Delegation The purpose of our delegation is to experience the international border between the United States and Mexico in the company of Mexican pastors, guided by the Borderlinks staff. Borderlinks provides food, lodging, translation, accompaniment and program staff. You can find out all about them at their website: www.borderlinks .org
Our Journey We will meet at BorderLinks in Tucson, Arizona on Friday, May 8 at 9:00 am. Most will arrive a day or so earlier may meet us there. Please be on time. We will conclude on Thursday, May 14 with supper. Please check with Michael Swartz before you buy your airplane tickets.
Accommodations Simple, comfortable dormitory style accommodations arranged by Borderlinks. Good food. Do look at the website.
Travel Please make your own arrangements after conferring with the delegation leadership. We can help make sure you are traveling with one or more delegation members.
Leadership Who is going so far? · Rev. Felix Ortiz-Cotto, Common Global Ministries. · Rev. Michael Swartz, Illinois Maya Ministry. · Rev. Justino Perez, CGM Missionary · A representatives of: · AlianzadeIglesiasCristianasEvangelicasDiscipulosdeCristo · Junta General deIglesiasCristianasCongregaacionalesde Mexico · ConfraternidaddeIglesiasCristianasEvangelicasDiscuplosdeCristo · We can accommodate 13 persons in total on the delegation.
Guatemalan Cultural Action (ACG) was established in 1989 as groupings of Mayan Guatemalans affected by the civil war in that country were able to return to their rural lands and rebuild their lives. Prior to 1989, they had lived as refugees in Mexico or had been internally displaced during the conflict. Global Ministries has partnered with ACG since its beginnings. ACG has four main objectives: 1) to promote community projects in the area of education, culture, economics, and ecology; 2) to promote Mayan and Christian spirituality as inspiring and encouraging sources of meaning for community work; 3) to promote ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue in promotion of a climate of harmony, peace, and solidarity within rural, indigenous communities; and 4) to provide training for the communities on their human rights and how to defend them. In 2008, ACG created a three year plan for 2008 to 2010. The Strategic Plan 2008-2018 also was elaborated through several workshops that included representatives from various communities and members of the ACG Board of Directors. Through two ACG General Assemblies it was possible to elect a new Board, create the Strategic Plan 2008-2018, and review what has been accomplished during year 2008 in order to plan for the work in 2009. The monitoring commission of ACG had two meetings to ensure all operations were going as projected and to make suggestions for the work ahead. The ACG administration worked on revision and authorization of documents, meetings, and proceedings with the help of ACG's Executive Director.
Additional achievements included:
* Repairs and maintenance at San Carolos Borromeus Farm and marketing of their products. * The creation and distribution of the Association News Bulletin to inform the communities in Guatemala and in other countries. * The "Bees" Project for credit and savings, utilized by 710 women between January and November 2008. * Distribution of 42 irons and other materials to build firewood-efficient "Thrifty" stoves in the Santa Elena and Nueva Libertad communities. * 31 students helped through ACG's scholarship program.
Limited economic resources forced a reduction in personnel but ACG continued to push through the work in 2008.
The Strategic Plan 2008-2018 will serve as a guide in achieving all priority projects and programs. ACG is most proud of the success of the Women’s Program. ACG’s goal for 2009 is to reach 1,000 beneficiaries and to continue to lay the groundwork for self-sufficient programs. As in the past, the participating families will benefit from the moral, spiritual, and financial support of ACG through projects, education, community participation, and personal rights.
On December 2, 2008, a delegation of United Church of Christ and Disciples of Christ pastors and laypersons from Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota traveled to Postville, Iowa to learn about the historic large-scale immigration raid that took place in May 2008.We met with detainees, pastors and lay workers who recounted the raid itself and told of the devastating effects still being felt in this community seven months later.
Postville is small-town Northeast Iowa. Picture hard-working people carefully tend their yards and gardens.They know their neighbors.They see each other at church, little league games and high school sporting events.Folks stop and chat on Main Street or at the local diner and families enjoy home-cooked meals with each other just about every evening.
Ethnic diversity doesn’t immediately come to mind with this picture.But in Postville, Iowa, population 1,478, an intermingling of diverse cultures has taken root over the past twenty years. In the late 1980’s a new kosher meat processing plant brought into the mix 300 Hasidic Jews who haled from New York City and 400 migrant workers, mainly from Guatemala and Mexico.Two decades later, half of the population of Postville is made up of new-comers who are more or less successfully being integrated into the community.
On May 12, 2008, 900 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents conducted a military-style siege upon Postville and the Agriprocessors kosher meat-processing plant.Agents armed with assault weapons and motion and heat-sensing devices descended upon the town in helicopters and passenger vans while school children watched in fright from their classroom windows.The entire town was traumatized by this disproportionate show of force.In all, 398 people were arrested on immigration charges, about 30% of the town’s population.
The arrestees were taken to the Cattle Congress, the county fairgrounds, and held in animal pens while they awaited being formally charged.ICE agents joked that the detainees were the equivalent of animals.Besides immigration violations, many were also charged with identity theft for having used false social security numbers provided by Agriprocessors for a fee to each worker of $220.This marks the first time undocumented persons have been charged with this type of felony crime which carries with it fines and prison time, greatly complicating each case.
Women - mothers - with minor children were placed under house arrest and tethered with a Global Positioning System (GPS)-monitoring device around their ankles. They are not allowed to leave Iowa until their hearings (set for May 2009) but neither are they permitted to work. How can they provide for themselves and their children, most of whom are US citizens? The men - many fathers, husbands - taken into custody were ferried between eight or nine different prisons from Miami to Texas, only to be shipped back to Postville under house arrest and tethered with GPS-ankle bracelets. While imprisoned their families were frantic to know where they had been taken. Multiple moves from one prison to another and another complicated their ability to stay in touch with their families or receive legal council. Many are still caught in this nightmare. Others, after agreeing to testify to Agriprocessors’ child labor law violations, are now back in Postville. They share the same fate as the women: they cannot leave Iowa and are not permitted to work. No government provisions are made for their food or housing. How are they to live and provide for their families?
We met with a group of men all wearing ankle bracelets. Hard-working people who were good neighbors in this small-town community, they spoke of the humiliation they felt at being treated like criminals and forced into dependency.They originally came to Iowa because they’d heard there was work at the meat-packing plant.They were happy to find a small town not entirely different from their own small towns back home.
Immigration from Mexico and Latin America has mushroomed since NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) went into effect in the 1990’s.NAFTA undermines local economies in favor of global markets.Employment opportunities in their own communities in Mexico and Guatemala are fewer and fewer.At the same time, US companies like Agriprocessors are built around access to this desperate labor pool will work for low wages in unsafe conditions.
Trade and immigration policies are intimately linked and in need of comprehensive reform for the good of all. For instance, conservative estimates of the cost of the Postville ICE raid to US taxpayers are approximately $13 million.Their local economy devastated and the social fabric torn, who can say how long it will take for the town of Postville to recover from the chain of events set in motion by the ICE raid?
On the day of the raid, Postville churches responded immediately and continue to provide support services for those who await trial.During the siege on their town, individuals and families sought sanctuary in St. Bridget’s Catholic Church and Community Presbyterian Church in Postville.Churches and their pastors and congregants were immediately willing to help provide a safe space for their neighbors.An ecumenical prayer vigil and march to Agriprocessors was quickly organized. It’s significant to note that ICE agents did not enter the churches to make arrests.
During the first month after the raid, 1,000 meals a day were served at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church.Father Paul Ouderkirk estimates that his parish is spending about $30,000 each month to support those who are living under house arrest and their families.Postville is not a wealthy community and St. Bridget’s is a humble parish.Theirs is a profound generosity of spirit and resources, the stuff of deep solidarity, the best of what it means to be a neighbor.Even as one asks how the detainees will be able survive, you can’t help wondering how much longer St. Bridget’s will be able to sustain itself and all whom they are supporting?
The quick and faithful response of the churches instructs us.The Postville churches formed a different kind of bracelet – a bracelet of love and solidarity – around threatened parishioners and neighbors.Should a raid like this occur in or nearby our communities, would our congregations respond in kind?
This is an excellent time for congregations and groups to study the roots and reality of immigration along with learning the rights of immigrants and their advocates. A good resource can be found in the book, The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, by Jane Guskin and David L. Wilson, Monthly Review Press, 2007. A local organization doing excellent work on this issue is the Chicago New Sanctuary Movement. They can be contacted at cmsa@chicagosanctuary.org.
I guess what I believed going into the experience was that the Postville event was effectively over. Though May 12 was a terrible day and left the community in ruins, most of the pain experienced was lodged in the events in that day. What we experienced was much different.
We met first with a group of Guatemalan women and one man who were working on getting their GED and would later be going to English classes. That provided a backdrop for our discussions with Father Paul.
Father Paul and the coordinator for Hispanic Ministries, Paul Rael, both of St. Bridget’s Roman Catholic Church shared with us the incredible suffering going on presently in the community. Women who were not deported because they have children are wearing ankle bracelets with GPS tracking chips. The women are not allowed to work, never seem to get any reliable information on what happens next, and are kept around for the trial to testify to Agriprocessors breaking over 9,000 child labor law provisions. They are going to take a legal angle he swore us to secrecy on so we'll bring you up to speed on that. Father Paul was clearly angry for the way these immigrant people had been treated. They have to ask permission to do everything or go anywhere and now their probation officer is refusing to answer the phone when they try to call him. The people have asked to voluntarily deport themselves but the government won't allow it.
The raid was clearly planned years in advance as a county fairgrounds’animal pen was reserved to keep the people who were detained.
Postville is at a breaking point. The Jewish community does not know how to reach out (feeling both ashamed and abiding by their identity to be separate) and those in the immigrant community are hamstrung by the limbo the government is putting them through. When I handed Father Paul the check from IMM, he broke down sobbing in my arms...thanking us.
Over lunch we met with a Presbyterian pastor who shared with us how hard the immigrant community worked in town. All they wanted to do was work. He would have gladly given them his social security number if they had asked. He shared that closing down Agriprocessors has been devastating to the community. The community lost its largest employer, local producers that have grown up around the plant have no processor, and he had a Jewish friend he could call that would have Agriprocessors fill the local food pantry with meat when they ran out. That is no longer possible. Resources are exhausted. People are exhausted.
We traveled to Decorah to meet with the local UCC pastor. Decorah took on some of the burden because Postville just could not handle any more need. A local Lutheran congregant is allowing 6 Guatemalan men to use a house. The Catholic parish house is providing lodging for three others (across the street from one another). The UCC pastor shared with us how Agriprocessors used a local Palauan man to recruit from 25-30 people from the south Pacific Island. Now that the plant has shut down, they are stranded.
We went to the home where the Guatemalan men (and one Mexican man) were staying. Two or three men told us their story. These men have been brought back for the trial and all wear ankle bracelets. Because the government does not allow them to work, people of Decorah are paying them in cash for odd jobs so that they can have some money and send some back to their families. Particularly heart breaking was the story of their detention in about six or seven U.S. prisons. They were moved around, fed very little, and sometimes put into a cold cell with only a t-shirt. Such stories had us thinking about what the men remaining in prison are going through. This man cried as he related that he had not been able to talk to his wife or sons for six months.
As we were about to leave, a young woman from Luther College came to talk to us. She said the situation is very dire with the women. She is worried about how depressed the women are getting and what they might do in the future with such depression. They cannot go anywhere, do anything, and their children cry at night for fathers who are no longer there
In February of 2007 members of the Illinois Maya Ministry (IMM) traveled to Cuernavaca, Mexico, to participate in a leadership planning retreat with representatives of the Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of Christ (WCUCC), the Minnesota Conference United Church of Christ (MCUCC) and INESIN (El Instituto de Estudios e Investigacion Intercultural) of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.
The location of this Encuentro was at the Cuernavaca Center for Intercultural Dialogue. This was a wonderful setting and we received great hospitality.
The first photo is most of the group. We are, from Left to right, Rev. Ernesto Martin Guerro, INESIN, Miguel Moshan, INESIN, Anne Roulet, a Swiss missioner at INESIN, Rev. Faye Buttrick, IMM, Rev. Gail O'Neal, WCUCC, Rev. Becky Johnston, (WCUCC), Rev. Paula Bidle, (MCUCC) and Rev. Michael Swartz, IMM. Participants not pictured are: Rev. John Buttrick, IMM, and Felipe Touissant, INESIN.
On other occasions we have met in Chiapas. The difference here was that we were experiencing the CCIDD program together, under the direction of Sister Kathy Long, OP, and enjoying the good food and comfortable accomodations of the center. We were having a common experience facilitated by a third party.
In the second photo we are together learning about some of the impacts of immigration of Mexican people to the United States.
Also, while we were there together we were able to do some long term planning and dreaming. We collaborated on a timeline of history for INESIN, from its founding under the inniative of Bishop Samuel Ruiz, who was then the Episcopal leader in Chiapas, to the present.
One of the unexpected aspects of our time together was a celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Bishop Sergio Mendez Arceo at the cathedral in Cuernavaca. It turns out that Bishop Arceo was the Bishop of Cuernavaca from 1952 to 1983. And as a progressive bishop and a colleague of Bishop Samuel Ruiz, Bishop Ruiz came to Cuernavaca for the celebration!
What a wonderful serendipity - or provedential guidance of the Holy Spirit, that Bishop Ruiz was in town at the same time with the leaders of the Institute that he had helped innitiate.
It turns out that Bishop Arceo was instrumental in the founding of CCIDD, so it is a smaller world than we even anticipated. The third photo in this article is of the poster for the special celebration, with a picture of Bishop Arceo.
The forth photo is of the procession into the back of the Cathedral of Cuernavaca, with Bishop Samuel Ruiz in the mitre, backlighted by the door.
The fifth photo in the series is a banquet in the patio area of the CCIDD facility, with Rev. Paula Bidle standing right behind Bishop Ruiz in the garden.
The time spent at the Encuentro was productive in several ways. We were able to plan for the future and communicate in a deeper way because we had more time together. We were able to experience several sorts of activities together - we studied, prayerd, ate, worshipped at the cathedral, enjoyed recreation and the beautiful setting both of Cuernavaca and of the Center. One of the exciting parts of the planning was a plan for developing the facility of INESIN put forward by Martin and the leaders from Chiapas. This includes a fairly ambitious plan to develop a retreat center that would facilitate their work with groups studying at the Institute.
One of the great introductions to the immigration crisis is The Devil's Highway by Luis Urrea. It is the story of over twenty men who enter the Arizona desert with not all of them coming out.
If you are interested in having access to the study guides, please e-mail Rev. Mike Mulberry at mmulberry@gmail.com.
To the left of the screen, in "Links to Our Relationships and Work", are copies of study guides prepared for you, your book club, or your congregation in walking through Urrea's text. Please feel free to use them and help us out with any commentary, editing, or additions.
The Institute for Cultural Studies and Research (INESIN) has focused its ecumenical efforts on the need for dialogue and understanding among intercultural groups so they can define and articulate their understanding of God, faith, truth, and other aspects of the divine. In 2007, INESIN held a series of workshops on the topics of spirituality, theology, community reinforcement, and support. Groups from diverse communities were trained with the purpose of their taking what they have learned back to the grassroots of their communities. For many, this is the only way they receive an education.
Workshop titles included: God in the Motherland; Indigenous Theology in Pastoral Care; Human-Spiritual Development for Lay Servants; Systematic Indigenous Theology; Theological Dialogue: Mayans, Mexicans and Yucatans; Preventing Domestic Violence, Women of the Bible and Paul; Women Prophets of the Old Testament; Mission Ministry in the Church; Summer School of Theology; Intercultural Conflicts and Nonviolent Resolutions and Ecumenical Dialogues on Violence and Death. In addition to these educational events, INESIN sponsored and organized several spiritual retreats and intercultural worship events. Groups included indigenous groups from Zinacantán, Margaritas, San Cristóbal , Chiapas Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Ocosingo, Chanmic Huixtán , Oaxaca , and Juchitán. Over 1,000 persons participated in these events.
INESIN works closely with churches, communities and individuals to help develop community leadership at the grassroots level. Moreover, INESIN works with leaders who are responsible for nurturing the education and faith development of their communities. Workshops and community events were held in 2007 on child and youth development, environmental care, and conservation. Work groups helped those still dealing with the effects of Hurricane Stan, and provided Vacation Bible School events and ecological and natural history tours. The work groups helped build water containment sites, helped build homes, and helped start protective measures for marine turtle habitats in Puerto Arista. These events are educational as well as recreational, and help to build cohesiveness and solidarity among the groups that interact. All events were intergenerational.
Other achievements include collaboration with the Baptist Seminary of Mexico-Chiapas Extension, the Intercultural Mayan Seminary, and UNITE of Bolivia with student and leadership exchanges. INESIN personnel were able to participate in various continuing education events, among them at the School for Peace, Center for Ecumenical Studies, and the Agape Ecumenical Center in Italy .
INESIN expresses its gratitude to Global Ministries for the funds that helped support the ministry of education, research and dialogue.
Translated and edited by: Office of Resource Development Global Ministries P.O. Box 1986 Indianapolis , IN 46206 Tel: (317) 713-2555 Fax: (317) 635-4323 gifts@dom.disciples.org
