Echele Ganas / Do Your Best

Écheleganas takes its name from a common injunction in Sierra Norte, given when someone is doing something difficult, especially between migrants and their families back home, meaning “Do your best” or “Keep trying harder.” Like the work itself, the title suggests a political work that is not a polemical work. Salzmann does not argue what is obvious to him (and many others) through experience––namely, that the overwhelming majority of immigrants, wealthy and poor alike, with documents and without, bring skills, ingenuity, determination, pluck, integrity and community-mindedness to the American cities in which they live and work. In so doing, embody American ideals as much as or more than Americans themselves. Likewise, Salzmann takes it as a given that questions of assimilation are for immigrants themselves to decide. Immigrants are entitled to the same self-evident truths and inalienable rights to pursue happiness as they understand it that Americans proclaim for themselves.