Borderlands

On Easter Saturday I accompanied a group of six humanitarian aid workers into a remote region of the Cabeza-Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. Our hope was to recover the remains of a man who had collapsed and died there last month.

It's easy to get lost in the daily needs, or discouraged by the magnitude of the crushing oppression on the U.S.-Mexico border.  CPT's mission to back partners as a part of transforming violence and oppression requires us to attend to the details of the immediate situation, and to the sources of the oppression that grows into violence.  Between the specifics and the systems, our presence and action strategically strengthen the forces for good.

They dared to leave before they were killed.  They dared to look for refuge in the belly of a beast that had a great part in creating the conditions of violence in their land.

The heart of Advent is laid bare in immigrant shelters along the U.S.-Mexico border. These communities expose the gritty side of Advent hope. The guests reside in a transitional space between a home they can no longer live in and a country that refuses to accept them. Between laughter and fear. Between tears and hope. In the rain. In the chill of night. In tents. In bunks or just under blankets. Their hope is palpable despite the facts. Their patience expectant. Their faith more durable than the nearby, new 30-foot wall and the fear that builds it. Theirs is not a cheap hope. They are the Light of which Isaiah wrote.

Raised in both Douglas, Arizona and nearby Agua Prieta, which is just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, artist and community college instructor M. Jenea Sanchez has an interest in the kind of public art that is a simultaneous expression of hope and resistance—hence the colorful, eye-catching mural that she and about 20 workshop attendees designed and painted on the Mexico side of the border wall in Agua Prieta on 15 November as the opener to “Responding to an Exodus: Gospel Hospitality and Empire.”

This shelter, sitting on the Mexican side of the border wall at the U.S. port of entry, is the last stop for people who have come to Agua Prieta, Sonora, to seek asylum in the US.  The campamento—or camp—is the end of a weeks’-long, or even months’-long journey.  Now these people live at the shelter, waiting for their turn to request asylum.  That wait took seven to ten days last summer but has now stretched to twice that long as the U.S. customs officials accept fewer and fewer people.  In addition, because of pressure from the Mexican authorities, people will soon no longer be able to sleep in the camp.