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By: Reverend Peter C. Hinde, O.Carm.
Train engineers hauling freight out of El Paso were greeted with a strange sight as they rounded the Cristo Rey Mountain heading west, passing the border fence separating Rancho Anapra, Mexico, and Sunland Park, New Mexico. This was the site of train robberies in years past, but on November 2 there was a crowd at the fence on both sides of the border and the U.S. Border Patrol cars surprisingly hanging back as though held at bay.
Five Catholic bishops with some four hundred faithful gathered to commemorate those 3,500-plus dead over the past ten years, victims in their attempt to enter the United States via desert or river. Those gathered on the Mexico side of the fence had earlier set up chairs and a table against the fence covered with a white altar linen, liturgical vessels and books thereon. Others came with flowers, flags and small white balloons. Seminarians in uniform dress and some dozen clergy at a given moment donned their albs to turn the ordinarily-deserted scene into one of festivity.
On the U.S. side, people were slower to arrive but soon replicated the scene on their side of the fence. Lively conversations ensued as people greeted one another, their hair and clothes whipped by the fresh breeze. Some called to friends or family on the other side of the fence and gathered at the fence to talk and touch through the fence.
Preparations made, the bishops arrived including, Most Reverend Ricardo Ramirez, Bishop of the diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Most Reverend Armando Ochoa, Bishop of the Diocese of El Paso, Texas, along with Most Reverend Renato Ascencio, his auxiliary bishop, Most Reverend Jose Guadalupe Torres, both of the Diocese of Juarez, Mexico, and Most Reverend Gerardo Rojas of the diocese of Parras, Mexico.
At this annual Day of the Dead, the bishops alternated in leading the celebration of the Mass. This year Bishop Ochoa presided, preaching in both English and Spanish from the U.S. side, while the intercessions were read and songs were sung alternately from both sides. Bishop Ochoa spoke to the dignity of peoples forced to migrate in search of work, of survival of themselves and their families and the need to mourn their deaths. Both Bishop Ascencio and Bishop Ramirez, quoting Pope Benedict XVI, said “that we should build bridges and not walls” between peoples that are one family, one America. This same idea was stated by Pope John Paul II in his 1999 Iglesia en America address in Mexico City.
The U.S. and Mexican bishops’ conferences in their historic joint 2003 pastoral letter, “Strangers No Longer,” assert, “The United States and Mexico share a special relationship that requires focused attention on joint concerns. The reality of migration between both countries requires comprehensive policy responses implemented in unison by both countries. The current situation is weakened by inconsistent and divergent policies that are not coordinated and, in many cases, address only the symptoms of the migration phenomenon and not its causes.”
The reading goes on: “Now is the time for both the United States and Mexico to confront the reality of globalization and to work for a globalization of solidarity. We call on both governments to cooperate and jointly create policies that will create a generous flow of migrants between both nations… It is now time to harmonize policies in the movement Wall of Death of people, particularly in a way that respects the human dignity of the migrant and recognizes the social consequences of globalization.”
This annual event began in 1993 before there was any fence at that point on the border. Sister Donna Kustisch’s justice and peace class at the Diocese of El Paso’s Tepayac Institute generated a group of activists, who hearing of the proposed fence, decided to counter with a Christian gospel witness joined by a similar group from Mexico. It became an annual event and by the year 2000 when the fence was completed the bishops began to assist as well.
One bishop noted how the fence is an emotionally-charged issue that is politically exploited during important U.S. elections. One man at the back of the crowd on the Mexican side shouted out, “Otro Muro de Berlin!”(“another Berlin wall”) signaling the scandalous nature of this fence.
As their names were lifted up on hundreds of white crosses, the dead were mourned, and as the white balloons floated in the sky, we prayed that they would be received by a welcoming God. The event was a clear call for taking away fences and for more opportunities for migrants to have legal access to the United States to fill jobs, to visit families, and to be able to cross legally between work in the United States and home and family in Mexico.
During the service, three freight trains passed by, traveling on tracks built by Mexican and Chinese laborers in the 1800s. Originally these trains were meant to move people as well as freight, but the people are no longer welcome—only the freight. Yet, how much does the United States, in its development and in its food, depend on the Mexican migrant labor force? How much does it depend on the miserly wages paid to the labor force which then subsidizes our U.S. lifestyle?
Let us widen the gates, make barriers obsolete and re-do the NAFTA agreement that has robbed the Mexican laborers of their jobs, their food and their livelihood. In the 1940's the Mexican Braceros Program helped in post-war U.S. agricultural development. Now it is our turn to help Mexico to develop.
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