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Border Solidarity & Safety
from International Project Coordinator, Mauren Casey
June 26, 2009

The news from Juarez, Mexico has been consistently bad over the last year: murders (more than 1,100 dead), kidnapping, robbery. Drug wars and impunity.

Labor-Religion Border Witness delegations have been traveling to Juarez since 2002. We have friends and colleagues who are living every day in the violence: Betty and Peter, Cristina and her students, the brave organizers of CETLAC and thousands of un-named innocents with whom we long to be in solidarity and accompaniment.

After serious reflection with our Border Partner West Cosgrove, we decided NOT to have our February 2009 delegation cross from El Paso into Juarez. The risk, with the rule of law in tatters and Mexican military presence everywhere, just seemed too great.

How did this delegation experience the Border reality and NAFTA’s impact on Mexico? West reached out and we were welcomed by a new (for us!) Border community: Palomas. Palomas is about seventy miles west of El Paso and has had its own share of suffering in the drug wars that have convulsed the Border. Until 2008, Palomas was a center for drug smuggling and human trafficking and all their attendant violence. In late 2007, the violence became so bad that the drug lords and their trafficking colleagues left Palomas. We know now that they left for the larger Border cities: Juarez, Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo.

During this time, Palomas has become peaceful. And very, very poor. The small city’s economic base had been illegal, drugs and human smuggling, but lucrative. Now there is no one to eat in the restaurants, to wash their cars, to employ maids and yard workers. The city’s only maquiladora, a furniture factory, has slashed its workforce in response to the U.S. recession.

We were warmly and gratefully welcomed. We listened to stories, heard of horrors, learned a different Border reality than we had learned in Juarez or Matamoros or Reynosa. It is a reality just as true and important as that of those huge maquiladora cities. And it is a reality equally shaped by a global economic system that treats human beings as expendable commodities.

We will continue to visit Palomas in the years to come and to build new relationships with people there. We pray for a time when our delegations can return to Juarez and nurture connections there. In the meantime, West visits as often as he can and is still happy to bring both greetings and donations. (Several of Cristina’s students have had to leave high school due to lack of funds). West is also planning a Solidarity Delegation to Juarez in September. Please contact him: westcosgrove@gmail.com for more information.

Please be in touch with Maureen (maureenc@labor-religion.org) to find out more about our Border Witness delegations. And, please pray for the innocent victims of a drug war that is fueled and funded by a U.S. market and fought with weapons smuggled into Mexico from our country.

Last Updated:12/06/2011
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