[Oe List ...] 11/18/10, Spong: Viewing Life and History on the American-Mexican Border

[Ellie Stock]

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Thursday November 18, 2010 

Viewing Life and History on the American–Mexican Border

I went to the United States-Mexico border in mid-October. I wanted to see the context in which so much of the present political debate on immigration is taking place. As with most political debates, I suspected that half-truths had been developed as wedge issues in order to exploit the fears of the people. Immigration is an issue today in almost every developed country of the world. In Germany, Turkish and Moslem immigration, legal and illegal, has grown over the years since World War I. In France, immigrants from Algiers and Morocco have excited and challenged French nationalism. In the United Kingdom, most of the dentists are now Poles and large populations of Indian, African and West Indian citizens of the Empire now are fixtures in this once "Anglo-Saxon" land. In Australia and New Zea land, there is the overt fear that these "Jewels in the Pacific," snatched as they were from aboriginal populations by European settlers, might now be overrun by an Asian tide that surrounds them on every side. Tribal fears are growing and exacerbating the tensions along every national boundary in the Western world. In the United States to the south, we share a 1,000 mile common border with Mexico, a nation of 120 million people, and to the north, we share a common border of over 5,000 miles with Canada (including Alaska) with a nation of 33 million people. For a number of reasons, among which are sheer numbers, differences in economic development and job opportunity, complex and historical relationships, common language and far more than most of us are willing to admit, a consistent and latent racism, the Mexican boundary is the one about which the immigration emotions flow in the United States. No one today is advocating that we build a protective fence across the Cana dian border or beef up armed border patrols at Canadian cross points. So I went to the Mexican border to see what "illegal immigration" looks like in that setting.
The border between the United States and Mexico is marked by the Rio Grande River (or at least that is what it is called in the United States. It is the Rio Bravo in Mexico). This river is America's fifth largest, yet it is only navigable for seaworthy ships for a few miles inland from where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Only barges, rafts and small individual craft are seen on its waters further inland. This 1,885 mile long river originates in the mountains of southwest Colorado at a Rocky Mountain height of 12,000 feet above sea level, from which it begins its journey through New Mexico, past Santa Fe and Albuquerque until finally entering Texas at El Paso and then it flows another 1,000 miles, with Mexico on one side and the United States on the other, until it reaches Brownsville, Texas, where it enters the Gulf of Mexico. There are places along this river like the Santa Elena Gorge in which steep mountains on both sides render almost any human passage to be all but impossible. There are also places in this river where the flow of water is so slight that people can step across without leaping. There are paired cities along the river like El Paso and Juarez or Brownsville and Matamoros, where the populations have always been interactive and interdependent both economically and personally. Most people along this border speak both Spanish and English in an adequate way. There are places along this river where cows graze in pastures and they move from one side to the other simply by fording the stream. These cows don't seem to need passports to travel to which ever side would be to these cows a "foreign shore." When we were rafting down the river toward the Santa Elena Gorge, we spotted a calf that was stuck in the river on the Mexican side and unable to extricate itself from either the mud or the water. Without rescue that calf would have drowned. Our guide took our raft to the distressed calf and while one of us held the raft near the shore, he went out of the boat into the river and onto the land pulling the calf to safety and returning it to its mother, who was waiting nearby. It did not occur to us until later that we had illegally invaded Mexico.
As we visited border towns like Presidio in what the Texans call the Big Bend, it was difficult to know whether we were in Mexico or the United States. Both the streets and the towns tended to have Spanish names. The restaurants overwhelmingly served Mexican food and the people on both sides looked, dressed and spoke in a very similar fashion. The border blends far more than it divides and that is a result of history, not geography. The border between Mexico and the United States from Texas to California separates today that part of the Northern Hemisphere that was once all Mexico. That fact, seldom recalled in the American press, caused me to think in a new way about national boundaries.
I listen to "Tea Party" politicians and devotees say and carry signs that proclaim, "We want our country back." I wonder who they thought were its owners and who took it away. North America has no primates, human or ape, that are native to this hemisphere. All human beings in this hemisphere are descendants of immigrants, who came at varying times in the past. The first invaders, who are now called "Native Americans", came across the Bering Straits or what actually may have been a land bridge before the last ice age, at some point about 20,000 years ago. They spread throughout what we now call North and South America, reaching to both poles, building in the process great civilizations and establishing themselves into identifiable tribes or nations in the process. They are the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Pueblos, the Cherokees, the Sioux and others. Yes, they had wars among themselves, but they ultimately settled into identifiable areas and developed unique cultures. They took this land from no one and claimed these hemispheres as their own with no sense that this ownership would ever be challenged.
There were forays into this hemisphere by Viking Europeans perhaps as early as the 11th century A. D., but no settlements of invading Europeans came before the early years of the 16th century. These invaders came primarily from Britain, Holland, France, Germany, Denmark and Spain, and in time they conquered the heretofore native peoples. Canada was French in the east, British in the west. The United States was closely divided between the British, Dutch and the Germans in its early years, but ultimately Britain won out and imposed its life, language and culture on what came to be known as the United States, while Spain and Portugal divided the rest of the hemisphere.
When Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, it included most of what are now the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and California. This area collided with the American expansionist dreams. So first America aided Texas in its bid for independence in 1836 and then, between 1846 and 1848, this nation fought Mexico and, in victory, forced Mexico to cede all of the territory from Texas to California. This was the moment when the Rio Grande, previously a river running through the middle of Mexico, became instead the dividing line between the United States and Mexico. This means that Mexico lost about half of the land that formed its nation. Like the division of Germany into east and west portions or Korea into North and South after World War II, families were divided. Mexicans on this side of the Rio Grande became citizens of the United States, but cultural and family ties with their kin people in Mexico were not terminated and at what was for them an artificial border they went back and forth constantly. The border has always been porous with American businesses having both encouraged and exploited Mexican workers as a source of cheap labor ever since. America's fruit and vegetable industries, its hotel and restaurant industries and its construction industries that have built the great cities of the west from Houston to San Diego, have all knowingly depended on illegal, immigrant labor. Now, however, tribal, protectionists' fears are high, as they always are during times of financial stress and economic downturn, so we have become anxious about "aliens" and want to contain and punish the very people upon whom we continue to depend. It is impossible to police a 1,000-mile common boundary. There are no fences tall enough to stop illegal immigration. The way forward is not to pretend that we can, but to help the Mexican government stabilize that country and to grow the Mexican economy. As long as there a re insufficient jobs available in Mexico for its burgeoning population, coupled with the desire of American business leaders to maximize profits by using cheap and available labor, illegal immigration will occur. The political desire not to reward illegal behavior with citizenship is both interesting and irrational, because all of our European ancestors were themselves illegal immigrants, who forced their way into this country.
The ultimate problem of population control in the whole world is another factor that must also be addressed before the immigration problem can be solved. Finite natural resources cannot sustain infinite population expansion. Family planning and effective birth control are moral imperatives. Unless population growth is stopped, the standard of living of the well-to-do nations is destined to drop and the presence of illegal immigrants on the borders of these developed lands will not diminish and irresponsible politicians will continue to exploit tribal anxieties for their own political gain. These tactics will not solve the immigration problem. If American employers were required to pay full wages and benefits for all of its workers, the willingness to hire illegal immigrants would disappear, but the price of most things would also rise. No politician will face these facts when one can win elections by talking about building fences instead. A trip along the Rio Grande wi ll convince any rational observer that illegal immigration cannot and will not be stopped until the systemic problems of greed and over population are addressed. The sad thing is no politician who addresses greed and over population will ever be elected. 

– John Shelby Spong
 




Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong


Don Tyler from Gallatin, Tennessee writes: 
After reading Jesus for the Non–Religious, and the origins of Mark in your weekly emails, I'm confused. As I understand it, Mark 14–18:8 would have been read in the synagogue on the Sabbaths between Passover and Hanukkah; chapter (maybe the first 8 verses of 16 on Passover?) 9:1–13 on Hanukkah: 5:1–8:38 on the 7–9 Sabbaths between Hanukkah and Sukkoth; chapter 4 during the 8-day Sukkoth festival; 3:17–35 on the Sabbaths between Sukkoth and Yom Kippur; chapter 2 and the first half of 3 on Yom Kippur (that sounds like a lot, should it be spread out more?); 1:16–45 on the Sabbaths between Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah and 1:1–15 on Rosh Hashanah. Is that right? But there wasn't a reading for Shavuot (Pentecost). What is read then?
Don Tyler from Gallatin, Tennessee writes: 
After reading Jesus for the Non–Religious, and the origins of Mark in your weekly emails, I'm confused. As I understand it, Mark 14–18:8 would have been read in the synagogue on the Sabbaths between Passover and Hanukkah; chapter (maybe the first 8 verses of 16 on Passover?) 9:1–13 on Hanukkah: 5:1–8:38 on the 7–9 Sabbaths between Hanukkah and Sukkoth; chapter 4 during the 8-day Sukkoth festival; 3:17–35 on the Sabbaths between Sukkoth and Yom Kippur; chapter 2 and the first half of 3 on Yom Kippur (that sounds like a lot, should it be spread out more?); 1:16–45 on the Sabbaths between Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah and 1:1–15 on Rosh Hashanah. Is that right? But there wasn't a reading for Shavuot (Pentecost). What is read then?



Dear Don, 
No, you don't have it quite correct. The Passion narrative of Mark was read at the observance of Passover, 14:17–15:49. The journey section of Mark 9:20–12:44 would be read between Dedication (Hanukkah) to the month of Nisan. Mark 13–14:1 would be read on the two Sabbaths in Nisan before Passover. Mark opens with readings for Tishri 1 on Rosh Hashanah (1:1–15), which is the Jewish New Year. He moved on to Yom Kippur that comes on Tishri 10 and then moves on to Sukkoth that comes on Tishri 15–22. The passages from Mark 5–9 cover the Sabbaths between Sukkoth and Dedication. There are no readings in Mark for Pentecost or Shavuot because Mark only writes for the Sabbaths between Rosh Hashanah and Passover or 6 1/2 months of the year. That is why both Matthew and Luke expanded Mark to cover the whole year. Matthew's lesson for Shavuot is the Sermon on the Mount, Matt. 5–7 and Luke's lesson for Shavuot is Luke 3:15–22. 
With no knowledge of the liturgical year of the Synagogue, I know that this is confusing material to grasp. I spelled this thesis out in detail in my book, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes. I still regard this book as the most pivotal, ground–breaking book of my career. Jesus for the Non-Religious assumes this prior book. 
I hope this helps. 

– John Shelby Spong






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