Border Update: Why I came, VOL XII

To Those GOOD FOLKS With Whom I Like To Exchange Stories, share ideas, mutually engage in real work, visit and generally keep up to date:

The other morning, I was down in south Tucson at Southside Presbyterian Church where everyday of the week, the church hosts a day-labor center for migrants. Folks in need of a bit of cash wo are living in Tucson or who are passing through on their way to Denver, New York, Florida, Arkansas, Seattle, or North Carolina can show up at six in the morning to put their name on the list. The church volunteers put all the names in a hat, and pull them randomly to determing who gets to go out first, second, third, and so on. They devised this system so that workers wouldn't start coming to the church at four o'clock in the morning-- or heck, camping over night at the church-- to be first in line. Then, as contractors or homeowners or anyone else that needs some help for the day comes by, the guys hop into trucks based on the list of priority. Church volunteers are around, but mostly it's the guys that enforce the system: "Hey man! What are you thinking?! Don't even try to get into that truck. You're not number 18, you're number 25 this morning.... Jose. Jose! Hey, Jose, you're up." If the guys are mostly running the show, then why do they choose to congregate on the church's corner? Because the church has worked out a deal with the local police to leave them alone. And, Border Patrol mainly let's them be so long as the guys stick close to the church. In addition, any employer who comes to the church to pick up guys agrees to pay at least eight bucks an hour.

So, as I was saying, I was down at the day labor center. It was a chilly morning. People weren't up to moving around a lot, just trying to stay warm. I got to talking with these two guys from Sonora. They were about my same age, 19 and 21. We started out with jokes. In order to understand, you've got to know that in spanish, the the slang word for testicles is "huevos", or "eggs." They use "huevos" in place of "balls" or "nuts." (Sorry, y'all. To the gutter again.) I told them about my host father in Nogales who liked to ask me, "Te Gustan los testiculos de la gallena?" (Do you like the testicles of the hen?) And, of course, I told my host father, "Hey man. Hens don't have testicles; they're hens." But then pointing to the eggs on my breakfast plate, my host father would point out: "Yeah they do have them. You're eating 'em!" Fausto, my host father, would laugh every time. And then, there's also the joke he taught me about which animal "makes" the biggest "huevos." "Which?" I asked these two guys at the day labor center. They started brainstorming: "What's that big African bird called?" But I interrupted. "No," I told them, "It's the bee. Because when they sting you...."

So, we were joking, but then, when I tried to ask them about anything of substance such as: "What do you think about the US?" "Why'd you come?" "Where're you headed?" "How'd you get here?", they wouldn't let me get anywhere. All they told me was that they were "Pure Sonoran," and then they'd try to throw me off track with some joke about me being gay. Finally, I heard, though I'm cloudy on the specific words, them say- more or less-, "This cat's the migra." They thought I was an undercover Border Patrol agent. I couldn't get anywhere. Although I'd told them about BorderLinks at the very beginning, about "studying both sides of the border to try to understand what's going on, about migration, the situation here," and about staying with a family in Nogales for six weeks, they asked me with suspicion in their eyes: "Why are you here, man? Why'd you come?"

It's a question I was asked a lot in Mexico, and recently I realized I have yet to share the answer with you. So, let me try to sort it out.

~ ~ ~

When I think about it, I reference a few reasons for my presence here on the border.

First of all, I'm here in the borderlands because of a man who I've included in my list of "Good Folks." Perhaps some of your know him. His name is Rick Ufford-Chase. For two years he served as the moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Years before that, though, he left seminary to engage more directly and more immediately with the world and its people. After a while in Guatemala, he came back to Tucson where he founded BorderLinks.

The first time I ever heard Rick speak was in Richmond, VA at a church conference three and a half years ago. Presbyterian events, you should know, are usually quiet posh. At this particular conference, I was staying in a Sheraton and the event was hosted at the downtown convention center. The first thing Rick said, standing in front of several hundred people, was: "This afternoon, I was riding the city bus,..." Now, there we were at a posh presbyterian event-- something that makes me a bit uneasy-- and this guy starts talking about being on the city bus. Who is this guy? He continued his story: "...and I met this man named Eduardo."

Eduardo, as it turned out, was from Guatemala, and he was searching around Richmond for the train station because he'd heard there was work out that way. Speaking both Spanish and English, Rick helped Eduardo find directions. Then Rick asked, "Hey man? How'd you get here? Well first, how'd you get from Guatemala to the US-Mexico border." "Oh, I jumped the train," he told Rick. But Rick said, "Wait a second. I know about that train. If you're on top, there are gangs that run along, and if you don't pay them, they'll shoot you and throw you off. And periodically, they stop the train in the middle of nowhere, in the desert, haul everyone off, and often beat the heck out of them. How'd you just 'jump the train'?"

Rick continued, "That's when Eduardo's face lit up. He smiled real big and said, 'Ah. I found that if I hung four ropes underneath the train--in-between the wheels-- they did not look there.' This man," Rick shared, "rode 1800 miles underneath a train, in-between its wheels, hanging in four ropes inches above the tracks. Through the desert. Through the night. In order to to make it to the US." And then Rick said something else. He said, "These are the stories we're called to tell. Not just to know and appreciate them but to somehow make them our own, so that we an be agents of change."

By that time, I was sitting forward, on the edge of my seat. My heart had sped up, and I was thinking: "Alright buddy. You just start walking; I'm followin' You."

Well, in the next couple of days, I met and got to know Rick. We talked a bit about social movements, and he found out that I was headed to Warren Wilson for school. "Warren Wilson, huh? BorderLinks and Warren Wilson have a partnership," he told me. "You ought to try to make it out to the border sometime during your time in college."

That's the first reason why I came.

~ ~ ~

The second reason I'm out here has to do with volunteering at a Swannanoa (NC) Valley food bank. I was in the back stocking food when one of the volunteer client-interviewers walked into the food pantry to ask, "Does anyone back here speak Spanish?" A couple of other folks said, "Hola." I looked around hesitantly, hoping for someone with more spanish than I. Nope. So, I responded, "I, I speak a little." Cathy, the client-interviewer instructed me to follow her. I tried to warn her, "Look, I only speak a --," but she cut me off. "It'll do," she said. "I've got a lady named Patricia up front. We were talking through a tele-translator, but the line went dead...."

Turned out, Patrica who was from the Mexican state of Zacatecas needed help with her power bill. "Tell her," instructed Cathy, "that we want to help her with her power bill, but we can only help once she has received a final notice." Oh god, I thought. How in the world do you say "Power bill" or "final notice" in Spanish? Oh, goodness. So in Spanish I began, "You know the paper about money? For your lights?" "Si, si," Patricia responded. "We want to help, but we can only help when you recieve a final paper." She understood. And then, I had to translate about diapers (another word I didn't know) for her six-month-old baby son and where to go around back to get some groceries.

This experience taught me, once again, that I had to learn some more spanish; I had to learn more about where folks like Patrica were coming from. The non-profit world-- indeed American society in general-- is woefully unprepared to interact with, help, or collaborate with our newly arrived neighbors.

~ ~ ~

And finally, though it's not necessarily a reason why I came to the border, I feel a sense of obligation to members of my family, friends, past professors, and members of American society that are afraid of people from south of the border. A week before I came out here, my uncle asked me, "You're not going down there without a gun, are you?" After the sound bite, he told me a story about a friend of his in the concrete business who'd been outbidded by a Mexican contractor. My uncle's friend estimated a job at $600, and the next day a Mexican contractor quoted a price of $200. "He got out-bidded by a third," my uncle told me. "Truth is, he doesn't know whether he's going to be able to stay in business. It keeps happening to him. Seems like these people coming up don't care how little they work for. We can't all compete against that." My uncle's words commissioned me with a new purpose for my trip to the border: synthesis.

How can we welcome our new neighbors without ignoring or white-washing our fears, some of which are legitimate? How do we overcome barriers of language and latitude to realize we're in this boat together? What do we do when our way of life is confronted by competition from hunger, absolute deprevation, and 1800 train rides? How do we react? How should we react? How will we react? And, given that we're in this boat, this hemisphere, this country, this state, this town and neighborhood together, how are we going to make the world we hope for out of what life offers us? What's our first step?

I've found some answers along the border. Perhaps you're finding some too. What's on your mind? How are we going to get from the world-as-it-is to the world-as-we-hope-it-to-be? What's up your sleave?

In any case, my uncle gave me a lot to think about, a lot of questions. I thank him for that.

~ ~ ~

Although I didn't tell those guys at the day labor center all of this, these are the reasons I came to the border.

~ ~ ~

Well folks, I've got exactly one week left in Tucson. I leave on a twelve o'clock-noon flight next Saturday, December 15. In the meantime, like most college students at this time in their semester, I have papers, projects and presentations in every one of my classes. In the coming four days, I'll be writing: a critical reflection on a book about the Mexican president Cardenas and his influence in the state of Sonora; an oral history report about my conversations with Dona Gloria; a paper concerning sweatshop conditions and possible routes to change in the maquila factories; a paper concerning the connection between anti-immigrant sentiment and elite interest, and my first ever true Spanish paper. Connected with all these, of course, are presentations. Ahh, it's the PPP time: papers, projects, and presentations.

Take care, now, ya-hear-
Nathan