What I learned This Week

This week, for the second time in twenty years I was called to the hot, dusty, and controversial Rio Grande Valley in Texas on a mission.

I first traveled to the “Valley” in 1992, full of energy and prepared to join others in tackling the alarming growth of HIV/AIDS in that area of our country. Soon after my arrival we formed a team of dedicated Mexican-American educators and medical personnel who provided information and care to group of people previously shunned by family, friends, and medical providers. Four years into the project, I turned my team over to a new source of energy; and drove, for what I thought would be the last time, up the long, lonely and empty highway from Harlingen to Houston and then on to Florida.

This week, 22 years later, I was called to the hot, dusty, and controversial Rio Grande Valley on a very different kind of mission – a fact-finding mission. This week I traveled to the Valley to learn more about the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding as thousands of people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador flood across US borders seeking refuge from the violence imposed upon their countries by drug cartels and gangs.

Astonishingly nothing much has changed in the Valley. It is still hot and dusty. It is still controversial. It is still inhabited primarily by Mexicans. While the rest of America has re-built, modernized, and upgraded itself to a shiny new technological reality, the Rio Grande Valley remains a tribute to its original builders – exactly the same.

As I visited with Valley residents and drove through neighborhoods that had once been my home, I remembered how much I had loved living in this old-fashioned dustbowl inhabited by large, fun-loving, and deeply passionate families. I recalled the love that my staff had for their very sick and frequently dying clients. I understood more clearly than ever that my four years in the Valley had planted a seed of spiritual awareness in me that led ultimately to my ordination to the diaconate in the Episcopal Church.

Washed over with memories and many emotions, I proceeded through a three-day journey of fact-finding. I stayed on track.

Most of what I learned, I already knew. The majority of these fleeing people – men, women and children – will be returned home where they will face more violence and possible death. Some will be granted safe passage and will end up throughout this country with family, or friends, or alone. Those who are granted asylum will, for the most part remain illegal. They will live in poverty, without sufficient education or economic opportunity, as will their children and their children’s children. This cannot be good. It can only lead to a socially and economically dysfunctional subculture.

Others will enter our country without sanction. Young men and adult men trained and hardened by gangs and drug cartels - men whose sole purpose is a life of crime and violence.

Yet others will enter as modern day slaves. Women and children who will be used and abused for economic profit – sold as day laborers or sexual playthings. These individuals will find their journey’s end in “stash houses” and brothels.

These are not positive outcomes for anyone – those who flee; or those on whose shores they land. As this human tragedy unfolds, there are no easy answers – perhaps there are no answers. We watch, we imagine that we can help – but how? If we are lucky we find a small area of service into which we can insert ourselves – gently, lovingly – realistically.

That brings me to what I did learn this week. I learned that humanitarian aid is hard to deliver. It is not easy to determine who is who and who needs what. It is not easy for just a few to coordinate attending to the needs of many. It is not easy to communicate across cultures – not only ethnic cultures but also religious, professional, and political cultures. It is not easy to watch people suffer and not be of much help.

Most importantly, as I watched a team of volunteers helping several mothers with children in tow complete paperwork, select clean clothing, and head for their first shower in many days, I learned something else – something that I already knew. I learned the same thing I knew 22 years ago when I first arrived in the Valley to care for people living with AIDS. It is the same thing that I have known for so many years. It is the one thing that has brought me to where I am today. It is what Jesus taught every step of the way as he journeyed to Jerusalem and the cross.

This week I learned, yet once again, how stunningly healing care delivered with unconditional love can be.     -------------  The Rev. Clelia Pinza Garrity