# Quote — Richard Rodriguez, Darling

> On the one side, the Mexican side, Mexican peasants are tantalized by the American possibility of change. On the other side, the American side, the tyranny of American optimism has driven Americans to neurosis and depression, when the dream is elusive or less meaningful than the myth promised. This constitutes the great irony of the Mexican-American border: American sadness has transformed the drug lords of Mexico into billionaires, even as the peasants of Mexico scramble through the darkness to find the American dream.

- Author: [Richard Rodriguez](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez.md)
- Book: [Darling](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/darling.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Rodriguez#Darling:_A_Spiritual_Autobiography_(2013)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/darling/on-the-one

## More from this book

> When Cesar Chavez died in his sleep in 1993, not yet a very old man at sixty-six, he died—as he had so often portrayed himself in life—as a loser.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/darling/when-cesar-chavez.md)

> My brother and I have, after many years, achieved our importance to each other as a difference. Because it is sometimes difficult for my brother to climb the steps to my apartment, he will often come by and we will sit in his car and talk. We quite enjoy one another’s company. My brother is no less a good man for not believing in God; and I am no better a man because I believe. It is simply that religion gives me a sense—no, not a sense, a reason, no, not exactly a reason, an understanding—that everyone matters.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/darling/my-brother-and.md)

> No Chavez speech I have read or heard approaches the rhetorical brilliance of the Protestant ministers of the black civil rights

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/darling/no-chavez-speech.md)