STORIES FROM THE BORDER
PART THREE: Heartache and Hope -Diving Into The Great Underground Stream
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Greetings, Friends:
This is the final installment of my Border Encounter experience with Abara. Since I’ll be covering our final two days in this newsletter, I will focus on a handful of stories and let the photos fill in some of the gaps. Thank you for traveling with me and bearing witness to this experience as I have shared it here with you.
PART THREE: HEARTACHE AND HOPE - DIVING INTO THE GREAT UNDERGROUND STREAM
FRI /JAN 27: DAY TWO
BORDER PATROL PRESENTATION
We started our day with Border Control agents/NGO Liaisons Frank Ocasio and Isela Aguirre in the park next to the Abara House property.
Isela was one of Biden’s liaisons when he was recently in El Paso.
My circle member Joy sums up this conversation with Border Patrol beautifully:
We had a “very candid and humanizing discussion about their day-to-day and some of the realities from their perspectives. I was surprised by their level of compassion; they view their mission as humanitarian as well as protecting national security.
They provided a lot of insight into the magnitude of exploitation of the migrants by smugglers and traffickers. Recently the team stopped a semi with 36 migrants stacked on top of each other in the cab—not the trailer—en route to a factory in NY where they had been promised 70 cents an hour to pay off a $35,000 debt for the privilege of coming here. Each of them had paid $13,000 for their place on the truck.
Children are used as decoys and dropped over the wall in the desert so traffickers can smuggle drugs while agents are distracted processing the kids. Legislative and administrative policies can change so quickly that sometimes they have to process cases differently in the same eight-hour shift. Enforcement policies change but they see no real qualitative differences between Democratic and Republican administrations—they still lack the intel, technology, and personnel resources they need (the feds fund them for something like 25k agents but they only have about 17k currently due to attrition). Morale is low and lots of mental health issues; they had 3 agent suicides in December. “- Joy Holley
AN AFTERNOON IN JUAREZ
Back at the Abara Offices, we discussed “dignified storytelling “practices in preparation for our next shelter visit, and then poured into the Abara van with Gustavo at the wheel and drove into Mexico. There we took a brief tour of a small museum that housed artifacts from the Mexican Revolution, we ate a quick picnic lunch at Mile Marker One, and then made our way to a shelter in Juarez.
DOMINOS AND DEVASTATION:
Juarez Shelter Visit and Edwin’s Story
The van wheels turned onto the dirt road and spit gravel as we pulled in front of the bright blue two-story church, Templo Bethel. The color made me think of a warm dome of protective sky or life-giving water in a dry, dusty landscape. We’ve been prepared to enter the space knowing that we will meet with shelter guests, play games and share a snack. We greeted a woman sitting in the sun on the stoop as we entered the building and stepped inside. My first impression was that it felt cavernous and cold. The main floor opened up into the worship space with standing space heaters which likely only get turned on when worship is happening. Shelves with literature stood nearby and two stairwells on opposite sides of the room led to the second story which serves as the shelter. Gustavo led us up the concrete stairs to the right.
As we turned down the hallway, we passed the restrooms and a small kitchen to the left, and another small room to the right. The hallway led us to the main room which was lined with bunk beds along three walls and folding tables and chairs in the center of the room. I glanced to my left and saw a small table with snacks prepared for us--paper rectangular bowls with a variety of Mexican candy, surely a special treat. To my right were the Pastor and his wife, likely close to my age, in folding chairs seated next to a space heater. We were greeted with smiles and shy waves from the roughly 25 people, mostly men, gathering to meet us. The lingering smells from the adjacent kitchen seemed to soak this room with a sense of comfort.
There were a few awkward moments as the two groups eyed each other for the first time. We are strangers entering their safe haven and we did so with humility and respect. I needed to dash to the restroom, and proceeded to lock myself in the stall somehow, yelled for help without full commitment, and then finally pounded on the sliding bar until it loosened and gave way to let me out. (Apparently, you can’t take me anywhere). I rejoined the group just in time for introductions.
Abara team member, Karina Garcia, gathered us all into a circle around the tables. With a bouncy ball in hand, she helped us break the ice by explaining that we would play a game. When you catch the ball you will share your name, where you are from, and your favorite food. In no time at all, there was laughter and camaraderie over shared favorite foods. I think Chile Rellenos was the all-time winner. Enchiladas was a close second. Several men from Honduras shared the name of another dish I didn’t recognize as their favorite. I was reminded of how much our favorite foods bond us to feelings of home.
It had been a minute since I have played dominos, and it was brand new to Joy, so Douglas, a stout man in his mid-fifties, showed us the rules. Iza Zermeño who served as our translator, Margarita, a 40s-ish woman with gentle eyes, and Edwin, a quiet man in his mid-40’, wearing a covid-style paper mask, rounded out the rest of our little game group.
At first, we mostly concentrated on the game, with mild teasing and smiles beginning when someone ( meaning me or Joy) placed a tile incorrectly. Slowly, Iza began asking us if we had any questions for each other. We began with pleasantries like where they were from, asked about their families, and what they liked to do. Douglas pointed out his son, in his twenties, standing a few feet away. He told us his son had been kidnapped recently and all he could do was pray for his return. ( We have learned that kidnappings are very common in migrant stories all along the route as well as in Juarez and El Paso- people are just snatched up off the street.) He prayed and prayed and three days later his son showed up again. We learned no more details. Then our dominos partners wanted to know about us; our ages, family situation, and what we liked to do for fun. Someone brought around our paper dishes of candy and another offered us fresh orange halves. Luxuries.
By this point, Douglas and Edwin have won several domino games and we have begun actively teasing them when they couldn’t place a tile and had to draw extra tiles from the pile. While I couldn’t see much of Edwin’s face behind his mask, he seems to enjoy it when I nudge him with my shoulder or protest when he wins a game.
At some point, we started going deeper and Edwin took down his mask (literally and figuratively) and began sharing his story of leaving his home in Honduras and why.
Edwin’s Story
Iza translated as Edwin slowly shared his story:
"A gang came into his home and told him that they were going kill him and his mom if they didn’t pay them. That same day that gang killed his father. After the gang killed his father, his wife was afraid that the gang was going to kill them, too. She took the two children and ran. He doesn’t know anything about them since they left. His mom was forced out on the street. And so he had to leave Honduras. He is very worried about her. He emphasized that his mom was the most important thing, the most important person to him. He went into the mountains in Guatemala and then started working several jobs which was the last time he was able to send home any money to his mother. And for a while, he was just working to survive. At one point on the journey, he too was kidnapped by men asking for ransom but he didn’t have any money. So he just prayed. That was his answer. I tried to ask him again, but I didn’t get a different answer. They finally let him go when they realized they could get no money from him.
Before he was in this shelter, he was in another shelter, which the cartel mistook for another location, so they came in with guns. He thought he was going to die that day. And then they noticed that it wasn't the place that they were looking for, so they just left, but that was after they evacuated the whole room with a gun. He went to Mexico City and from there he was able to get here, and he’s been here for three months”
Our table sat in silence trying to take in all he had shared.
His mask was now down around his chin, his eyes lowered to his hands which had been rolling a domino tile between his fingers the entire time. Iza’s eyes were softly glazed but she kept her eyes on Edwin, ready to share anything else he might say. This was not the first time I sat in awe of her, as she translated these brutal stories of pain, with tenderness and strength.
Then his final words to us were these:
“Sometimes we just… you know…we just need a person to be there. And to tell us that they love us and to give us a hug. So thank you… thank you for coming here… thank you for bringing your joy.” At this point, Joy and I are using every ounce of restraint we can muster not to cry at the table. Edwin continued thanking us, and you could hear the tenderness in his voice. “May God bless you. Thank you for bringing your smiles here. Thank you for coming. Thank you.”
I wanted to reach out and hug him but I knew that wouldn’t be appropriate without his permission, so I asked Iza to ask him if he would like to share a hug. We did. At this point, Sami came by our table and announced that we’d better get going. We said our goodbyes and told Edwin we would pray for him at his request. (Though I will not share it here, one of our group took a photo of Edwin and me. Now I can continue to see Edwin’s face as I hold him in my heart and prayers.) One quick word about “prayers” - I do very much believe in the power of prayer, but also along the lines of the famous C.S. Lewis quote, “To say that 'prayer changes things' is not as close to the truth as saying, 'prayer changes me and then I change things.” Prayer is both contemplation and action.
We gathered back in the hallway as some of our group asked questions of the Pastor. I slid out of the group. I had to get away to be alone for a few minutes. I found myself downstairs in the sanctuary. Unable to hold back the grief in my body any longer, I paced and quietly wept. I offered up my pain and I prayed for Edwin.
As the rest of the team slowly joined me downstairs, we thanked Pastor again and made our way out into the sunshine, a contradiction to the dark cloud of shared grief we were experiencing. Returning now to the van, you could feel the weight of the emotions between us. Joy was crying now too and talked about the heartbreak of Edwin’s devastating story. Sami asked Iza to share Edwin’s story with the rest of the group and she did. She then added that as we were leaving Edwin told her that this was only the second time he has ever told his story, the first time being to Pastor, when he arrived 3 months ago. Sami, who does this work day in and day out, yet has kept his heart open in compassion, said: “And there are thousands of Edwins.” I looked back at Sami and he was visibly moved.
HOPE ON THE MARGINS
Panadería Rezizte (Resistance Bakery) and Jorge Perez
Our next and much-anticipated stop was a visit to Panadería Rezizte, not only for a sweet treat but to meet and learn more about Jorge Perez- a baker, artist, and activist.
“I used to ask, ‘What represents the border?’ Suddenly I realized, it’s bread,” Pérez said, noting that wheat originated in Europe and was then combined with local ingredients like vanilla to create traditional Mexican breads. “Bread is a thousand-year-old tradition. Bread is an excellent representation of the migration of people, the recipes, all that is related to the movement of people.” - Corrie Boudreaux/ El Paso Matters
Bakery owner and artist Jorge Pérez, also known as “Yorch,” displays an engraved print he created. Pérez says bread represents the border region as it symbolizes the movement of people throughout centuries and the mixing of elements from different geographic areas. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)difficult difficult
We finished up the evening with a community potluck at Abara. Many of the community leaders and friends we’d met were there. None of our small group lasted long, however, we were too emotionally and physically spent.
OUR FINAL DAY AT THE BORDER
SAT/ JAN 28: DAY THREE:
We spent our last day more casually with Sami as our tour guide. He took us to a section of the border fence in New Mexico. Back in El Paso, we toured the ABARA HOUSE property and actually saw a man scamper over the border fence right before our eyes, followed by choppers and vehicles. Later, we made a few stops along the Mission Trail.
THE GREAT STREAM UNDERGROUND -HOPE AND HEALING
It’s taken me now three weeks to crawl through the grief I have been feeling following this trip. Person by person, story by story, meeting and listening to those willing to let us into their experience affected me in a personal, direct, and deeply impactful way. I’ve also had a lot of intense dreams as my subconscious tries to process what I cannot process consciously. I feel like I am just coming up for air. Writing this series has helped me begin to process my experience.
The complexity of this issue and the sheer number of migrants suffering all over the world, seeking safety and trying to find a better life, can feel overwhelming. This is happening on a global scale and not just on our southern border. The cumulative pain is impossible to imagine, much less hold. And when you then add to that the devastating earthquakes in Syria and Turkey, the war in Ukraine, or insert the latest tragedy of the week… we are soon either numb, immobilized by despair, or stumbling toward making a response that never feels enough, that never seems to move the needle of a hurting world. We cannot function in despair. But we mustn’t numb ourselves to it either.
Where do we find our hope? How do we move forward in hope with little to no control of the systems and structures in this world?
German mystic Meister Eckhart said, “God is a great underground stream that no one can dam up, and no one can stop.” And no matter how weak my hope sometimes feels, no matter how clouded with despair the glasses through which I see the world become, it’s pretty minor when compared with the great underground stream of hope that can carry me. When we can remember to submerge ourselves in the hope of the Larger Story, the Mega-story, the great underground stream of hope and possibility, we gain the strength to walk back into the stories we are living in the world and bring that renewed vision of hope and healing with us.
Patrick Oliver regards the soul as “our capacity to be truly present to those around us, and to the world in which we live – and therefore our capacity to be truly present to the grace of God in which we’re held.”
I wanted to share some of the places where I witnessed authentic hope and embodied presence during this encounter:
The networks of community leaders in El Paso and Juarez working together
Abara and their approach to humanizing relationships across borders
Abara’s partnerships with Ciudad Nueva, Sacred Heart, Templo Bethel, KIND, and other organizations serving the suffering of the migrants and working to change systems
The dedication and faith of the young leaders we met like Iza, Clara, Gail, and Gustavo.
The dedication and faith of those who have been doing this work for decades and persevere in hope and love
Retired and active Border Patrol agents showing up in their humanity
Activist bakers like Jorge who share bread and liberation
The profound resilience and faith of those whom we were privileged to meet in the shelters. (Some groups march into shelters “to share Jesus.” Many of the people I met are already well-acquainted and living close to his Love. Over and over again, they said that the only way they survived was by turning to God.)
I’ll leave you with one last story from Abara Intern, Iza Zermeño. It is part of a longer, more beautiful conversation we had in the van after leaving the Juarez shelter. But that stays between us. Iza is a college student from Monterrey studying Business Administration. She had been interning with Abara this past month and plans to take much of what she learns back to Monterrey. As a mom, I couldn’t help but ask how she is tending to herself amidst her work in the shelters and translating so many painful stories for visitors like us.
Here’s what she said:
“When I listen to the stories, I try not to make myself the center of the story or the suffering. Because I feel it's easy when you listen to things like this, to make it subconsciously about you and how it affected you. And it's just like, this is someone else's story, and there is so much pain and suffering, and it hurts me because I am an empathic, very sensitive person. But I know I can’t fix it. It's like, I did what I could do at that moment…(translating) and I did it to the best of my ability. The rest of my effort was just listening and loving this person well.”
Sacred listening and presence is an act of love.
Each of us can show up in love, and as love, moment to moment, like Iza.
Iza’s luminous heart strengthened my own. We take action where we can to address the broken systems and structures, to ease the pain of the world, and we weep and relinquish what is beyond our ability to control back to the stream of the heart of God. We step into the stories of a deeply hurting world having first immersed ourselves in the great underground stream that is Love, by whatever name we know it. Every step we take from the banks of that great underground stream leaves footprints of hope and shifts the trajectory of the world toward love.
Thank you for your witness and your encouraging responses to this series. I’m so grateful to share here with you from my heart to yours.
xo Mary
FOR THOSE DESIRING MORE RESOURCES:
Here are links to some CCDA blogs from Sami's Central America trip a few years ago. They have some interesting materials related to the realities on the ground in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico: Overview; Honduras; El Salvador; Guatemala; México; Conclusion
Here are links to the Darien Gap Documentary and the Central American Reality Video
This is Abara's Border Response page and it lists specific responses on the border and ways to get involved
Sign up for their newsletter! You can do this at the bottom of their website page
Sign up to receive border text updates by texting "Abara" to +1915-265-4449
Consider signing up for monthly or quarterly giving here.
Lastly, follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: @abarafrontiers for updates!
“What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.” ― Jean Jacques Rousseau
In February, I will be donating a portion of my paid subscriptions to:
Abara House Donations: “Friends of Abara recently helped secure historic properties with a dream for "Abara House” located at the historic La Hacienda restaurant. Abara will enter a capital campaign in 2023 to raise funds to purchase and restore the properties. This property sits directly on one of the oldest known crossings of the Rio Grande River, an ancient indigenous pathway predating Spanish colonization in 1598, later becoming the famed "Camino Real de Tierra Adentro." We hope to honor the stories of this land by exploring our histories, the beauty, and the tragedy, and the stories that are yet to be written.” - from the website
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The artwork and graffiti is so beautiful and moving.
The pain and heartbreaking reality as well as the faith, hope and love shine through your sacred storytelling, Mary. The gift of each person’s presence is woven throughout the reflections. Thank you for opening yourself to all that this experience entailed and for sharing the depths of it with us. Xo