A day without a Mexican 

:
This text which deals with the positive aspect of Mexican labor in California. It is an excerpt
from an essay written by Jorge Ramos entitled : The other face of America. 

Jorge Ramos is a famous journalist who is himself an immigrant born in Mexico City in 1958.
He has worked for a lot of American media and has been called “the voice of the voiceless” as he has
often dealt with problems faced by Spanish speaking minorities. 

The whole text is based on a hypothesis (that is to say “What would happen if Mexican left
California) and he tries to list all the disastrous consequences of this scenario.

In the last 6 lines the narrator corrects a few facts about Mexican labor. Throughout the text
the writer shows that the departure of Mexicans immigrants could affect (and even ruin) many
economics sectors in California namely the food industry (l.5) construction and clothing industries
(l.9-10) as well as/together with the service industry (l.15). It would affect family life (l.17) because
many children would lose their nannies and it would also affect the judiciary and health fields (l.24-
25). We have to bear in mind that California is a rich state with dynamic economy and it has a border
with Mexico.
Thanks to the anaphora a day without a Mexican in California, the writer manages to
convince his readers. Besides this text his carefully organized in so far as he uses parallel structures :
thus he repeat the conditional “would” When he imagines the consequences and he quotes some
figures in brackets. Furthermore, he uses many plural forms (“losses”, “millions”, (l.4) ...) and
negatives terms (“without”, “not”, “unkept”, “unfulfilled”).
In order to insist on the extent of the damage he aims to show that the departure/the disappearance
of Mexican immigrants would paralyze the whole state of California. 

In the last paragraph, the writer wants to put an end to the unfounded
stereotypes/prejudice(s) of many Americans who wrongly(#rightly) think that Mexican in the us are
unskilled workers whereas many of them have high academic qualification (line 29/30). Moreover, he
cleverly ends his text with two superlatives (l 31) to insist on the vital contribution of Mexican
immigrants to California.

Therefore, J. Ramos aims to discredit/debunk the myth according to which Mexicans would
be a burden on American economy. In fact, California benefits from the cheap labor, which is a real
asset to the economy.
 The real story of the Superheroes :
Those four pictures were taken by Dulce Pinzon, of photograph artist. The name of this
project is “The real story of superheroes” so we can assume that the photograph will show us that
the superheroes are not only the one we can see in Marvel’s movies. We are going to present you
the 2 photos on the right.

On the first picture, we can see the window cleaner who’s dressed up as Spiderman. He has
no security. It is obviously a risking job, an accident can happen really fast. 
On the second picture, a man dressed up as the Thing (in the 4 fantastic). He is holding a pneumatic
drill. He is very muscular. He has to use his physical strength every day. His job is very physical, with
bad condition and no protection. Immigrants workers often have the worst jobs.  
On the third photo, the man who is dressed up at Hulk is called Paulino Cardozo. He is a delivery
worker. He has to carry boxes of vegetables all day long. 
On the last photo, the woman who is dressed up as Catwoman is a nanny looking after children. She
is holding a toddler in her arms. The little girl is clinging to her clothes. She works in a wealthy family
because they are living in NYC and they have a wonderful view. 

In conclusion we can say that these two immigrant workers are wearing superheroes suits
because they are doing low pay jobs that no one wants to do even though they are really useful. Plus,
they are able to support their families back in Mexico by sending them some money.   
With those pictures, the Mexican photographer probably wanted to revalue the image of Mexicans in
the USA. 

Dulce Pinzo (born in 1974) she is a Mexican artist living in New York. The real story of the
superheroes which is a project done in 2006 consist in a series of 20 color photographs and it pays
tribute to the courage of Mexicans immigrants who work many hours in difficulties conditions for low
wages and send some money to support their families in Mexico. Hence these immigrants who are
dressed up as superheroes to show the everyday sacrifice and heroism of this immigrant workers.