after travel restrictions were imposed on Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
Our country has flourished from the success and work of many immigrants and their U.S. born children. Where would our state of technology stand without the efforts of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Jordí Muñoz? Jordí Muñoz, who comes from my hometown of Tijuana, Mexico, invented the drone, and was waiting for his green card while living in L.A. when he built his first model. Where would we be without the Mexican immigrants who wake up at 4a.m.and finish at dawn to pick olives, almonds, oranges, plums, walnuts, strawberries, garlic and much, much more for the rest of the world, like my father, Jesus Valle? Donald Trump has successfully offended and limited millions of immigrant families with his political power. The United States’ backbone is made up of ethnicities from all over the world, and without our blood, Trump would be nothing.
To end this rant with another one, I’ll say that though I disagree with mass corporations like Budweiser and their capitalist domination of the free world, this commercial grabs hold of what we need to see in our country in the years to come and what we should see today: hope, acceptance and the unification of all diversities.
