On May 6, we loaded the 15 passenger van to head south (well, southeast). I got to know my fellow travelers, including a priest from Brooklyn who was at a church on Wall Street when the twin towers fell on 9-11. As tragic as the story was, it was worth hearing from someone who was just a few hundred yards from ground zero, and it was heartening to know that none of the children in the child care center at the church lost a parent that day (miracle?).
Lunch was at the Restoration Project in Tucson, which is an ecumenical community working a lot with detained migrants. They served us a great lunch, and told us stories of refugees and asylum seekers who were detained sometimes for years. These folk are not criminals, so there is no prohibition from keeping them without being charged, and they also have no equivalent to a public defender to make their case to a court that they should be granted asylum. When migrants are released, some have lived in detention in the US for years (such as the Cubans who arrived during the Mariel Boatlift), and when they are dropped off at a Greyhound Bus station a few blocks from Restoration Project's Casa Mariposa, it may be the 
first time in years they have been free, and their first taste of freedom in the US. Casa Mariposa provides them a place to stay when they are released.
first time in years they have been free, and their first taste of freedom in the US. Casa Mariposa provides them a place to stay when they are released.After checking into the new Best Western in Douglas, AZ, we crossed the border in our van to Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico. Our first stop was Just Coffee, or Cafe Justo in Spanish. This coffee cooperative was founded by a microloan from the Presbyterian Border Ministry in Agua Prieta called Frontera de Cristo. With this cooperative, the coffee growers in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas own the entire process, from growing 
coffee beans to roasting them to packaging and distributing them. Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world (can you guess the first? Our van used a lot of it to get us down there), and there are lots of "middlemen", and of course, speculation that causes prices to be pretty volatile. I also learned that pre-roasted coffee beans can keep for long periods of time, and when coffee prices are low, beans are stored away, and when prices are high (as they have been the last couple years), you are likely drinking coffee that was stored for 20 years before it was roasted. Just Coffee prides itself on fresh coffee. The growers earn about a third more per pound than most growers, and unlike any other grower they know of, get health insurance and a pension. That means they don't have to carry 150 lb burlap sacks of coffee beans on their back until they are dead. This has allowed coffee farmers to stay in Mexico and not have to migrate to the US. You can read the stories of the individual farmers in Chiapas, and the workers at the roasting facility in Agua Prieta, on Just Coffee's website. Last year, Just Coffee sold 70,000 lbs. of coffee, just a drop in the pot of the global coffee market. But it's a good start. And it's good coffee. I bought the premium Marago coffee, and had some today. It's delish. They mostly sell via internet shipments, which cross the border and are shipped from Douglas, AZ. Many churches, especially in Arizona, sell Just Coffee as well. It's pretty reasonable, too.
coffee beans to roasting them to packaging and distributing them. Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world (can you guess the first? Our van used a lot of it to get us down there), and there are lots of "middlemen", and of course, speculation that causes prices to be pretty volatile. I also learned that pre-roasted coffee beans can keep for long periods of time, and when coffee prices are low, beans are stored away, and when prices are high (as they have been the last couple years), you are likely drinking coffee that was stored for 20 years before it was roasted. Just Coffee prides itself on fresh coffee. The growers earn about a third more per pound than most growers, and unlike any other grower they know of, get health insurance and a pension. That means they don't have to carry 150 lb burlap sacks of coffee beans on their back until they are dead. This has allowed coffee farmers to stay in Mexico and not have to migrate to the US. You can read the stories of the individual farmers in Chiapas, and the workers at the roasting facility in Agua Prieta, on Just Coffee's website. Last year, Just Coffee sold 70,000 lbs. of coffee, just a drop in the pot of the global coffee market. But it's a good start. And it's good coffee. I bought the premium Marago coffee, and had some today. It's delish. They mostly sell via internet shipments, which cross the border and are shipped from Douglas, AZ. Many churches, especially in Arizona, sell Just Coffee as well. It's pretty reasonable, too.After learning about Just Coffee at their Agua Prieta roasting and packaging facility, we visited a resource center for deported migrants in a non-descript building immediately next to the border station in Agua Prieta. Deportations are down significantly in AP, as the number of migrants apprehended has fallen, and US Customs and Border Protection is grouping people together for large deportations at specific points rather than sending them immediately back where they crossed. Certain populations, such as those with a medical condition, may still be immediately deported at the nearest port of entry. Generally, the US government literally drops the people at the border, as flying them to the interior of Mexico is more expensive (though may reduce the rates of people trying to return). Since hiring a "coyote" (smuggler) to help cross the border is extremely expensive, most people who have done this have sold everything they own and left family behind. They have no resources and no way back home. The migrant resource center helps them with this.
After the migrant resource center, we visited a shelter for migrants run by La Sagrada Familia Catholic Church in Agua Prieta. Due to the low deportation numbers lately there, we met just a few migrants, but had some interesting conversations. I don't know if they told us their entire stories, but I do know that some migrants were heading north and some were heading south. Most had been deported. One was Polish and deported from Chicago to his native Poland. Trying to get back to family in Chicago, he boarded a flight to Mexico City, and somehow made his way to AP. Presumably, he will hire a coyote to try crossing. I had dinner at a table with a man who crossed the border near Deming, NM, almost 20 years ago, when the border there was almost non-existent. He did not need to hire anyone to smuggle him. He lived in Denver, mostly doing day labor. He enjoyed it, and felt he had all his needs met while living in the US, far more than in Mexico. However, he also told stories of living under a bridge, and his deportation was a matter that he disputed. Drugs fell out of a bag and onto the ground, and he claims they belonged to his friend, who was never deported, and that he knew nothing of them. He was headed back to the Mexican state of Chihuahua to be with family. Another man I met was married to an Anglo woman in rural southern Utah. They had children together, and due to a dispute with his father-in-law that he would not elaborate upon, he ended up getting deported. He spoke English extremely well. Still another man worked as an auto mechanic just down the street from where I live in Phoenix.
In this day and age when information travels the world in milliseconds and goods and services are traded daily, nobody should have to leave their homeland to be able to support their family. There have been economic migrants from the beginning of humankind, but in our hemisphere this has intensified in recent years with the globalization of our economies. We saw one small way that people can stay in their homeland and still provide for themselves and their families, and we met people who went to the US in search of a better life, only to end up back home or somewhere else. Admittedly, they are not all perfect humans. And not every Mexican (or Pole) dreams of moving to the US, nor feels the need. Clearly the men I met had a spirit of adventure as well. And at no point did I feel threatened or unsafe, nor did I feel that anyone deported that I met had the slightest thought of doing harm to others.
No comments:
Post a Comment