Blog from El Paso, Texas - 1

Group outside El Paso church

A small group of Columban contacts in Britain is spending Holy Week 2015 on a Columban Mission Exposure Visit to Texas and Mexico, exploring issues around migration. Daniel Hale writes:

Hi from the Columban Mission Centre in El Paso, Texas. El Paso, and its twin city of Juarez south of the border (about a 10-minute heavily fortified walk from here) were founded by a Jesuit priest in 1650. El Paso, the pass to the north, a key trade route, is nestled between two sets of hills, and the desert stretches out beyond the city limits. And it's here that the effects of economic and political decisions made many thousands of miles away have an immediate impact.

Crowded into their small home, we heard Fr Peter Hindes, O.Carm. and Sr Betty Campbell RSM, co-founders of the Tabor House Community, recount their years of work raising awareness of the impact of American foreign and economic policy among the peoples of Latin America. Their home, made by their own hands, sits on a bluff in a poor area of Juarez.

Now in their 80s and 90s, for the last 20 years they have welcomed visitors like us as part of a 'reverse mission' to get people in developed countries to understand more of the reality lived by local people. They continue their work listening to the testimonies of the people of Juarez. Out in the yard, Sr Betty has a memorial wall upon which she invites us to write the names of men and women disappeared or murdered over the last bloody 20 years.

Free trade agreements and the structural reforms they accompanied failed to lift many out of poverty, they argue, and increased the stakes for those who would capture the wealth that was generated. This drove an epidemic of violence in the city, with up to 300 murders a month. 15,000 people died, and are still dying, though in smaller numbers.

Few investigations are undertaken, few people get justice. Sr Betty's simple memorial seems to be the only place of recognition of the loss of life.

Back at the Columban Mission Centre in El Paso we were treated to tacos by Elizabeth, an undocumented migrant. After her son witnessed a murder in Juarez, she and her family were targeted by 12 men with AK47s. She was shot five times. After four months in hospital, she made a full recovery. Her brother and her sister in law were not so lucky. Frightened for her life, she fled with her husband and grand-daughter to the States. Sitting in front of me, her story starts to hit home.

The names on Betty's makeshift memorial include Elizabeth's family too. Elizabeth, stranded in a country that doesn't want her, lives everyday the impact of decisions that lack compassion and justice.