Continuamos!
Other less-than-savory facts about Juarez:
- Since the mid-80's, over 600 women have been murdered in Juarez, a phenomenon known in Spanish as femenecidio. A large portion are victims to domestic violence, whether by their parents or by lovers. Other women have been raped and murdered on their commute to work, which often necessitates long time spent alone and in darkness, as street lights are scarce outside of downtown. Few arrests and fewer sentences have been procured for the murderers, creating a climate of impunity and fear.
- Thousands of people have migrated to Juarez to work in the maquilas, huge foreign-owned factories that benefit from proximity to the US market, minimal or non-existent tariffs, and a broad base of workers willing to work for cheap. We spent an afternoon with Pancho and Erlinda, lifetime maquiladoras who are on constant watch by their employers for standing up against abuses from time to time. Pancho and Erlinda still have no running water, despite petitioning the municipal government for years. They detailed to us their elaborate steps to conserve water, such as using shower water to water their trees outside. "El agua es oro," Pancho told us - "Water is gold." Yet before we left, they offered us a cafecito, an early afternoon snack break with cookies and, of course, coffee, made with, what else, water. We all drank gold that day, alchemied by generosity.
Beyond the fact that maquila salaries often do not stretch to cover a family's basic needs of food and shelter, the cultural damage the maquila industry wreaks is catastrophic, especially as regards the family, the basic building block of society. A few examples: Even when husbands and wives work at the same maquila, they are prohibited from working the same shift because companies fear theft by submissive wives, and because even the smallest dose of camraderie among workers could blossom into communal defiance of company rules. Add to separate shifts an hour or more commute, and you have both couples who rarely see each other, families who spend a scant amount of time all together, and kids who are left unsupervised for large portions of the day. How can families build strong bonds when work is all-consuming?
Another example: It is a common practice for maquilas to demand that all female workers take birth control, regardless of their age or marital status. Furthermore, if a women gets pregnant while an employee, she is often fired. Such practices treat workers not as human persons with a life beyond the factory walls, and a family, but as mere extensions of the rest of the machinery used to make dashboards or lights or whatever.
A bleak picture, no?
Poverty up close looks like...me and you and my great-aunt Josephine
People can never be reduced to statistics. As helpful as percentages and GDPs are to understand the stability of a society, the persons whose lives produce numbers to crunch are not quantifiable and, in my opinion, the largest benefit of traveling to an impoverished region is that up close, the fabulous variety of personalities and identity is clear on faces and in voices, even of the most impoverished. So on our trip, the strongest notes of hope came not from a (needed) proliferance of programs to feed the poor and gain justice for victims, but from the people at the source of those programs who had an unsatiable thirst and hunger for righteousness.
Still to be continued...
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Oh Mexico!
Whew! The whirlwind tour of America's borderlands is over, and here I sit trying to encapsulate the weekend in order to share it with all of you faithful blog readers. So here goes!
To Mexico via Limosina
At 5:15 PM Valentine's Day, we gathered in the prayer room for a brief reflection and prayer before embarking. At 7, we were snuggled into the bus, ready or not, Mexico, here we come! Our route headed south out of Denver via highway 25, with stops in Colorado Springs, Pueblo, and Albuquerque. Suffice it to say that early into the 12-hour bus ride, all comfortable positions were utterly exhausted. Our bus driver drove his rig with gusto, and we arrived in El Paso an hour ahead of schedule, good news for our cramped limbs!
Where's the line in the sand?
We were met at the station by West Cosgrove, a former Maryknoll missionary who now, with his family, runs Casa Puente, a center for education about border issues for groups such as ourselves who travel south to see immigration up close. West treated us to a delicious breakfast before engaging us in conversation about what we knew about the border and what we would like to know. After whetting our appetite, he drove us to three 'snapshots' of the border.
The first was high aloft a ridge. El Paso lay at our feet, with Juarez not far beyond. In fact, from this height, it was nearly impossible to tell where one country ended and another began, besides for the skyscrapers absent from Juarez's skyline. West pointed out to us Monte Cristo Rey, a peak divided between Mexico, Texas, and New Mexico. At its pinnacle stands a large cross, and every year on the feast of Christ the King, pilgrims from both countries climb to the top for mass and fellowship.
Our next snapshot was the border as fence, demarcating the boundary between Juarez and Sunland Park, New Mexico. For all the rhetoric about border enforcement, this fence was shockingly inept. Only about a mile long, it is easily walked around; only about eight feet tall, easily surmounted; and the best irony came from the two-foot tall drainage tunnel that offered an unhindered passageway under the fence for those humble enough to crawl. All in all, it was easy to wonder what exactly the purpose of such as structure was.
Finally, we met the border at the Rio Grande, known locally as Ni Grande Ni Brave for its paltry stream of water that snakes through Texas, having been ransacked for irrigation in New Mexico and Arizona. The Rio Grande forms the border the Gulf of Mexico and El Paso, where it heads north through US territory. Hence, at the breaking-off point, there begins a series of 276 concrete posts that deliniate the border through the desert lands past El Paso. We posed by the first marker, which stands next to a plot of dry soil used by Mexicans for weekend soccer games. The ball often escapes onto the US side, and is chased by futbolistsas.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us
We visited the Annunciation House in El Paso, a shelter for migrants and their families from Mexico. One of four current volunteers, Charlie, gave us a tour of the cramped dormitories and sparse chapel. From the roof, he pointed out where one of their former residents, a 19-year-old, was shot and killed by the Border Patrol while taking out the trash. Several other residents were witnesses to the shooting, and when they testified at the local police office, they were arrested by the Border Patrol and deported.
Theoretical questions about immigration policy, border enforcement, and migrants' rights become concrete and unaviodable in El Paso, the third-poorest city in the US. Charlie spoke of the fine legal line he and the other workers walk every day. As a private residence, they are protected from entry by the Patrol without a warrant. The legal quandry hinges on whether they are offering food and shelter to migrants who entered the states illegally, and passions run high on both sides. One sign that frequented El Paso read, "Humanitarian aid is never a crime."
Do bridges divide or unite?
At 5 PM, we walked the five-minute stroll from US to Mexican soil, over one of several International Bridges. We paid 35 cents for the priveledge, and didn't have to show passports, id, nothing. At the bridge's peak, where it rises above the middle of the Rio (not) Grande, the view beneath gives a glimpse into Mexico's opinions about US policy. Painted onto the Rio's concrete shores were slogans decrying the numbers of migrants killed in the journey each other, others exalting Latin American heroes such as the iconic Che, Fidel Castro, and Simon Bolivar, and still others denounced Bush as the real terrorista.
At the end of the bridge was Juarez, loud and cramped, with no buffer before the plunge into sensory Mexican cityscape. We met our Juarez guide, Jim Weaver, who with his wife and three small children serves as a Maryknoll missionary for a Juarez parish. Together we hopped on a public bus until we arrived at the Centro for Derechos Humanos, a human rights advocacy center where Jim also works. By this time, I was feeling drained, over-stimulated, and ready for a long extended siesta. Thankfully, after a talk about domestic violence and workers' rights in Juarez, we were treated to a delcious meal of stuffed meatloaf, and then - finally - a flat and stationary place to rest my head!
Saturday: Un Perfil de Juarez
'Perfil' - a profile, snapshot, outline sketch. Such we received Friday of the sprawling metropolis south of the border, Ciudad Juarez. Named for the first and only indigenous president of Mexico, Juarez is a city of children, migrants, and Catholics, explained Oscar, a former seminarian who now works at the human rights center. In the last few decades, the population of Juarez has exploded, mainly with migrants from poorer rural states in southern Mexico, propelled north by financial distress. Juarez is in the desert, and with little infrastructure in place to accomadate such a population boom, has undergone growing pains on a massive scale.
In brief: why do they come?
Mexico's social stability has long been tenuous, having endured a civil war and several revolutions in her short life as a republic. The majority of her people have lived for generations as subsistence farmers, surviving but without much excess profit. Hence, disasters both natural and manmade have long had potential to wreak havoc on her economy. However, when in 1994 leaders from the US, Mexico, and Canada signed a free trade pact known as NAFTA, the bottom fell out of Mexico's economy. While NAFTA is not the only factor in mass migration, it is a huge one.
Immigration analysts speak of 'push' and 'pull' factors in migration. The 'push' factor during the '90s in southern Mexico was that farmers whose crops had previously been protected by national tariffs were subjected to a tariff-free international economy with countries like the US, who heavily subsidizes their farmers. Unable to compete in the race to the bottom, countless rural farmers gave up the ghost.
But why move north? Hence the 'pull' factor: Juarez is a mecca for foreign companies because of its proximity to the US market, the tariff-free economy and (the pull) supply of steady low-wage labor (read: bankrupt peasants). Yes, jobs are widely available in Juarez, which attracts a steady stream of immigrant workers. However, the salaries of such jobs are not enough to support a family unless mom, dad, and maybe a few kids are working fulltime. Employment alone does not mean comfortable standard of living.
To be continued...
To Mexico via Limosina
At 5:15 PM Valentine's Day, we gathered in the prayer room for a brief reflection and prayer before embarking. At 7, we were snuggled into the bus, ready or not, Mexico, here we come! Our route headed south out of Denver via highway 25, with stops in Colorado Springs, Pueblo, and Albuquerque. Suffice it to say that early into the 12-hour bus ride, all comfortable positions were utterly exhausted. Our bus driver drove his rig with gusto, and we arrived in El Paso an hour ahead of schedule, good news for our cramped limbs!
Where's the line in the sand?
We were met at the station by West Cosgrove, a former Maryknoll missionary who now, with his family, runs Casa Puente, a center for education about border issues for groups such as ourselves who travel south to see immigration up close. West treated us to a delicious breakfast before engaging us in conversation about what we knew about the border and what we would like to know. After whetting our appetite, he drove us to three 'snapshots' of the border.
The first was high aloft a ridge. El Paso lay at our feet, with Juarez not far beyond. In fact, from this height, it was nearly impossible to tell where one country ended and another began, besides for the skyscrapers absent from Juarez's skyline. West pointed out to us Monte Cristo Rey, a peak divided between Mexico, Texas, and New Mexico. At its pinnacle stands a large cross, and every year on the feast of Christ the King, pilgrims from both countries climb to the top for mass and fellowship.
Our next snapshot was the border as fence, demarcating the boundary between Juarez and Sunland Park, New Mexico. For all the rhetoric about border enforcement, this fence was shockingly inept. Only about a mile long, it is easily walked around; only about eight feet tall, easily surmounted; and the best irony came from the two-foot tall drainage tunnel that offered an unhindered passageway under the fence for those humble enough to crawl. All in all, it was easy to wonder what exactly the purpose of such as structure was.
Finally, we met the border at the Rio Grande, known locally as Ni Grande Ni Brave for its paltry stream of water that snakes through Texas, having been ransacked for irrigation in New Mexico and Arizona. The Rio Grande forms the border the Gulf of Mexico and El Paso, where it heads north through US territory. Hence, at the breaking-off point, there begins a series of 276 concrete posts that deliniate the border through the desert lands past El Paso. We posed by the first marker, which stands next to a plot of dry soil used by Mexicans for weekend soccer games. The ball often escapes onto the US side, and is chased by futbolistsas.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us
We visited the Annunciation House in El Paso, a shelter for migrants and their families from Mexico. One of four current volunteers, Charlie, gave us a tour of the cramped dormitories and sparse chapel. From the roof, he pointed out where one of their former residents, a 19-year-old, was shot and killed by the Border Patrol while taking out the trash. Several other residents were witnesses to the shooting, and when they testified at the local police office, they were arrested by the Border Patrol and deported.
Theoretical questions about immigration policy, border enforcement, and migrants' rights become concrete and unaviodable in El Paso, the third-poorest city in the US. Charlie spoke of the fine legal line he and the other workers walk every day. As a private residence, they are protected from entry by the Patrol without a warrant. The legal quandry hinges on whether they are offering food and shelter to migrants who entered the states illegally, and passions run high on both sides. One sign that frequented El Paso read, "Humanitarian aid is never a crime."
Do bridges divide or unite?
At 5 PM, we walked the five-minute stroll from US to Mexican soil, over one of several International Bridges. We paid 35 cents for the priveledge, and didn't have to show passports, id, nothing. At the bridge's peak, where it rises above the middle of the Rio (not) Grande, the view beneath gives a glimpse into Mexico's opinions about US policy. Painted onto the Rio's concrete shores were slogans decrying the numbers of migrants killed in the journey each other, others exalting Latin American heroes such as the iconic Che, Fidel Castro, and Simon Bolivar, and still others denounced Bush as the real terrorista.
At the end of the bridge was Juarez, loud and cramped, with no buffer before the plunge into sensory Mexican cityscape. We met our Juarez guide, Jim Weaver, who with his wife and three small children serves as a Maryknoll missionary for a Juarez parish. Together we hopped on a public bus until we arrived at the Centro for Derechos Humanos, a human rights advocacy center where Jim also works. By this time, I was feeling drained, over-stimulated, and ready for a long extended siesta. Thankfully, after a talk about domestic violence and workers' rights in Juarez, we were treated to a delcious meal of stuffed meatloaf, and then - finally - a flat and stationary place to rest my head!
Saturday: Un Perfil de Juarez
'Perfil' - a profile, snapshot, outline sketch. Such we received Friday of the sprawling metropolis south of the border, Ciudad Juarez. Named for the first and only indigenous president of Mexico, Juarez is a city of children, migrants, and Catholics, explained Oscar, a former seminarian who now works at the human rights center. In the last few decades, the population of Juarez has exploded, mainly with migrants from poorer rural states in southern Mexico, propelled north by financial distress. Juarez is in the desert, and with little infrastructure in place to accomadate such a population boom, has undergone growing pains on a massive scale.
In brief: why do they come?
Mexico's social stability has long been tenuous, having endured a civil war and several revolutions in her short life as a republic. The majority of her people have lived for generations as subsistence farmers, surviving but without much excess profit. Hence, disasters both natural and manmade have long had potential to wreak havoc on her economy. However, when in 1994 leaders from the US, Mexico, and Canada signed a free trade pact known as NAFTA, the bottom fell out of Mexico's economy. While NAFTA is not the only factor in mass migration, it is a huge one.
Immigration analysts speak of 'push' and 'pull' factors in migration. The 'push' factor during the '90s in southern Mexico was that farmers whose crops had previously been protected by national tariffs were subjected to a tariff-free international economy with countries like the US, who heavily subsidizes their farmers. Unable to compete in the race to the bottom, countless rural farmers gave up the ghost.
But why move north? Hence the 'pull' factor: Juarez is a mecca for foreign companies because of its proximity to the US market, the tariff-free economy and (the pull) supply of steady low-wage labor (read: bankrupt peasants). Yes, jobs are widely available in Juarez, which attracts a steady stream of immigrant workers. However, the salaries of such jobs are not enough to support a family unless mom, dad, and maybe a few kids are working fulltime. Employment alone does not mean comfortable standard of living.
To be continued...
Thursday, February 14, 2008
On nothing that has to do with Valentine's Day
Apparently I am not a very active blogger...but here's what's new in Bethany's mile high life:
Several of my coworkers and virtually all of the kids I tutor are Mexican-American, a handful from Juarez itself, so I'm greatly anticipating the opportunity to see their homeland, to imbibe Mexico for a weekend. Questions on which I hope to gain some clarity: What compels rural Mexicans to leave the countryside for an urban desert? And what compels Mexicans of all stripes to come to the US, often illegally and through murderous terrain? What role does or should the US play vis a vis Mexican immigration? In an election year, all of these questions seem highly pertinent, and I hope to travel beyond the land of shock and rhetoric to more solid ground of conviction. Finally, I am first of all Catholic and only secondly American, so how does my faith shape my approach to immigration policy and immigrants themselves?
Work
I continue to work Mon-Thurs at Cross Community, and Fridays at a food bank. The nature of a non-profit geared toward community organizing often feels very indirect, and I still struggle to find enough profitable tasks to fill my time. But some opportunities have developed, and I enjoy the work that I am doing, especially with the schoolkids, very much. In the thick of helping a fifth grader with her equivalent fractions or reading Mercer Mayer to a first grader, I feel like I should pay my boss for the chance to see knowledge bubble up in young minds.
- The knitting club is well, still clicking away! Two kids have finished their squares, others are making progress, but one girl told me today that her mom is using her needles to knit a scarf for her grandma...not really what I had intended, but I'm glad grannie will be warm.
- I'm helping to teach a gardening/nutrition class to 5th graders with a woman from Denver Urban Gardens. It is ridiculously fun. So far we've planted a budding bumper crop of spring onions in little plastic containers, and the kids have learned such salient vocabulary as cotelydon and germination.
- On Fridays, I spend my mornings at the Broadway Assistance Center, which is also more fun than can be believed - normally I am engaged for an hour or so in sorting vegetables and fruits into their proper boxes, as well as transforming bags of cast-off clothing into a presentable clothing bank. Every last fiber of my OCD tendency comes out in full force.
Community
- Last Saturday we hosted a Euchre tournament at our house. For those of you uninitiated to Euchre (i.e. non-Midwesterners), it's a trump card game that has a lovely combination of skill and luck. We had a great turnout, five games going at once in a battle for the prize, a two-foot tall trophy made out of beer cans. The winners, who were not CVV members, graciously left the trophy at our house, where it now graces our mantle.
- What I have noticed as the single greatest challenge of community life: discerning when refraining from group activities is necessary to nourish one's soul, and when it is selfish. Do others struggle with this? It seems that even in the healthiest communities (ex: CVV), there still exists subtle pressure to fit within a certain...aura...of the group, expressed in ways of speaking, preferred activities, and dare I say worldview? Why is this? Perhaps the more well-formed we are ourselves, the more we are able to be free from the tendency toward conformity.
The sweetness of life
Coming Adventures
- I'm going to spend my Valentine's Day evening on a public bus (La Limosina, no less) traveling to El Paso, Texas with my housemates. Romantic, indeed, in the Chestertonian sense of this blog's title - none of us know exactly what to expect in our long weekend in the borderlands, a land fraught with the woes of migrants and toasted red-hot by political debates.
What I do know: we leave Denver at 7 PM and arrive in El Paso at 7 AM. We will spend Friday in El Paso, attending a seminar about the economics and politics of immigration policy. Later Friday evening, we'll cross the puenta into Juarez (my first journey onto Mexican soil) and will spend the night either at local families' homes. Saturday and Sunday will treat us to more seminars, mass at a local church, and (collectively the most anticipated event) a soccer game between 'Equipo CVV' and 'Equipo Brasil'! Like we stand a chance!
Several of my coworkers and virtually all of the kids I tutor are Mexican-American, a handful from Juarez itself, so I'm greatly anticipating the opportunity to see their homeland, to imbibe Mexico for a weekend. Questions on which I hope to gain some clarity: What compels rural Mexicans to leave the countryside for an urban desert? And what compels Mexicans of all stripes to come to the US, often illegally and through murderous terrain? What role does or should the US play vis a vis Mexican immigration? In an election year, all of these questions seem highly pertinent, and I hope to travel beyond the land of shock and rhetoric to more solid ground of conviction. Finally, I am first of all Catholic and only secondly American, so how does my faith shape my approach to immigration policy and immigrants themselves?
Work
I continue to work Mon-Thurs at Cross Community, and Fridays at a food bank. The nature of a non-profit geared toward community organizing often feels very indirect, and I still struggle to find enough profitable tasks to fill my time. But some opportunities have developed, and I enjoy the work that I am doing, especially with the schoolkids, very much. In the thick of helping a fifth grader with her equivalent fractions or reading Mercer Mayer to a first grader, I feel like I should pay my boss for the chance to see knowledge bubble up in young minds.
- The knitting club is well, still clicking away! Two kids have finished their squares, others are making progress, but one girl told me today that her mom is using her needles to knit a scarf for her grandma...not really what I had intended, but I'm glad grannie will be warm.
- I'm helping to teach a gardening/nutrition class to 5th graders with a woman from Denver Urban Gardens. It is ridiculously fun. So far we've planted a budding bumper crop of spring onions in little plastic containers, and the kids have learned such salient vocabulary as cotelydon and germination.
- On Fridays, I spend my mornings at the Broadway Assistance Center, which is also more fun than can be believed - normally I am engaged for an hour or so in sorting vegetables and fruits into their proper boxes, as well as transforming bags of cast-off clothing into a presentable clothing bank. Every last fiber of my OCD tendency comes out in full force.
Community
- Last Saturday we hosted a Euchre tournament at our house. For those of you uninitiated to Euchre (i.e. non-Midwesterners), it's a trump card game that has a lovely combination of skill and luck. We had a great turnout, five games going at once in a battle for the prize, a two-foot tall trophy made out of beer cans. The winners, who were not CVV members, graciously left the trophy at our house, where it now graces our mantle.
- What I have noticed as the single greatest challenge of community life: discerning when refraining from group activities is necessary to nourish one's soul, and when it is selfish. Do others struggle with this? It seems that even in the healthiest communities (ex: CVV), there still exists subtle pressure to fit within a certain...aura...of the group, expressed in ways of speaking, preferred activities, and dare I say worldview? Why is this? Perhaps the more well-formed we are ourselves, the more we are able to be free from the tendency toward conformity.
The sweetness of life
- Lent has begun! This year I'm participating in an 'Armchair Retreat,' meaning that I read Scripture prayerfully in my comfy orange chair, and then meet with a spiritual director once a week to talk about what God whispers to me, or not, during times of silence and meditation. My director is a mother of 10 named Donna who already has challenged me to grow more mature in my faith. Funny thing, I've been hoping for someone who could spur me on in my spiritual life, and now that I have someone who speaks truth to me without frills or gloss, it's a humbling and disconcerting experience to recognize how much further I have to go on this journey to Heaven!
- I am still teaching a confirmation class to 5 middle schoolers. They will be confirmed April 25. It has been a joy to share the faith with them, and I am so invigorated by the two hours of solid theology/spirituality I enjoy each week.
Peace to all of you, forgive me for not posting more often, but know that it is because my life is very full and not out of nothing to say!
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