WE ARE ALL MIGRANTS

El Paso, TX

I have posted a previous piece written by my oldest grandchild Cameron Young regarding this trip to the border that briefly told some of their experiences there. A Brighter Future... The following article, written by Cameron, was recently published on the Unitarian Universalist website. UUA Southern Region 

This take on what Cameron calls "borderlanders" brought back dramatic images of my childhood growing up in Texas. From second-graders having DDT put on their hair to rid them of lice, to the 16-year-old Mexican boy who barely fit into our 4th grade desks as he joined us for the couple of months he was able to come when cotton-picking time was finished and his family had not left to return to Mexico. Even as a young child, I felt sorry for the treatment of these children who had no choice as to where they had been born. Today, the immigrant children being held  in confinement at our borders, elicits the same compassion. Hopefully, the actions of people like Cameron will help shine a light on the abuses of our brothers and sisters seeking asylum, and the history of our complicity in some of the unfortunate circumstances that have driven them to seek refuge in our country. The land of the free.

Todos Somos Migrantes: Journeying Toward Collective Salvation 

        

El Paso, TX; the U.S.-Mexico Border; the line between two different worlds which begin to blend the closer in proximity they become. If it were an abstract painting, the U.S. and Mexico would show up on the canvas in radically different colors and textures, yet I imagine the artist would take her hand and smear it at the places the two countries conjoin, leaving the area of Juarez-El Paso particularly indistinguishable, just as the two cities look like only one from a birds eye view. Juarez-El Paso is an environment of effortless pluralism the type that has sparked nationalist hysteria throughout our country, but I view such pluralism as beautiful, perhaps even anthropological art smeared by the hand of God. Border historian Oscar J. Martinez characterizes U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a place with “powerful transnational forces [which] pull large numbers of borderlanders into the orbit of the neighboring country with a resulting array of cross-boundary relationships and lifestyles.”

In January of this year, I made a trip to this part of the border as part of a contextualization study with my peers at Brite Divinity School. It featured a week full of powerful interactions with numerous borderlanders from all walks of life - clergy and activists to academics to refugees - in one moment, I even found myself praying in a federal courthouse as approximately 30 migrants and refugees, many of whom were barely over the age of 18, would be simultaneously sentenced to prison or deportation.

One truly transformative person we encountered was when we visited the Border Farmworkers Center and met its Executive Director, Carlos Marentes. Marentes has oft been compared to his late colleague and mentor, having been called the Cesar Chavez of the West. The U.S. has a long history of abuse and exploitation of migrant farmworkers, from physical abuse, to employers’ failure to pay already minuscule wages. Carlos was quick to give us information chronicling the history of such exploitation, which frequently goes unpublished. He included a picture of workers being sprayed with the pesticide DDT, at the border as part of the Bracero program in the 1950s. Marentes has made it his life’s work to advocate on behalf of migrant farmworkers to prevent such abuses from occurring.

Talking with him was also a powerful reminder of how deeply intertwined our realities are with the workers. For starters - our food. He pulled out a bucket of chili peppers as a physical example of the painstaking and thankless labor that goes into nourishing our bodies. So striking that someone else’s physical pain could manifest in my physical nourishment.

Marentes also provided some insight regarding the causes of such a magnanimous wave of migration. He explained that most agricultural land in Mexico operated under the Ejido system, meaning most of it was community owned - such a foreign concept in our capitalist society. The Ejido system began to decline mid-20th century when the World Bank created dependencies on loans for farming technology, and died with the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, championed by then president Bill Clinton. Allowing U.S. corporations to negotiate with Mexico’s financial elite, the U.S. demanded that the Ejido system be abolished from Mexico’s constitution, allowing foreign interests to buy those lands and force its inhabitants to either leave or work for a fraction of the rewards. Think about that - U.S. corporations now have enough power to change a country’s constitution. And it wasn’t just Mexico, comparable trade policies have been enacted elsewhere, devastating thousands of self-sustaining communities across Latin America, because that is what capitalism inherently does.

NAFTA ushered in an unprecedented level of prosperity for much of the U.S. and unprecedented levels of poverty for Mexico. In that, I have to acknowledge the money in my pocket and the food that I eat is tainted. But while this exploitation of citizens might have brought immediate gratification for us, there are long term ramifications for us, too. This caused millions of workers in Mexico to come to the U.S. to seek work, ramping up what is often referred to as the “immigration crisis (yeah - the U.S. caused it).” This ultimately led to a nationalist backlash and Trumpism, which has certainly sent many of us into a frenzy. More so, these policies boosted the Agricultural Industrial Complex in North America, which is now one of the leading contributors of climate change in the world.

Universalism. What happens to one happens to all. The subjugation of laborers across the world that our country has helped cause, has rendered us lost too. Lost in anxiety over our political climate. Lost over the state of our planet. As Universalists, when we say our salvation is wrapped up in others, it is not a theological abstraction - it’s a reality. And when we speak of salvation, it is not of some hypothetical afterlife. It is Here. Now. Just as Juarez and El Paso, despite being on other sides of a fence and belonging to two separate human social constructions we call countries, they are the same from the perspective of our vast universe. With millions of migrants and refugees journeying toward their salvation - their literal saving, it behooves us to journey with them. Because, in the long term, our saving is also contingent upon it.

We are all migrants. Todos Somos Migrantes.

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Cameron Young is a native Texan and lifelong Unitarian Universalist. Having grown up in those programs, they developed a particular affinity for youth and young adult ministry. Prior to joining the UUA, Cameron served as a lifespan religious educator in Fort Worth, Texas for five years, having helped to implement their congregation’s first ever Coming of Age, Spirit Play, and Young Adults programs. Cameron also served a two-year elected position as Young Adult Co-Facilitator at General Assembly. Cameron has a Bachelor of Music from Louisiana State University and is currently a seminarian at Fort Worth’s Brite Divinity School. A professional musician and classically trained singer, Cameron has performed in numerous operas, musicals, is a member and co-founder of DFW’s Uptown Carolers, a professional Christmas caroling company, and also recorded with Grammy award winner Leon Bridges on his debut album. In their spare time, Cameron is an avid traveler, die hard fan of Dallas sports teams, and devoted coffee drinker.

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This grandmother speaks:

After reading this several times, the policies Cameron speaks of that "boosted the Agricultural Industrial Complex" and raised the level of our contribution to climate change, raised my hackles. It brought to mind how dismayed I was to learn that "The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) 2015 report on foreign investment in U.S. agricultural land found that at least 26.8 million acres of privately held farmland were held by foreign owners, marking a steady increase over the past 30 years."Foreign-Owned U.S. Farmland  What American investors did to Mexico, foreign countries have been doing to us, China being one of the largest contributors. That fact and the increased industrialization of farming exacerbates the plight of farmers as well as those seeking to work for them.

It behooves us to seriously think about what we can do to help the immigrants desperately trying to gain entry into our country. As we are complicit in their reasons for doing so, we must be complicit in - as Cameron puts it, "their salvation". Listening to the solutions the candidates for our next Presidential election put forth, we can at least make efforts to vote for one who puts forth the most logical, compassionate ways to alleviate the "humanitarian crisis" we are facing. We already know that Trump's ways always favor the corporations.

Peace,

Marilyn