01:00 AM EST on Sunday, March 13, 2005

SAN ANTONIO

CONSTANTINE, the new supernatural thriller starring Keanu Reeves, starts off in Mexico, with two men picking through the scraps of a desert wasteland. While searching, one of the men -- an otherwise unnamed "Scavenger," according to the credits, played by Jesse Ramirez -- stumbles onto what viewers later find out is the much-coveted "Spear of Destiny."

Holding it in his hand, the Scavenger gains seemingly indestructible strength and a callous disregard for human life. And as he heads north toward Los Angeles, we view the path of destruction he leaves behind.

While his character plays only a minor, almost nonexistent role for the rest of the film, his prominence in the opening scene and his importance in propelling the narrative suggest a greater significance connected not to this cinematic world of magic and mysticism but to contemporary, concrete attitudes and anxieties about immigration.

Art mirrors life. Shakespeare's The Tempest expressed early-17th Century attitudes about the mysterious continent and its Caliban-like inhabitants.

With his tattered clothes and rough, unkempt appearance -- vaguely reminiscent of Rafael Resindez-Ramirez, the serial killer who crossed the Southwest along the rail lines until his capture, five years back -- the Scavenger embodies the worst of Anglo-America's stereotypes as he transforms into an unstoppable uber-immigrant, capable of crossing borders and creating a hell on earth. According to legend, the Spear serves as a conduit, letting all sorts of creepy things from beyond enter our world.

Immigrants have been demonized before -- scapegoated for failing economies, overcrowded schools and crime sprees. In Constantine, we are the demons, an unwelcome legion chipping away at the margins of society.

In fact, the film's logic reflects that of such right-wing nativist organizations as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Voices of Citizens Together, and American Patrol, what with their perennial calls to close off the border, as well as the more mainstream (though no less pernicious) policies set by the Bush administration when it relocated the Immigration and Naturalization Service under the Department of Homeland Security -- a move that essentially equates immigration with terrorism -- and the neoconservatives and well-heeled liberals, whose economic prosperity and way of life depend on low-wage immigrant labor to pick their crops, prepare their meals, care for their children.

On screen or off, metaphorical or real, the foreign, alien, non-white or undocumented "other" -- society's most defenseless member -- poses a threat to this nation's illusory belief in cultural plurality and benevolent intervention because of who we are and what we represent: a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-lingual America.

Throughout areas such as southern Texas or urban California, we are already the majority; meanwhile, nationally we have become the "majority minority," numerically surpassing blacks. However, behind the demographic fanfare and marketing blitz, our access to and representation in places of policy and power continue to lag far, far behind, with little indication that this will significantly change in the next few decades.

Despite the rhetoric about liberty and equality for all, for America's brown and black members, citizenship -- by birth or naturalization -- does not ensure the full rights and privileges of belonging.

Simply put, an ever-decreasing number of white elites will continue to wield greater and greater control over the institutions and ideologies that affect our lives.

Look at the Senate: Until the last election, there had not been a black or Hispanic member in decades. Now we have three, Barack Obama, Ken Salazar and Mel Martinez -- which may seem to suggest tremendous progress until we put things in perspective and question why the government, in this example, has been so resistant to change.

In Constantine's climax, Reeves's character confronts a motley crew of demons assembled about him. "You are in violation of the balance," he shouts. "Leave immediately, or I will deport you!" He then proceeds to kick demon butt and send the delinquents back to their fiery final resting place.

This is, after all, a movie. Back in the real world, though, solutions are never so simple. What are the implications of deporting every undocumented person? What of the conditions that drive them north? Who prospers? Who benefits? Who else is targeted?

Do we have any other options, when the demons are deported and even the most kindly of extraterrestrials ends up returning home before the credits roll? We need a new paradigm, a new way of imagining alternatives to the way things have been and the way things are. We've learned to live with white America; now, white Americans must learn to live with us.

Alejandro Perez is a writer, educator and cultural activist based in San Antonio.