Everyone sees our world in different shades of different colors. The United States is the worlds most powerful nation, and we have our hand in virtually all projects around the world, we do this to try to better it for the people inhabiting it. Is The United States actually creating a better planet? Is the United States the one causing all the problems?
I will be comparing and contrasting two stories, one is about Columbians who are forced to work in the drug trade business, or take a bullet and die, while the other story is about how the United states wanting to pass a bill in the United States that would put a halt to all trade tied with countries that endorse child labor. These two issues are very similar while at the same time they differ from one another, and how here in the united states we are trying to fix these situations, but might not be able to fix or solve anything. These two articles are very similar in the fact that the U. S. s involved and trying to better and change certain ways of living for people over seas. In Silver or Lead, the united states is trying to pass a bill that stated, “The United States would no longer permit the import of goods from factories were forced or indentured child labor used(Divakaruni 442). ” While in the second article, Silver or Lead, The U. S. sends billions on dollars to aid Columbia, but the money meant for the aid of the citizens, for the people that need aid, is being used in funding their militia, and the production of drugs that will be later flowed into the untied states, and other parts of the world.
A similarity among both of these stories is that if the United States is tries to ‘fix’ the situation it will all end up backfiring on us and becoming a bigger issue than in the beginning. In the story Live Free or Starve, many children are being employed and paid for the work that they are doing. Without these jobs they would have no money and wouldn’t have what is need to survive. “But is this bill, which, if it passes the Senate and is signed by President Clinton, will lead to the unemployment of almost a million children” (Divakaruni 443).
If such bill were to be passed, millions of children would be left without jobs, and without a check at the end of the week, meaning that they would have no money to pay for food, no money to stay alive, they would just starve. In Silver or Lead a story about a drug war, there is no light at the end of the tunnel signifying and end to all the unnecessary deaths brought on due to the violence that is tie with drug trafficking. All that is happening is more, and more money is being made, while more holes are being filled with the murdered bodies of people caught in the crossfires of this drug war.
Nothing is working to stop this war. The consequences of the U. S. trying to help out these countries rise from ruins only seems to be causing more problems, causing more deaths, and more heart ache. A difference between Silver or Lead and Live Free and Starve, is how our government affects each of these countries overall. In the story Live Free and Starve The United States government is trying to pass a bill that would ultimately make us stop trading with companies over seas that hire children to make products used in the U.
S. This would have an impact on children very severally, they would lose work hours, and possibly their entire jobs, which would force them onto the streets, force millions of kids to live on the streets. These kids have no other means of work, they have no families to shelter and feed them, they would just end up starving, and dying on the streets that they so much hoped to be off of, and instead to be working and making money to survive. In Silver or Lead the U. S. unds and arms foreign countries to stop the rebel forces in drug wars. “Entire villages get caught in the crossfire between paramilitaries and rebels. In the past ten years, over 35,000 civilians have lost their lives in the conflict and hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes” (Carpanter, 215). All this help we seems to be giving them appears to only be causing one thing, which is death, death of thousands of civilians. The last similarity is that in each story there was a narrated story within the story.
In Live Free and Starve the author refers to a you boy she had met named Nimai, “Nimai’s parents were too poor to feed their several children, and while his older brothers were already working in the fields and earning their keep, Nimai was to frail to do so (Divakaruni, 443). Her mother took him in, and provided him with work, so that he could pay for his necessities and survive. How if an anti-child-labor law were to be in place, it would have effected them, and she would not have been able to provide such work for him.
In Silver or Lead the author talks about Eric and Miguel, two young boys caught in the middle of a drug war. A young American, Eric, who does drugs, and Miguel a young Columbian who doesn’t do drugs, but who has to live everyday in the middle of the worlds largest producer of cocaine. “ Eric and Miguel represent opposite poles in what the United States government refers to as the “war on drugs. ” Miguel’s home is where it starts. In his little village, drug protection is the only possible way of life. Eric’s home is where it ends.
In his suburban paradise, the stress of homework and ex-girlfriends requires weekend breaks for drugs” (Javdani, 448). Lastly, the United States should sit down and think things through, if they are indeed going to go forth and try to make things better, than they need to come up with better bills that would benefit those young kids over seas working in factories. The US needs to stop focusing of other countries where drugs are being made, and focus on our boarders, and instead of sending money over to those countries mass producing drugs, they need to focus on putting an end to the drug flow into our nation.
Our nation might think its doing whats best for our country while trying to help out others, but are they doing either? These problems may someday be fixed and created into something good, something good that everybody can benefit from, The U. S. is trying to be the ones to help, but sometimes you just need to let things unwind by themselves and just work on your own persona, and try to make yourself a better person, that is what needs to be done to the U. S. , we need to strengthen and better ourselves before we go out to better the rest of the world.
