Border Hope

The Canal : Reynosa, Mexico from Bedouins International on Vimeo.

[Español]

Less than 15 miles from my house in south Texas, there is a community where people live in shacks with no electricity or running water. It is a shantytown built along the canal that runs through the city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. People bathe in the polluted water and get skin problems as a result. Most of the people moved here from very poor communities in southern Mexico. Unemployment, health and nutrition issues, alcoholism and drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, and despair abound. There is significant prosperity in other parts of Reynosa, just a few miles away. But a Mexican friend who herself grew up in poverty maintains that the conditions in the shantytowns are as bad as you can find anywhere else in Mexico.

On Sunday, May 31, 2009, my new friend Will and I visited this community. We took about 100 sandwiches, about 50 apples, and a bag of carrots. After spending an hour or so slapping together the sandwiches at the pastor’s house (in another part of Reynosa), we arrived at the community, drove down the muddy road along the canal and stopped in front of the little “templo,” one of the only concrete block structures in the area. Attendance was lower than usual, because it had rained, which makes everything muddy. (Kids tend to miss school on such days as well, because they have to walk almost a mile to school.)

Up front the pastor was praying with his hands on the shoulders of a woman and her adult son, who with great emotion were thanking God for the bags of groceries that sat in front of them on a couple of chairs, an offering that I think the other people in this neighborhood church had put together for them–a big box of cereal and similar items. The pastor remarked that the son had eaten only potatoes that week.

At the end we ate together. I sat next to a young couple, Nemesio and Irma, and their 6 week old baby Vilda, if I got the names right. They came from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca about 6 months ago. At some point I asked if they had any land in Oaxaca. He chuckled, said no, and remarked, “We have nothing!” Afterwards we continued talking to folks, and skipped rocks on the canal with José, a boy maybe 11 or so years old, who had no shoes.

My family and I had visited this community a handful of times before. My wife and I and other friends talked at length with Pastor Juan, the pastor of the “templo,” about the community’s needs and ways to help. Pastor Juan enthusiastically supported an idea my wife proposed: Bring sandwiches or other food each week for a fellowship dinner after the afternoon church service. By networking among churches and other contacts on both sides of the border, I’m hoping to form a team to do that. The aim will be to build relationships, get to know needs and opportunities, and get more eyes and ears and brains praying and working together toward constructive solutions.

John, the pastor of the church my family and I recently began attending on the Texas side (where Will also attends) is very supportive of this effort, and hopes others in the church will get involved. John and Will and others in the church have agricultural and appropriate technology expertise that might eventually be brought to bear.

The powerful and informative video above, 6 minutes long and used with permission, will give you an idea of what this community is like. You really gotta see it. It was produced by some guys from Alabama who stayed for a week with a family further down the canal. As the video says, people come here looking for a gateway to opportunity, only to find themselves stuck in a dead end.

But are teams such as those mentioned in the video, who come from far away, do short visits, bring a pot of stew, and build a few houses, and then return home, a sufficient answer in and of themselves? What can be done to form lasting personal relationships locally, and thereby connect people from marginalized communities like this with local resources (education, ideas, vision, capital, mentorship, etc.) for ongoing empowerment?

Hopefully Will’s and my visit was a small start that can be built upon. Will you help us?

Steve