Posted on 01/17/2005 9:26:17 PM PST by Citizen James
ALTAR, Mexico — Along a northbound dirt road, a young couple clad in jeans and T-shirts jumps out of an idling van and walks toward the path's edge, making for a white concrete box with a wrought-iron cross perched on top. Dozens of candles are crammed inside the 5-foot-high altar along with statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. As the couple kneels before the display, a little boy runs out of the van and kisses the ground.
The humble spot about 60 miles south of the Mexico-Arizona border serves as one of the last places migrants worship before being shuttled to spots where they will attempt to slip illegally into the United States on foot.
On a quest for economic survival, some migrants traveling through the treacherous Arizona desert also find themselves embarking on a religious journey. Many rely on faith to sustain them through the trip's perils, praying at icons or lighting votive candles to remember those who died along the way.
Before jumping aboard moving cargo trains during the trip north, 29-year-old Carlos Enrique Cano Vanega and other Central Americans he was traveling with would pray by the side of the tracks.
"We began to entrust ourselves to God and asked that he would keep us safe," said Cano, a Honduran man who had journeyed to this Mexican community recently in preparation for an attempted trip to the United States.
People everywhere will often seek spiritual comfort during troubled times. And Latin Americans identify themselves as religious, even if they don't attend services regularly, said Jacqueline Hagan, co-director for the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston.
In the case of poor immigrants, reliance on faith is even heavier because they have virtually no other resources, Hagan said. "The only recourse they have is to turn to religion, and that's all they really have on the road as well," she said.
Before embarking on the trek into the United States, indigenous residents of the Guatemalan highlands seek counsel, about whether to make the trip and when to go, from evangelical pastors or the Black Christ, a dark-skinned depiction of Jesus common in parts of Latin America, Hagan said.
"Religion is their spiritual passport in the absence of authorization," she said. "They get sanctioned by God to do this."
While on the road, some turn to biblical passages that mirror their travels, such as those citing how the Israelites wandered through the desert under God's guidance.
For Cano and others on the train, reading the New Testament to each other brought comfort.
"You feel something ... you feel safer than being out there" without anything to sustain you, he said at a migrant shelter in Altar, a city that serves as a popular staging area for migrants planning to cross the border at Arizona.
Fifty-six-year-old Ernesto Garcia Mondragon frequented the Catholic church in town to pray for his nephew, who left Mexico bound for the United States. Three months after 19-year-old Olaf Avila Gonzales departed, the family had yet to hear from him.
"I went to ask for the miracle that God and the Virgin can grant me," said Garcia, a shop owner from San Ildefonso. "More than anything, I hope that wherever he is, he is alive."
The family still clung to the hope that Avila hadn't become one of the hundreds of migrants who die each year making the same journey. The names of some of those people are written on crosses nailed or tied to the tops of telephone poles along a route from Altar to the border community of Sasabe, serving as a reminder of the danger.
Migrants setting out on foot for the Arizona desert are often ill-equipped for the tough terrain and the lack of water, shade or roads. They don't know much about the desert, the frigid cold in the winter and searing heat during the summer, the snakes and spiders, and the bandas de bajadores — or rip-off crews — hiding in wait for victims.
Faced with such threatening reality, spirituality helps explain how they get through such a journey, Hagan said. "It's divine protection on an otherwise life-threatening and dangerous journey," she said. "It allows them to endure this hardship."
In the desert, volunteers who maintain water stations on the U.S. side of the border for illegal crossers have found hymnals, bibles and rosary beads scattered among the plastic water jugs, food wrappers, backpacks and clothes migrants leave behind.
At times, they've also discovered antlers atop their water stations, a symbol used by one indigenous group.
"To the Yaquis that is 'God bless you and your whole lineage,'" said the Rev. Robin Hoover, founder of Humane Borders, a group that operates some of the water stations. "It's a profound blessing."
Some items hold sentimental value, such as the scapulars occasionallyseen hanging on tree branches. The cloth necklaces have a prayer and a saint stamped on them and are often given as a gift to young people for confirmation.
"Why was it there? Was it for the next group of people who came through? Was it a person in despair?" asked the Rev. Bob Carney, a Tucson Catholic priest who works with migrants.
Migrants who make it deeper into Arizona have left religious graffiti on interstate supports. Those waiting to be picked up by smugglers leave the messages and drawings, Hagan said.
Once they reach their destinations, many will again frequent a church or shrine to offer thanks for their arrival.
And even if they don't make their destination before being caught and sent back, migrants often attribute how far they made it to religious intervention, Hagan said.
Many of the men who stay at the migrant shelter in Altar have been caught trying to enter the United States. With nowhere to rest or eat and hardly any money left, they wait there in the hopes that they can attempt another crossing, said coordinator Francisco Garcia.
Many tell Garcia, "Si Diosito quiere, lo voy a volver a hacer." ("If the Good Lord is willing, I'm going to do it again.")
"If you believe in God then you must believe in letting these poor people in."
Thanks for giving me that info:
http://www.nccbuscc.org/mrs/stranger.htm
thank you for an informative post.
Much better than than the last one to me.
Regards
Hummm.......sounds very similiar to, "From each according to his ability and to each according to his need."
Well.... yes it does, doesn't it?
Excellant observation, T.C.
Great graphic, and it tells the story:
sometimes a cartoon can say more than, well... a thousand words!
There was a recent article that said just that, that the church encourages migration and that many churches here "help" the immigrees.
"Religion is their spiritual passport in the absence of authorization," she said. "They get sanctioned by God to do this."
As far as I'm concerned, this sounds like the same excuse the islamofasicts use.
And I suppose their "faith" condones breaking the laws of neighboring countries.
Yeah, they're not real concerned with that "no coveting" thy neighbor, are they?
Another recent news item:
Every day as many as 4,000 illegal immigrants cross the border into Arizona, and you pay for it in ways you might not even think.
The 5 i-Team's Chris Hayes broke down the numbers to see just how much of the tab you're picking up.
Every minute, at least one immigrant crosses the border into Arizona.
They're coming here for a new life, and while most might be looking for better jobs here, many are also finding benefits we all pay for.
Small business owner Velia Guethe said, "I think about the hospitals and the schooling."
Guethe just opened a small coffee shop in Guadalupe called Coffee De Mexico.
Guadalupe is a small town of just one square mile -- located between Phoenix and Tempe, at the base of South Mountain.
Guethe told us she understands Mexican immigrants are just doing what's best for their families, but she worries about the expense.
"I do want them to help us with the burden cost of all these expensive things."
Like health care.
John Rivers of the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association told us, "This is a problem for every hospital in Arizona."
At Senator Jon Kyle's request, his organization calculated the cost to Arizona hospitals for treating illegal immigrants at 31 million dollars in just one year.
That $31 million would pay for more than the cost of a new trauma center here in the valley.
And Rivers said the expense could be much more.
"That's a bare minimum number. The truth is, nobody knows what the number is, I mean we can estimate, but frankly it's not much more than a wild guess."
Lupita Martinez is a valley restaurant owner who thinks about the costs often.
But she says she also may benefit from illegal immigration.
She suspects illegal workers are the only ones willing to accept her starting pay of $8 dollars an hour.
She demands legal documentation, but she thinks many workers can easily get fake documents -- just as they would do to apply for Welfare.
And according to the Center for Immigration Studies, Welfare payments, including food stamps to Illegal immigrants in Arizona cost us $4,698,000 in 2001.
That's enough to put away more than 250 prisoners for a full year.
There's another expense you've probably never imagined.
Tucked behind a familiar stretch of I-10, and right across from one of Phoenix's most popular resorts is an indigent burial ground.
Many of the grave sites are marked John Doe or Jane Doe.
They're likely illegal immigrants who died shortly after coming to the United States.
In the last five years Maricopa County alone has buried 100 unidentified people at an estimated cost of more than $197,000. That's enough to pay the five year salary for any one of the more than twenty Maricopa County jobs now open.
Immigrants say they pick up some of the costs themselves.
The 5i-Team attended an English class in which more than 20 immigrants attended.
The students told us they were restaurant employees, mechanics and other low wage workers.
From their perspective, they pay taxes and many times can't take advantage of the services.
They say they can prove we can't afford life without them.
http://www.kpho.com/Global/story.asp?S=2537000&nav=DIH7Ssy8
KPHO-Phoenix Az, Jan. 14, 2005
see T.C.'s #29:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1322897/replies?c=29
Explain to me how this is not socialism.
Well, we've been calling it a "tidal wave" for some time now, but I guess only in the aftermath of the Indonesian wave will people have a stark enough image to make the consequences seem real: A Nation Drowned.
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