wfn.org | U.S.-Mexican border becomes classroom for educators

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Oct. 9, 2000 News media contact: Thomas S. McAnally·(615)742-5470·Nashville,
Tenn.     10-32-71BP{453}

NOTE:  Photographs are available for use with this story. For related
coverage of the Christian Educators Fellowship meeting, see UMNS stories
#454 and #455.

By Tom McAnally*

SAN DIEGO (UMNS) - Theological perspectives on separation and division met
head-on with current political and economic realities when United Methodist
Christian educators gathered for their biennial conference Oct. 2-7.

Groups of people attending the Christian Educators Fellowship (CEF)
conference left the comfort of their glistening, resort environment in San
Diego to cross the Mexican border, where 2 million people in Tijuana
struggle to meet basic survival needs.

The daylong tours were consistent with the theme of the conference, which
acknowledged that a border sits amid the beauty of the region and that
individuals face borders in their daily lives.

The stated challenge for the conference participants was "to move ourselves
and the church beyond these borders by our faith and not by our sight." That
challenge was based on Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is the assurance of things
hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," and II Corinthians 5:7, "For
we walk by faith, not by sight."

As the bus pulled away from the Town and Country Resort Hotel, tour guide
Alicia Riedy, describing herself as a "child of the border," prepared the
educators for the "disparity that exists between first- and third-world
countries that share a border." Riedy, who has lived on both sides of the
border and has dual citizenship, is a candidate for elder's orders in United
Methodism's California-Pacific Annual (regional) Conference and serves as a
hospital chaplain in San Diego.

The mother of 10, Riedy said when she was young it was an embarrassment to
be a child of the border. Now able to affirm her roots in the border
culture, she took the educators to Chicano Park in the Logan barrio
(community) on the U.S. side of the border. The 1.8-acre park sits in a
once- residential area where a highway patrol office was to have been
constructed. Mexican Americans and others protested, and today the park
stands as a monument to pride and self-determination.  Striking murals of
Chicano culture are painted on concrete pillars that support the interstate
highway above.

Once across the border, the educators met with Javier Maldonado, a Catholic
layman who is a chaplain in one of the 700-plus maquiladoras that employ
30,000 people in Tijuana.  Maquiladoras are factories owned by international
companies seeking cheap labor, primarily for the assembly of products. The
number of such industries has increased dramatically since the approval of
the North American Free Trade Agreement. While environmental, labor and
health laws exist in Mexico, Riedy said they are often ignored. 

The busload of Christian educators had to stop outside the maquiladoras
where Maldonado works because of a Mexican law that requires visitors to pay
at least $25 to enter any of the factories. To get such a permit requires
not only money but time and paperwork, Riedy explained. She was critical of
the Mexican government's imposition of the tax and the lack of accounting
for its use.  

While much of the attention centered on Maldonado's ministry, he was quick
to explain that his vocational situation is unique and far from what exists
in other maquiladoras in the area. The 1,300 employees in his company, who
assemble electrical breakers, are paid beginning salaries of about $70 a
week, compared to the $40 or $45 in other plants. At the factory where he
works, employees receive subsidized meals and assistance with
transportation, and have access to company doctors and nurses. Many
employees, as young as 16, do not read or write. Some of the maquiladoras
offer space where classes are offered after work.  

Riedy said she and other church leaders are hoping that Maldonado's work
will be a model for the managers of other maquiladoras. Asked if the
Catholic church supports his work, Maldonado smiled and admitted that no
effort is being made to place chaplains - lay or clergy - in positions such
as his. Though a Catholic, he said he does not identify himself as such,
unless asked, but attempts to serve the spiritual needs of all people.

Many of the employees along the border, most of whom are in their 20s, have
left extreme poverty in southern areas of Mexico in search of work, usually
leaving their families behind, Maldonado said. 

"They face cultural shock and family disintegration when they get here," he
said. "Spiritually speaking, they don't import their religious and beliefs
and customs. Many don't go to church because this is not their church, not
their parish, their pastor, their community. The symbols and saints of their
faith are not here. There is no blanket to protect them." Because of this,
he said individuals often behave in ways that they would not behave at home.

Maldonado, who has a master's degree in theology, said employees most often
share with him concerns related to work relationships, stress, spiritual
matters, marital issues and domestic violence. 

The biggest challenge, he said, is to deal with the employee's sense of
self-worth. "I tell them,  'You are not a number. You have sanctity and you
are unique.  ... You are a son or daughter of God.'"

The educators visited one of the mountainside shanty communities built by
indigenous Mexicans, who are often discriminated against by the other ethnic
groups in the country. Riedy showed the visitors a school in the community
being built by her home church in the United States. It will be the only
school where students can learn in both their indigenous language and
Spanish, she said.   

The community, like many in the region, has no water or electricity. The
educators followed Guillermo Alvarado down the steep dirt streets with open
sewers where dogs and children played. A social worker who receives some
church support, Alvarado's special ministry is with children. Six hundred
children work and live on the streets in Tijuana, a blight the Mexican
government doesn't want to admit, Riedy said. Many children sell gum and
other small items to the tourists to help support their families, while
homeless children are often recruited into criminal activity and
prostitution, she said.

Probably the most dramatic moment for the Christian educators was viewing
the barriers that snaked across the landscape, separating the two countries.
One area had as many as three barriers, all covered with spiraling barbed
wire. On the U.S. side, dozens of border patrol vehicles and officers were
on the lookout for people trying to slip illegally into the country. The bus
driver, an Anglo citizen of the United States, told the visitors that a
German tourist recently compared the barrier to the Berlin Wall.  

In a poignant moment, the visitors stood high above the beach where the
solid metal wall separating the two countries extended into the water.
Inscribed on the Mexican side of the wall were the many names of those who
had died trying to cross the border, again a scene reminiscent of Berlin in
former years.   

Riedy described the area as a "military zone" and expressed hope that it
would become less hostile. For those who fear the influx of immigrants, she
stressed that they have come to find work so they can feed their families.
If placed in the same predicament, she suggested the Christian educators
would do the same thing.   

"Many of these people leave their families behind," she said. "They are
alone. They don't speak the language. They want to work. If they could stay
at home and feed their families, they would."
 
Referring to the economic advantages on the U.S. side of the border, she
quipped: "I can't get my teen-agers to pick lettuce." Recently, U.S. growers
offered $10 an hour to have oranges picked, she said. "Nobody but
undocumented people responded." 

Crossing the border is difficult and increasingly dangerous. Because of the
intense fortification along the border in the Tijuana-San Diego area, Riedy
said people crossing illegally are going farther inland, risking injury and
death in the mountains.
 
Late in the evening, as the visitors returned through the busiest border
crossing in the United States and made their way back to their hotel, Riedy
reminded them that economics, complicated by political corruption and
insensitivity, is responsible for the plight of people in the "third
culture" along the border.  

"In the end, we are all immigrants," she said.  "We must find a way to live
and work together."

# # #

*McAnally is director of United Methodist News Service, the denomination's
official news agency with offices in Nashville, Tenn., Washington and New
York.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
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