elping in El Paso in the midst of our recent refugee crisis, with thousands of teaming masses at the border, mostly from Central America {and our history of past wars there}, I remembered a picture. It hangs in the rectory of the San Mateo Catholic Church in Tila, Chiapas, Mexico. I’ve visited there to work in their clinic various years from 1998 till 2015. When I first went they were suffering their own war—the national government had a full one half of their troops stationed in Chiapas [one of Mexico’s 29 states] to put down an indigenous Zapatista movement.
Yet the poster represented a time just past in the 1980’s
when this very poor area with its own troubles, and it’s diocese of San
Cristobal, committed to helping the poor seek justice and had opened its doors
to thousands of refugees from terrible massacres in Guatemala {just across the
border from Chiapas}. It was remarkable, with all this trash talk
promoted by our administration & media about immigrants [then Communitsts and now gangs] to
see evidence of a faith that would share meager resources with those even less
fortunate, and more abused.
“They tore away our fruit, They cut off our
branches, They burned our trunk, But they were not able to kill our
roots.” 1978 – 1988, 10 YEARS OF
CAMPESINO STRUGGLE - Guatemala, Central
America
To get a some idea of what that struggle has been, please
listen to the NPR story, Dos Erres, and then read a commentary from one of the
long term non-profit groups working in Central America.
The faithful of San Mateo in Tila shame us. We have supported terrible suffering in the
lands to our south in the name of our supposed national interests, while they
gave aid to those we helped dislodge. The
Central American people’s economy, and livelihood, and personal safety are
nearly destroyed, and now we build walls and rail against their “illegal” plea
for asylum.
he mostly indigenous Mayan people of the diocese of San Cristobal are a much better living example of the scripture’s commission, “you shall love the alien as yourself, for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt.” Lev. 19:34 Most of us in the U.S. are just a number of generations away from having been welcomed, and often invited ourselves unwelcomed, into the land of the original inhabitants of America. Let’s have a little humility, and engage in Gospel hospitality. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” There may come a day, as has frequently happened to dominant societies down through history, that we ourselves may seek shelter at other nations’ borders.
Resources
Illumination art by Kathy Brahney
