Spring Break 2009: To bear witness…
Many people have wondered what my “alternative” spring break was all about… so I will tell you.
I went to the Alicar Valley in southern Arizona to learn and bear witness to what is happening on our border.
Discussions of our border and those who cross it “illegally” are rife with rhetoric that is framing the conversation quite ineffectively and erroneously. This is a major injustice both to us and to the people that cross our borders in search of a better life every day. It’s too easy to say they (the “others”, those not like “us”, “those Mexicans”) are illegal, want nothing more than to take out money/jobs, bring drugs over, and should be removed from the United States if they enter illegally. I used to draw that in as black and white as I could, allowing a perverse and over-zealous sense of nationalism to help me see past the glaring hypocrisy in my own framework of thinking. I used to, some time ago, draw that line in the sand in solidarity with the majority of the American people, who, driven by fear, in one form or the other, don’t what the “others” to be here.
I stand in solidarity with the migrants. They are my heroes in fact. Their reality, by and large, is much more black and white than ours: if they don’t come, their families may starve or live in abject poverty. This is largely due to macro-level economic factors that they have no control over. They are not a homogenous group without their own agency, but they are victims of a larger system. For brevity’s sake I won’t get into NAFTA, Cartels, US subsidies, Maquilidoras, and how these all play into the plight of the average Mexican/Honduran/Guatemalan/El Salvadoran migrant. But they come… they come for their families because they love them and want to provide for them. There is wealth in America. That is their reality. That is their black & white. Most (honestly) don’t even want to come, but feel they must. That is why their community fronts the money to get these people to the US, seeing these journeyers as a hope for sustenance and furtherance of their dreams. They usually travel hundreds or thousands of miles to reach the border, especially those from Central America, and will face severe injustice along the way. In fact, for example, most of the women who travel from Central America take birth control before their journey because they know along the way to a “better life” coyotes will rape them because that’s the method of control for their smugglers. It’s worth that much for a “better life” of economic slavery and abuse in the states. It’s worth that much to come to America where they will be “illegal” and inherently viewed as lower because they are undocumented and no one can really go to bat for an illegal immigrant. The migrants we spoke to in Mexico that were about to cross into the US were very ignorant of how far they had to go, what they should bring, what they should wear, the difficulties they would face, and even where they were going… migration north is largely controlled by the cartels who provide the coyotes and charge exorbitant amounts of money to smuggle their human cargo to “freedom”. No, these migrants are not masters of their destinies. They are victims. We mustn’t forget this, for that is their reality. But to them, it might just be worth it. That should tell the citizens of the north something…
America’s black and white is actually a lot grayer… I do not seek to attack my country or question the reason people have strong beliefs about the border issue. They, like the migrants that seek a life in the United States, aren’t born in a vacuum, but are socialized products of their environments that fiercely want to defend their way of life and their families. This is not in and of itself a bad thing. It becomes bad when it is denied to the person on the other side off the ill-thought fence that draws a line between a people who have never been apart. Our language here in the United States’ media and government is designed to draw a distinction between the human on the south side of the border with the human on the north. Dehumanization is rampant. “Illegal” is commonly used, migrant is not. “They take our jobs”, when we, have in some ways, taken theirs. Are they not our brothers and sisters? I used to, a long time ago, feel like there was a difference between them and me… but is there? I’m the son of an Italian immigrant who grew up in the “land of opportunity”… am I so different because my father has always been here legally? I don’t think so. Is the “American dream” only for those who have achieved it already?
These questions post much deeper questions than I am fit to answer here, but it does lead me to why I chose to learn about border justice issues: Because human beings, regardless of their race, legal status, sex, religion, creed, or any other criteria, don’t deserve to die in the Sonoran desert because they have sought to enter the United States. That is why No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes exists… because humanitarian aid is never a crime and all people have rights.
No Mas Muertes was born out of the sanctuary movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_movement) that started in Tucson’s Southside Presbyterian Church with pastor John Fife running the defiance. As that passed and time moved on more and more people died of exposure in the Arizona desert, the church knew it again had a job to do, and so began the Samaritans and No Mas Muertes. The rest, as they say, is history.
No Mas Muertes exists to provide humanitarian aid to migrants entering the United States. This includes, but is not limited to, medical care, water, food, and information on migrants rights. Volunteers, and everyone is a volunteer, patrol the desert for immigrants, leaving water and food on trails, to help in any way they can because hundreds if not thousands of migrants, men, women, and children of all ages, have died in our desert, and this should utterly appall us. I do not seek to appeal to emotion but to encourage everyone to construct their visuals accurately.
What No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes does is not civil disobedience. We are not sitting at the front of any buses or getting beaten by police and arrested (for the most part). You can legally provide care for migrants in any way as long as you’re not willfully furthering the journey of an “illegal migrant”. What it is then, is civil initiative. The last person found dead in the desert by NMD was a fourteen-year-old girl name Josalina . Her parent’s couldn’t even come to the memorial to see where she died because to return to the spot would be going through border patrol check points and they were, of course, undocumented. Fourteen. Did she willfully choose to make the 60+ mile trek to Tucson from Nogales? Did she want to die in our desert? No, what we at No More Deaths do is civil initiative, because regardless of what people think about border policy, a person, legal or “illegal”, in the United States has full constitutional protection and protection under multiple human rights treaties the US has signed and ratified (see article 6 of the constitution for the relevance). Our actions, then, are civil initiative because the government of our great country is turning a blind eye to the human rights catastrophe at our border. We cannot do the same. As US citizens, let alone those of us who serve a King (Hint: Son of God…) not a kingdom, it is our duty to carry out the work the government is failing to do. No More Deaths then, is doing the governments work. What a dubious distinction. The border patrol surely won’t do it. They are willfully blind to the nature of their culpability in the oppressive border system. The National Guard won’t do it (mostly because, no matter what Kid Rock says, they’re pretty worthless, I would know). The Sheriff’s office won’t do it, especially our racist and shameful excuse for an Arizonan, “Sheriff Joe”. No one will take care of the poor and oppressed (as is a biblical mandate, see Isaiah, Micah, the gospels)… so, miraculously, the church is… through the ministry, yes ministry, of No More Deaths.
A ministry? Yes, because I’ve never seen the church like I saw it there. There pastors and anarchists and hippies can dine and work together in one accord. The pastor doesn’t have to water down the truth he holds in his heart, but he doesn’t have to compromise the mission of the church either. Southside Presbyterian understands the Church; yes, the “big C” Church. I can’t even tell you what it was like to be amongst Christians who had committed their lives to justice, peace, and the gospel. Not the social gospel, but the work and life and message of our Lord Jesus Christ. They needed no platform to preach from, just a life of service and humility to lead. Mother Teresa knew something about that if I remember correctly… such men and women were there at our quaint camp in the desert. Others were there too. College students, hippies, “anarchists”, you name it. People committed to justice, even though we may not all agree on the details of such a statement…. But it was amongst these beautiful people created by the Lord that I learned of the community the church should have. I learned what disagreeing well was. People always say “Hippies just love people”… but it’s true. I was humbled by the caliber of people I was able to spend my week in the desert with. I count some of them as mentors almost. I may have a faith they claim to have never given two seconds of thought to, but we have more in common than we may believe. We, for the most part believe man is fallen and that the systems he created are inherently broken, that the world is built on injustice. This, my friends, is biblical! From there we can dialog. I didn’t walk away from that weekend believing in free love, drugs, or destroying capitalism and no one encouraged me to think those ways… but I did walk away with friendships, stories, and a witness to convictions that rivaled the most pious men of the cloth.
“They will be known by their fruit”… and real love was shown on behalf of these disparate people towards the migrants who wandered into our camp and those we found on the trails. That fruit was love, and it was plucked and served to all in camp whether American or not. Conversely what can be said about the fruit of our friends at CBP and Border Patrol? They mean well, but there are thousands of documented abuses of detained migrants at the hands of our very own US Border Patrol. Give any man power and a dehumanized victim and abuses will abound. Welcome to the reality of the migrant… who can be held for 72 hours without processing or a meal and if he happens to be the unlucky 70th migrant of the day, he’ll face 6 months in jail with no real legal options! But the real fruit is borne by our friends at Wackenhut, the Danish-owned private security company contracted by the Border Patrol who carry out the processing and deportation of migrants once captured by the Border Patrol. Hmm… it’s like the infamous Black Water (who, I admit, I detest) just not as sexy. Wackenhut undoubtedly does a decent job of fulfilling their requirements for their contract, but the real telling issue is that they are there at all. Border Patrol agents, due to being found bribable, can’t stay at one location on the border for more than 6 months, which says a lot. So… for the rest of the behind the scenes work, pay someone else to do this work for you… oh, their fruit, their fruit… the privatization of the militarization of our border… nothing makes me lose hope in something faster than when it becomes about money, and folks, there is an element of that here. I truly don’t want to get into it all… but a BP agent’s motivation for the job isn’t money but believing in the mission… can the same be said for Wackenhut? Doubtful. The fruit, I’m afraid, is rotten.
What we attempted to do then, in the desert, was live in community together, as an alternative to the hedonistic spring break rituals our culture embraces, for a common purpose: serving our brothers and sisters to the south. A migrant once told John, a Christian peacemaker serving at No More Deaths’ camp, “We know what the wall says about us, but what does it say about you?” And what does it say about us? What do we, whatever primary identity we have, American, world citizen, Christian, Socialist, Conservative, want to be said about us? What do we want to be known for not for our own sake but because of the depth of our convictions and the content of our character? The wall speaks of a nation-state’s division, willful blindness, hidden racism, and fear. Our response to this wall should speak of love, service, solidarity, and most importantly, humility.
There is so much more to be said, and I am no expert on this issue, but this is what I witnessed.
God Bless, Dan
For more information check out www.nomoredeaths.org and ASU’s 2009 Border Justice event http://www.west.asu.edu/publicaffairs/public_events/?i=770
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