To the Editor:

With the capture of Dzhokar Tsarnaev in Watertown, Mass., the entire nation scrambled in search of so many unanswered questions to help law enforcement, counter-terrorism officials, profile analysts, psychologists and experts in the field of behavioral science to conduct an extensive investigation on the cause that drove these two brothers to act against the same people that gained their thrust. While cautioning against a “rush to judgment,” Obama said that the investigation would seek to find out why two young men who studied in the U.S. would turn to such violence.

Home-grown terrorism is not a farfetched idea, considering the rainbow of immigrants arriving here every day from all over the world carrying political ideology, anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism beliefs that hold the United States responsible for their misfortunes. They believe the U.S. drove their countries to financial distress, forcing them to leave behind their loved ones, and leading them to hold a grudge against international corporations like the Gulf & Western and the Barrick Gold, a gold industry leader in production, reserves and market capitalization.

The company operates mines and advanced exploration and development projects around the world, and holds large land positions on some of the most prolific and prospective mineral trends, a company that has been accused of exploiting the lands with heavy machinery and using equipment that is destroying the ecological systems in some of the countries they operate. Critics point to tree degradation and contamination of some of the local rivers with poisoning materials used in the disintegration of the ground in the search of precious metals and minerals.

There is a connection between most of the people that immigrate to the United States that makes the elder immigrants question their separation from the homeland and their family. It’s this sinister thought that keeps them searching for an answer that can comfort their spirit while giving them balance to the sense that what they are doing here is worth the sacrifice of living a life full of discontent for whatever reason they believe. None of them are comfortable about abandoning and leaving their homeland behind. These elders are the ones that pass along to the youngest the testaments of why this new generation must keep within their hearts the culture, ancestors, history and the glories of the old country that make me remember an old saying, “You can always take a lion out of the jungle, but you can never take the jungle out of the lion.”

We must remember any country that has been ravaged by civil war, where children become soldiers, defenders of their family and revolutionary forces against their own will, while the international community turns its cheek the other way and does nothing. We also should be aware that everyone involved in those civil war countries will question their participation in a war that they feel must be condemned and prevented by the international community with a sincere hope that a country like the United States intercedes on their behalf. They watch their family being killed one at a time by warlord criminals and when intervention never happens, the citizens of those countries are left with a sense of frustration that sometimes leads to a nightmare that can be passed from father to children.

The reality is a different story, as we have seen throughout the years how many Americans have turned terrorist without an explanation. Such is the case of Faisal Shahzad, who staged the failed Time Square bombing; Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who opened fire on a crowd of soldiers and civilians at Fort Hood, Texas; and Najibullah Zazi, who plotted to attack the New York subway with backpacks loaded with explosives.

Akbar Ahmed, the chairman of Islamic studies at American University in Washington, described such men. They are American, but not quite American.

We can go on, saying and describing how regular Americans disregard patriotism and how other Americans can confuse the patriotic ideology with just hatred for anyone that is not an American or just a simple immigrant.

What we need to understand as Americans is that this country is founded on a Constitution full of immigrants that came from all over the world while running away from absolutist governments indifferent to human travesty and injustice. We must support each other in the course of unity. We should concentrate our efforts on our similarity and not on our differences in order for us to gain each other’s trust and respect. We want to secure a better future and the well-being of all, for if not, we will be generating uncertainty that at the end can tragically turn into a Trojan horse supported by an organization that wants everyone in America to secure a heavy artillery, whether you need it or not and in our own backyard.

Lately, I have been having a nightmare that has kept me from falling sleep. I dreamed that the government made a call for every healthy individual to enlist and defend our nation from the enemy within and no one attended, not the U.S senators that work so hard for the benefit of those private companies, neither the local officials distracted by fortune and glory and certainly not the families of those soldiers that died with no memory of whom they were, and then the government faced the realms on calling the nation immigrants and then things get bleak.

Ivan G Marte

CEO for the Center

for the Defense of Civil Rights and Equality