On Friday evening after work, I went to a fundraiser at Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project (aka where Tom works). They had food, beverages, and salsa lessons on their beautiful back patio- it was a great way to kick off the weekend.
Yesterday morning, I hung out with a School Sister of St. Francis for a while, chatting about the future of the Catholic Church. She showed up with a bunch of food because 5 nuns are staying at my house this week for a retreat, and she's acting as their hostess. After a great conversation, I ended up talking to a professor of gender studies from Valdosta State who's staying in El Paso for the summer. She's known my landlord for a while, so she was over to clean our kitchen with him. We chatted about women's health for about two hours. Have I mentioned that I love my house?
After sitting outside for 20 minutes in the 100 degree sun to correct my tan lines for the wedding I'm in on Saturday (great success!), one of my roommates and I went over to the Anapra border fence:
Anapra is one of the poorest neighborhoods of Ciudad Juárez. I took this picture while standing in Sunland Park, New Mexico. This was the first time I've actually seen "the fence." As I've mentioned before, in El Paso, the border between the U.S. and Mexico is the trickle of water referred to as the Rio Grande in the United States (people in Mexico call it the Rio Bravo). However, as you can see in the map below, the river continues going north, so the border between the countries becomes a land border as soon as you go west of El Paso:
This is probably a good time to mention that "the fence" looks different all along the U.S.-Mexico border, with several places, especially in Arizona, having a structure that looks more like a concrete wall. The fence at Anapra looks pretty similar to the chain-link fence in my backyard in Massachusetts, minus the fact that it's a few feet taller. The tall poles that you see have cameras on top of them, and the car tracks are from the Border Patrol cars that closely monitor the area.
When my roommate and I arrived at the fence, at least 3 Border Patrol cars pulled up immediately to check out what we were doing. Then the kids who live in Anapra closest to the fence came out to greet us. My roommate had met them the week before, and once Border Patrol realized that we were there to just hang out with the kids, they backed off a few hundred yards.
The reason we went to the fence was because my roommate had met a little girl who wasn't wearing shoes last week, so she wanted to return with shoes for her and candy for the rest of the kids that live in the area. She threw the stuff over to the kids before we realized that parts of the fence have large gaps that would have allowed us to just pass the things through.
The whole experience made me extremely uncomfortable. First, I was convinced we were going to get arrested because it seems like throwing things over the fence is probably illegal (however, I've asked about 80 people and so far everyone has said it is only perhaps an offense committed against Customs in Mexico because goods entered the country without being inspected). More than anything, though, I was uncomfortable being a part of a system of utter dependence. The houses of Anapra and Sunland Park are like 100 yards apart, and both areas are clearly quite poor. However, lots of visitors to the El Paso area visit the fence, and the kids on the Mexico side come out and ask for things from the gringos. We all know that it's not solving anything to give the kids un dolar or shoes or candy, but maybe it makes some people feel less guilty about the privilege of standing on the U.S. side of the fence by giving something to the other side.
There were 5 kids there when I was visiting; 2 girls and 3 boys, all between the ages of 6 and 12. I would've loved to have grabbed a ball and play volleyball over the fence, or to chat about what the kids are learning in school, or basically to have done anything. But instead the girls asked me for literally everything imaginable: my sunglasses, my earrings, my cell phone, my shoes, money, etc. They were super whiny, which actually made me feel less guilty about saying "no." It was just awkward to realize that these children have been raised to consistently ask the gringos who go to the fence for things. I can't blame them, or their parents even. And I could go into a whole rant about the long-term implications of building of the border fence and NAFTA and whatnot, but that still wouldn't make me feel any less uncomfortable with the situation. So we only stayed for about 20 minutes before heading back home.
I was very grateful to go out to dinner with the Border Servant Corps volunteers and one of the girls' (Ali) parents right after this experience. And I was even more grateful to go swimming and in the hot tub at the hotel where Ali's parents were staying. That's the first time I had been swimming since last August, which is crazy to think about since I went to the beach every weekend for most of August 2010-July 2011 while I was living in Savannah!
Anyway, yesterday morning I went to the Catholic Church that sits in the Segundo Barrio, which is basically like being in Mexico, El Paso. It's the area closest to the downtown bridge that I often cross to access Juárez, and the streets there are lined with little tiendas selling cheap clothes and goods and blasting music in Spanish. I love walking around the neighborhood, and it was cool to be there to worship, too. Two of my roommates, both of whom are not Catholic, came with me, which was really nice. The church is run by Jesuits and only has Mass in Spanish. The service was good and the building itself is absolutely beautiful (minus the fact that it still has the old style very white statues of Jesus and the saints around the inside...that always kind of creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable, especially in a room where I'm one of two Caucasians).
Yesterday afternoon, I went to the Pax Christi showing of Inside Job. If you haven't seen it, I recommend that you do.
When I got home, one of my roommates had cooked an incredible dinner of tilapia, mashed potatoes, mango salsa, and salad. We all ate together and then greeted the 5 sisters who will be staying at our house for the remainder of the week.
I'm so grateful to be here, especially on weekends like this one! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment