Border Trip Day 3: Learning About the Community From the Locals

On Sunday, May 8, we went to church. It is a church trip after all. St. Stephen's Episcopal Church stands on the only block in the US that has a church on all four corners (the others are Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist, I believe). It's a lot of Protestant churches in one place for a town of maybe 20,000, of whom 90% are Latino. The churches are nice old facilities, presumably built by Phelps Dodge, or whatever iteration of the mining company it was at the time. Seth Pollie is the vicar of both the Episcopal parish in Douglas, where he is the celebrant at the 9 a.m. service, and at the parish 23 miles away in Bisbee, where he is the celebrant at the 11 a.m. service. One look at Seth and you can tell he is not a Roman Catholic priest, accessorizing his collar with earrings and a pony tail. After the eucharistic service, we had a roundtable discussion with members of the community about life where they live - in Douglas and Agua Prieta. Had I known they were making us a full lunch buffet at 10:15, I wouldn't have loaded up at the Best Western's breakfast bar right before the 9 a.m. church service. But when people come for a visit in Douglas, this is what they do - cook.

Only about 15 people attended St. Stephen's this Sunday. I imagine this is normal. Those in attendance included the Chief of Police, a doctor or two, people who were new to the area, people who had grown up in the area, and people who returned to the area for its strong sense of community after years of living in big cities. A woman who had lived in Douglas for 66 years (since she was 4 years old) spoke of how the community changed from the days when the border was almost non-existent. She had a nanny for her children who was from "across the line". She drove her home one night, and realized she had house plants in the back of her car. Realizing that she would not be allowed back into the US with her houseplants if she drove them into Mexico, she left the plants at the border station with a guard. When she returned a short time later, another guard was working, and kindly helped her put the plants back into her car. It was that kind of casual, friendly community. The wall was just a small fence that extended a little bit out of town. One man spoke of having horse races, Mexico vs. the US, alongside the wall. At the time, 50 Border Patrol officers worked in Douglas. Today there are 600.

Alberto Melis is a Cuban-American who, after many years in law enforcement in Texas, became Chief of Police in Douglas. He referenced the case of rancher Rob Krentz, who was murdered last year on his sprawling ranch (though at 40 square miles, the Krentz ranch is smaller than many, he stated). There is widespread speculation that Krentz was murdered by a coyote (smuggler), although Chief Melis pointed out it has not yet been proven who killed Krentz or why. Chief Melis repeated several times that he did not know what the answer was to immigration or border issues, but he said that a wall is not the answer, in his view. He referenced previous walls, such as the Berlin Wall, more heavily armed than anything on the US border, where people still found a way across. He also pointed out that 20 years ago, the drug smuggling hot spot in the US was Miami, and today it is Arizona, and in a few years, it will likely be somewhere else. According to Melis, the resources spent on protecting our southwestern border are vast, with Border Patrol budgeting $10,000 A MONTH in tires for some vehicles that do heavy duty through the rugged terrain.

The group was not untouched by issues that have arisen related to immigration and the border. A doctor pointed out that, in spite of the walls, people still try to cross, and often end up injured and are transported to local hospitals before they are deported. The hospitals are not crowded by migrants, but nor are they reimbursed a profitable rate for treating such patients. Still, people valued the strong sense of community, including safety. Our priest from Trinity Cathedral who lead our trip said that when she lived in Agua Prieta, people from elsewhere would routinely ask her if she felt safe as a single gringa (foreign woman) living there. She said the biggest safety risk riding her bicycle around town were the stray dogs that would chase after her. And so many people told me when I announced I was going to "be safe", rather than "have fun", "learn lots", etc.

So let's take a look at the statistics for this small community of Douglas, where people walking by on the street say hi, and I felt like the odd man out not knowing anyone else in the local Safeway. A quick search at http://www.city-data.com/, a favorite reference site of mine, shows Douglas's crime rates to be below the national average, much below the average for large cities such as Phoenix or Detroit, and also, on the decline. And aside from what people hear on the news, there is another story to be told of life in border communities in Arizona from a project I worked on a few years ago called Border Kids Count. A study of Census and other data showed border community residents have strong roots, with homeownership rates similar to the rest of the state in spite of lower incomes. The drop-out rate for Latino teens in about half in border counties compared to the rest of the state. Foreign-born residents are more likely to be US citizens in border counties, and are more likely to have lived in Arizona for more than 10 years. And while a lack of economic development means slightly higher poverty rates for Latinos on the border, Anglos kids are 37% more likely to be in poverty than Anglo kids in the rest of AZ, showing that a lack of economic development hits a broad cross section of the community.

After church, we departed for a brief stop in Bisbee, lunch in Benson, and back to the Valley of the Sun. Bisbee is an old mining town that was hit hard econically, like Douglas, when the mine closed. Douglas replaced jobs at the smelter with more border patrol jobs, a state prison, and the various retail jobs from Agua Prieta residents coming across the border to shop at Wal-Mart and elsewhere. Bisbee, meanwhile, was taken over by hippies and artists, who loved the narrow, winding streets and turn-of-the-last-century buildings climbing up the steep hillside. See the bumpersticker photos from Bisbee! Lunch was in Benson at Reb's Cafe. Benson is a different world from Bisbee, being a railroad/truck stop/ranching town. Clearly Reb's Cafe's owners have a conservative/libertarian bent to their politics. All this coexists (usually) peacefully here in Arizona. :-)