Alternatives?

Do you remember the film Traffic? It won 4 academy awards in 2000 and focused on the issue of drugs, Mexico and the United States. The scene from the movie that always sticks in my mind is one where there is a whole plane-load of law enforcement and political people, clearly frustrated because their efforts have failed to make an impact in the situation. "Can you think of something we can do differently?" the protagonist asks. There is complete silence.

The proposals regarding drugs and the US/Mexico border seem to be more of the same. And if anything, the situation since 2000 seems even more difficult. Back in my May 10 blog I lamented that the only way we can seem to think of to respond to drug issues and the border is with more militarization, which up to now has not seemed to work well.

The link below is from a group of Mexican Non Governmental Organizations that proposes not doing more of the same. It is not dashing, but it is worthy of consideration.

http://lawg.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/lawg/documents/congress_ngoletter_militaryaid_mexico_inglesfinal.pdf

Friendship Manor

Yesterday a group from the church had lunch at Friendship Manor. Friendship Manor is a not for profit retirement community just up the street from the Church of Peace. (For more information http://www.friendshipmanor.org/) There are quite a number of church members residing there at this time and one way to keep in touch is to have a lunch in the private dining room there. While a number of our church members who live there were busy with other things we were able to enjoy a meal with fourteen of our church members and friends. The instigator for these lunches has been our Parish Nurse, Mary Oelschlaeger. Yesterday not only were Mary and I present from the church, but also the church secretary, Nora Steele, and our music director, Mary Kae Waytenick brought a couple of her flute playing friends and put on a little concert up in the chapel. The food was good, the music was delightful; it was all very nice.

Our relationship with Friendship Manor has been growing in the last few years as we have more members living there. For the last two Good Fridays we have had the midday service in the chapel at Friendship Manor. We simply invite those members of the church who do not live at Friendship Manor to come there rather than church for the service. It works out well and many residents of Friendship Manor who are not members of the Church of Peace also enjoy the Good Friday service.

I also take my regular turn in the rotation of preachers at the Sunday Afternoon vespers service there. My next turn is on Sunday, June 7.

It is good to keep in touch. The photo at the top is me sitting with Lou Bauck, a long time church member who is a resident.

Nice Lunch with Delle

Faye and John Buttrick and I had lunch with Delle McCormick today at El Minuto Resturant in downtown Tucson. It was a wonderful chance to catch up. It is also a reminder of how small a world it is when we have lunch in Tucson with a person whom we first met as a UCC missionary in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.


Delle is an ordained UCC minister who is now working as the Executive Director of BorderLinks, a group which works in the area of popular education to inform folks about the reality of the border and the dynamics of the world economy. BorderLinks is the group with which we were to have been travelling this last week as part of an international delegation. We had scheduled this delegation months ago. But it had to be cancelled at the last minute because of the H1N1 virus. And therein lies the rub.

Had our delegation taken place we would have spent about $7,500 for the week with BorderLinks. Instead they received the $500 deposit. And we are not the only ones cancelling this spring. First there was the fear of the drug related border violence. Then this flu. All together BorderLinks has lost about $100,000 in anticipated income this spring. They have had to lay off staff and Delle told us that she has a board meeting tonight where significant decisions will need to be reached.

• Please pray for BorderLinks as they work through difficult times.


• Pray for all those who make a living along the border as these times, along with a militarized border makes it hard for everyone.


• Consider making a donation to BorderLinks.


• For those who are UCC, think with us about how we could affirm our partnership with BorderLinks so that all would know that this is part of "us." In the Methodist nomenclature they could be designated an "advance special" which would make them eligible for donations from churches and provide a stamp of approval to any who would want to know. What is the UCC equivalent?

If you want more information go to: http://www.borderlinks.org/

Back In Tucson

Tuscon it hot! Back here after a drive through the Gila National Forest area. It was cooler up in the mountains. One very cool highlight was the Very Large Array Radio Telescope that is near Succoro, New Mexico. Even though it is hard for me to understand how it does what it does it is impressive to see what looks like an array of radar dishes on railroad tracks pointing up at the sky. This is just before I enter the visitor's center, where there is a video about the kind of work that is done here. The array itself is composed of 27 antennas - the things that look like radar dishes. It covers an area of some 17 miles. The antennas are moved occasionally, depending on the specifics of the particular piece of research and the specific area in space on which they are focused.
Each antenna dish is 25 meters in diameter. Each dish is mounted on wheels on railroad tracks so they can be moved. The total weight of each is 230 tons; 100 tons of which is the reflector.

Santa Fe

I spent a good amount of time poking around Santa Fe yesterday. The first mission church in the area was San Miguel, so that is a good sign. Visited the statue of Bishop Lamy at the St Francis Church. He is the missionary pastor featured in Death Comes to the Archbishop a laudatory account of his work that I read as a young person. Lamy also built the church and was first archbishop of the area. It is an irony that the park next to the St Francis church has a big sign than says "no dogs allowed." I don't think Francis would approve. I peeked in studios and a high point literally and figuratively was a beer at the bar on the roof of the hotel La Fonda. I was a little surprised how much I was thinking about when I visited here with my parents when they were living in New Mexico.

The photo at the top is Mission San Miguel. The lower photo is Bishop Lamy statue in front of the St Francis Cathedral.

It Takes Two

I was somewhat relieved when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, when travelling in Mexico, and particularly when speaking at TecMilenio University in Monterrey, Mexico, on March 26, 2009 used the term "Shared Responsibility." This was in talking about the border, and the flow of drugs. While I was disappointed that the only way she seemed to be able to think about addressing the shared problem was with yet more law enforcement and militarization of the border area, in a situation where law enforcement on both sides seems to be failing to accomplish the purpose of slowing the flow of drugs. Nevertheless, the sense of "shared responsibility" is a welcome sea change when before all difficulty seemed to be laid at the feet of Mexico alone.

Here is part of what Secretary Clinton said:

And I know that one challenge that we will work with you to address is drug trafficking that has terrorized some Mexican communities, especially those along the border. And I join my voice to all those who know that this situation is intolerable for honest, law-abiding citizens of Mexico, my country, or anywhere people of conscience live. This affects not only the government, the law enforcement, the military, the judicial system of Mexico and the people of Mexico, but of the more than 60 million Americans who live in U.S. border states. That is why I have been very clear in my time here. The United States recognizes that drug trafficking is not only Mexico’s problem. It is also an American problem. And we, in the United States, have a responsibility to help you address it.


Traffickers use guns purchased in the United States to fight each other and to challenge the Mexican military and police. Their enterprise is financed in part by our country’s demand for drugs, which sends up to $25 billion a year in illicit drug profits back into the hands of the drug kingpins. Drug profits are propping up cartels financially allowing them to continue their campaign of violence and lawlessness. Earlier this week, the Obama Administration announced a comprehensive plan to increase security along our border, including more officers to stop the illegal flow of guns into Mexico.



For the secretary's complete remarks go to the link below.

www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/03/120955.htm

Sine Nomine

Yesterday I drove to old downtown Albuquerque to look around and to see a movie that may not make it to Davenport; Sin Nombre.

The movie was great. It is two stories, one of a young woman from Honduras who travels to the United States, and the other of a gang member from Tapachula, Chiapas. It is 96 minutes long. It is in Spanish with English subtitles. It is violent, but so is the situation. The focus of the film is the difficulty of the journey through Mexico as migrants prepare to try to cross the Northern border of Mexico into the United States.

In my head the name, Sin Nombre gets mixed around with the Latin words Sine Nomine, which is the hymn tune of For All the Saints. No one on this journey travels alone, they are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses and a community of people; the saints. While these saints ain't no saints, some help others along in the journey. And always our situation is contextualized by those who have gone before, and all the experiences and people who have brought us to this time and place. One can imagine that many people now in the United States who have travelled here from Central America and Mexico have similar journeys in their experience and their own community of saints who have accompanied them on their way. I wonder how our border closing efforts fit into the narrative they construct when, having arrived, they rest from their journey?

Lots of Equipment

One of the things I have noticed on my drive is there is a lot of equipment on the road and in the area placed by border patrol. Driving along on the highway and I am passed by SUVs or trucks with a special cab on the back for imprisoning persons for transportation. In one place I passed a border patrol truck on the side of the road with two little all-terrain vehicles in the back. I have to admit it looked like it might be fun to race over the desert on a little ATV!

On the morning of Friday, May 8, when I got on the road in Douglas, Arizona, I drove downtown to see what there was to see of downtown and that did not take long. The main drag runs North/South, so I took a left turn at the end of the main street and I was then paralleling the border. There was an orange-pink set of traffic barriers on my right, then a ditch or arroyo, then a path, then the border fence which is, as you can see, a nicely constructed one with posts and ten foot tall parallel steel slats. Straight ahead one can see the monitoring tower, and to the left is a camera like the traffic cameras at home.

When I first turned left there was a one ton flat bed truck with special equipment mounted on the back, and it was pulled up at one of these light pole units that are placed along the left curb of the street as the orange-pink barriers are placed along the curb at the right. I think that the white box on a trailer at the based of the light pole is a generator. And this one ton truck was devoted to the maintenance and refueling of these generators on a regular basis. I was sorry that I had not thought to drive this route the night before, because I am sure that the presence of these several portable light units with their accompanying generators made for a dramatic lighting effect accompanied by the sounds of portable generators. I know a little of what that noise is like from the occasional power outages in the Rock Island. As a regular thing I suspect that it gets pretty tiresome. As I looked through the steel slats of the fence I noticed fairly new residences on the Agua Prieta side in Mexico.

Here I am pulling out of a parking lot and the vehicle right ahead of me was BORDER PATROL. Probably over time that I would become desensitized to all the presence all around of these law enforcement officials. Maybe I would get to know some of the officers at church or at the local eatery. But as a visitor, a foreigner to these parts, it was fairly overwhelming.

This last photo is of the parking lot at the new Border Patrol facility at Sonoita. According to my little AAA guide Sonoita has a population of 826, one motel, the Sonoita Inn which they have not evaluated, and one eatery, the Cafe Sonoita. The facility looks like one of the steel out-buildings which are placed on farms in my area, only bigger. That is a lot of vehicles in the parking lot. When we were given a tour at a Border Patrol station several years ago we were told that each officer is able to buy the sort of vehicle he likes and then it is "his." This means he can leave his stuff in the car next time he comes on shift. So I think these cars in the parking lot represent all the officers who are not on shift at this time. That would also mean that there are several other officers and vehicles that are in the field.

On the one hand I imagine that all this infrastructure, vehicles and personnel means investment in this area that seems pretty beat down and poor. The family income in Hidalgo County in Southwest New Mexico is a little over $20,000 per year. The national average is a little over $40,000 per year. At the same time I imagine all these guys relocated here from other parts of the nation have some impact on the community that is not so desirable, also.

Nogales and Nogales

How did it come to this? The construction of a wall along US / Mexico border is really a very unusual human development. It ranks along with the Berlin Wall and the walls/barriers being constructed to keep separated the Israelis and the Palestinians. I guess there was Hadrian's wall in Britain and the Great Wall of China. These last two in particular, along with the Berlin Wall, remind us that such human structures loose their meaning over time. Stuff changes.

While those of us in the Midwestern United States read about the wall in the newspaper it has a physical reality here in hot and dusty Arizona.

Using the watchtower as a marker, and it is unusual with all its electronic gadgets and cameras, we can see the same wall from two sides. This tower is very near the crossing point between US Nogales and Mexico Nogales. Buildings come right up to the barrier on both sides.

On the US side there is a deserted street in a residential neighborhood. Up at the very top of the photo the watchtower is visible, along with an SUV with the Border Patrol markings on it. In the few hours I was in the area this vehicle did not move and there was another maybe two blocks further up the street that did not move either. They were sitting there watching in the 100 degree temperature with their air conditioning on and the windows closed.

The next photo is on the Mexico side. Once again find the tower with the square rigging on the top. One can see why this location may have been chosen because the raw earth shows that this is on the edge of a hill. Hanging on the lamp post is a political banner. The whole Mexico side has a lot more activity.

On the Mexico side one is not in a residential neighborhood but rather on the edge of a commercial area. If you look closely that parking meters have been installed at the base of the hill/wall and cars are parked. The parking of cars nosed in against the steel wall continues along the wall even when it is flat.

This was also a place where an obelisk made of sandstone was placed many years ago to mark the defined border of the US and Mexico, along with proclamations of enduring friendship among nations. In fact, there are many markers from earlier times when the tone of the relationship between these two nations was much more cooperative and supportive.

At the base of the obelisk a Mexican muralist has given a devastating view of what the United States means from his perspective. It is the worship of death beneath the worship of the dollar.

At the same time some other Mexican artists have offered other decorations of the wall; playfulness in the face of unfriendliness and oppression, hiding a military green eyesore with bright color and dancing figures.

On the Road in Arizona

Since the delegation is cancelled I decided to be a tourist on my own. This first photo is of Mission San Xavier del Bac on an reservation for indigenous people just South of Tucson. It was one of the missions established by Father Kino in the middle 18th century. Quite old, and well restored. The most recent restoration was in the 1990's and the who place is quite beautiful.

I continued south and came to a the town Tubac just as I was ready for something to drink. What a pleasant surprise. It was an old Precidio town, in fact, the place from which De Anza set off for his epic overland journey to California and San Francisco. It has a state park museum and in that museum is a statue of San Xavier del Bac! So that helps complete my mental picture of the mission.

It turns out that Tubac is also an art colony and I want to come back again when I have more time. The place is really quite marvelous. Check out the website http://www.tubacaz.com/

When I was in the small local market I got to watch a little human drama in the parking lot. According to the clerk the Border Patrol had pulled over a young man because he was suspected of transporting undocumented immigrants. The young man became irate and so the Border Patrol called the police. So what you see in the photo is the police officer speaking with the young man and Border Patrol speaking with the clerk who asked about what was going on. Well, the young man walked away from the encounter without being detained by either law enforcement agency. He was agitated and talking on his cell phone. No lack of employment for law enforcement in this area.

Continuing on my journey I drove through the town of Patagonia. My seminary friend Dwight Sullivan served the Methodist Church in this town at one point. It was not a good fit for him because the town is small and in a remote area and he was single at the time. But actually it is a quaint little town and I had a burger at the Stage Coach Inn and Saloon. Turns out my waiter lived in Rock Island at one time! Small world.


I did walk across the border at Nogales earlier in the day. It was depressing - the hawkers in the street seemed desperate, and both the US side and the Mexico side seemed pretty economically depressed. More later.

Tucson

Arrived in Tucson yesterday. Picked up a car and drove from the airport to the BorderLinks office in downtown. Had a nice chat with Delle McCormick, who is the executive director of BL. It has been a rough time for the organization. First, there is the downturn in the economy, then the threat of drug related border violence, and now the whole H1N1 flu scare. The delegation that I was supposed to be part of, the one that would have begun this Friday, fell victim to the flu-in-Mexico event.

The delegation which would have included pastors from Mexico, along with Global Ministries staff and pastor from Illinois Maya Ministry, had to be cancelled because the pastors from Mexico were prevented from travel. The government of Mexico cancelled public events, including church services, through last weekend. The whole month of May will probably be characterized with only absolutely necessary gathering in Mexico. And our Mexican partners - from the Congregational Church of Mexico along with two groups related to the Disciples of Christ could not travel to the border in these circumstances.

Rev. Felix Ortiz-Cotto, executive for Latin America and the Caribbean, says that we will try to reschedule. Delle hopes this will come soon, because not only does BorderLinks want to accomplish their mission - deeper knowledge of the dynamics of the border - but frankly, they could use the money.

Meantime I have a week in the Southwest to relax, travel and think. I will keep you posted.

God and Me

One of the boys in our congregation completed his God and Me award through Cub Scouts and received the certificate and badge last Thursday evening. Here I am with him and his scout leader at the Pack meeting.

He did a great job and I appreciated his loyalty coming on several Wednesday afternoons to work on this project. It is a good experience for me as a pastor to have some time to get to know youngsters in the congregation better by working together.