La Frontera in North America

 

    Father Amador of Immaculate Conception Church in Rio Grande City, Texas, has made the trip for 21 years. Every summer he travels to Rockport and Kingston and Wellesley Island to visit friends, wed couples, and sail the sparkling Saint Lawrence. His time in Canada and upstate New York is refreshing for him; this other border community certainly has elements of home, despite its northern exposure.

    My own parents live in Ogdensburg, New York, but an hour south of Ottawa. When I first moved to Brownsville, Texas, I drove my trusty 1994 Dodge Spirit from border to border. Though it needs to worry more about sand than snow here on the Mexican frontera, Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley most assuredly feel like home.

    This kind of coincidence is more than happenstance. La frontera, the border, Rio Grande, Saint Lawrence, a Maple leaf, Stars and Stripes, or an Eagle killing a Snake – these countries and their border regions are hopelessly intertwined. Our histories run in and out of each other’s like red and white run in all our flags.

    Herein lies the problem of treating borders as lines and not lifestyles, maps without morals, rivers without life, concrete divisions rather than dual communities. To divide Brownsville, Texas, from the Matamaros, Mexico, Bruce Springsteen sang about is more than simply building a wall along a levee – it is severing conjoined sister-cities. God forbid we do the same thing to Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec, by building a wall down the 45^th Parallel and cleaving a town in two. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 itself is an affront to the community and interconnected cultures we have cultivated in la frontera.

 

    In the name of the Thousand Islands Bridge arching over the shining Saint Lawrence and the Gateway International Bridge suspended over the muddy Rio Grande, we ask all citizens of Canada, Mexico, and the United States to campaign a thousand times for legislation and policies which will foster positive relationships along the border rather than sever them.

    In the name of the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge and the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge, we urge border-crossers to make their international feelings felt and their voices heard from Capitol Hill to the local town hall.

    In the name of Ambassador Bridge and Rainbow Bridge, we pray that our nations will continue to view the diverse rainbow of immigrants as ambassadors of hope and progress and promise.

In the name of the Progreso-Reynosa and the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridges, we affirm that true progress in North-American relations is not far off, that our cultures and our environment and our economies are caught up in “an inescapable network of mutuality.”

    In the name of McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa Bridge and the Fort Frances-International Falls Bridge, we note that the United States’ Secure Fence Act of 2006 was a fall from grace, a detrimental piece of backwards law which promoted artificial divisions instead of natural coexistence.

    In the name of the beautiful Blue-Water Bridge and the arching Peace Bridge, we call for all militarization and violence along our shared borders to cease as we construct immigration policies, drug-prevention programs, environmental cooperation plans, and mutually beneficial trade relations similar to those of the successful European Union.

    In the name of all these and more, let us build bridges not walls. Let us rebuild broken bridges and the relationships they represent. Let us rebuild the bridge to our past, learning from dehumanizing immigration laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the literacy test. Let us forge new tri-national immigration legislation like the DREAM Act and earned paths to citizenship so that all people have the right to pursue their happiness in whichever North America it resides. Let us spend more time on our welcomes than our goodbyes, our fragile ecosystems than on our nativistic ego-systems, more money on our combined poor than on poured concrete.

 

    “Oh Canada,” “Viva Mexico,” “America the Beautiful” – God bless us all and may we learn to coexist as our borderlands have long exemplified. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote that, “whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured” (“Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution”). If we can work on ways to progress beyond NAFTA and CAFTA to truly promote a working relationship, the idea of a border wall on the Mexican-American frontera will seem the absurdity it is and the push/pull factors of immigration in all three countries will be substantially reduced simultaneously.

     Mexicanos, Anglos, Canadians, North Americans, IMMIGRANTS – UNITE. We hope you will express solidarity with Father Amador and myself as we begin our upcoming march tomorrow. Along with numerous others, I will be walking 120 miles from Roma to Brownsville, Texas from March 8-16, and we would love to get support from the international community. This No Border Wall Walk invites any and all concerned citizens, whether they speak Spanish, English, French, or a mixture of them all. Please come and make your voice heard. Dr. King felt that “the ultimate tragedy in Birmingham was not the brutality of the bad people but the silence of the good people.” Come speak out for yourself, the immigrant among us, and la frontera – good people must no longer be silently complicit in any North American country. Be the bridge you wish to see.

Public Comments at Brownsville City Commissioner’s Meeting- 2/19/2008

Teachers are always talking about how their students teach them so much more than they have taught. This is not empty rhetoric. Yesterday evening, I attended my first City Commissioner’s Meeting here in Brownsville, Texas, because 2 of my students wrote essays on what Martin Luther King would say today about immigration. They taught me that Honor Roll students are still entered into the same lottery system for citizenship as everyone else. They taught me that the power of hope, that the “faith of a child” to send their essays to Princeton University is the type of powerful force which can and is changing our country as we speak. As I sat there, overwhelmed to see my students receiving accolades and shaking the hand of Mayor Ahumada who has defiantly opposed the wall, Alexa and Mayra and their families taught me pride.    So, when I got up to give my Public Comments to commemorate my students’ hard work and their indefatigable optimism, I was more than a little nervous because I wanted to do them proud by their teacher. The following is my speech:

 

“Walls are made to support roofs, not to divide neighbors. Walls are supposed to keep out the rain, not hard-working students who earn 100% in English-as-a-Second-Language classes and dream of one day attending excellent American universities Walls are made to support a family, not separate spouses and children from their mothers. Walls are intended to keep families safe, not to terrify immigrants and not to segregate nations. Walls have always been used to make a home, but they should never be used to keep out hard-working, well-meaning people who just are not “lucky” enough to have been born 1-mile to the north. Walls are for hanging pictures of people we love, not to send a message of hate to would-be immigrants and to those who are legally here.

Martin Luther King wisely said, “The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.” The entire United States can learn ideas of coexistence, integration, and community strength by simply studying the Rio Grande Valley and its relationship with its neighbor. While politicians in capitals are debating the “idea” of some 12 million extralegal residents, Brownsville and other cities on la frontera are living proof that 99% of these immigrants sincerely want to work and contribute to American community and economy. The very idea of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 is ignorant of the real contribution these immigrants make on a daily basis.

My students Alexa Mireles and Mayra Flores are the epitome of this. Both of them represent newly-immigrated Mexican-Americans who are highly successful in America. I have the pleasure to teach many talented and ultra-motivated ESL students at Rivera High School everyday. These scholars are A+ students and have dreams of one day attending some of the best universities in the land. A border wall, the border wall they wrote against in their essays for the Princeton University Martin Luther King Day Celebration essay contest, would separate many of these students from their parents, sisters, friends. This human element, largely ignored when discussing 700 miles of wall, is why I am against the wall.

Tonight, I stand in support of this Valley’s mayors, politicians, and landowners who have courageously defied the idea of a border wall in their backyard. Mayor Ahumada, you have made this the issue of your tenure as mayor, and I applaud your efforts to nonviolently oppose the destructive influence of the Secure Fence Act of 2006. You and I both know that the money which would be spent on separating two nations and thousands of families could be better spent building homes in our city on the border by the sea, the poorest city in the nation.

Tonight, I wish to invite you, the Commissioners, and every concerned citizen from Roma to Brownsville, to join me and the Border Ambassadors as we walk on this 43^rd anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery March. This March Against the Wall will show the solidarity of border communities against the Secure Fence Act, and it will also encourage those willing to stand up for the immigrant and la frontera. We ask for your endorsement, your public support, your prayers, and we hope to see you on the 16^th as we finish our march here at 5:00 on the UTB lawn. Dios te bendiga. <http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/moore_84628___article.html/king_guerra.html>

So far, Mayor Pat Ahumada and Commissioner Edward Camarillo have accepted the invitation to come to the closing rally and the challenge to continue nonviolently opposing the border wall.