Street roots
Jan. 23, 2009
Martha Gies is the
author of "Up All
Night/ a portrait
of Portland told
through the
stories of 23 people
who work
graveyard shift. In
Veracruz, Gies leads
an annual
writing program
called Traveler's
Mind; at home in
Portland, she
teaches at The
Attic Writers'
Workshop.
BORDERING, from page 1
Or, if you don’t have all that paperwork
or an aptitude for red tape, or if someone
at the Consulate doesn’t like your looks,
you turn tail and head back to rural
Guanajuato. Unless you have the dough to
start shopping for a smuggler - called a
coyote or pollero - to lead you across.
Whether you live through it or not, you’re
going to owe at least three grand.
And if you make it to the Christmas tree
farms or food processing plants of the
Willamette Valley, you’ll be stuck. You’ll be
able to wire money home, but you won’t
be able to return to watch the children
grow up, because they won’t grow up if
you don’t stay here and keep sending
those wires.
It’s a catch-22.
Yet it benefits everyone — except the 7
million Mexican workers who are here
illegally.
The Bracero Program (1942-64),
permitted Mexican men to come to the
U.S. legally to work and, having earned a
bundle — much like our own boys did in
the Alaska fishing
industry — return
home to their
families in Mexico,
perhaps for three
months over
Christmas, perhaps
for good.
Originally enacted
during World War II,
when the U.S was
fighting in Europe
and the South
Pacific, the Bracero
Program ensured an
adequate supply of
agricultural and
railroad workers.
The U.S. actually
Hear John Gibler,
above, read from
"Mexico
Unconquered,"
Friday, Feb. 6
at 7:30 p.m.
Powell's City of
Books, 1005 W
Burnside
You can talk to
Beth Poteet about
joining the New
Sanctuary
Movement at 503-
550-3510. Or travel
with her to Mexico
to learn about how
NAFTA has put 2
million corn farmers
out of work. Learn
more at
witnessforpeace.org
to send a workforce
to keep the farms and canneries and
freight cars running, the tracks in good
repair.
The repeal of the Bracero program, in
1964, was not designed to eliminate a
Mexican work force - and it didn’t - but
rather to give growers complete power
over a labor force that was dangerously
close to organizing: César Chavez founded
the National Farm Workers Association in
1962. The early ’60s also saw several new
specialized mechanical harvesters on the
market, along with the first maquiladoras
— over-the-border factories built to take
advantage of cheap labor with no
environmental or workplace protections,
The Bracero program had been a
humane way for Mexican men to keep
food on the table without paying the price
they pay now: by coming to the U.S. they
lose everything worth paying for in the
first place — family, home, culture, church,
music, language, the silent land and the
very stars.
Today, on both sides of the border,
there are people speaking out about these
injustices, people writing about the
problem and companioning the workers,
the poor, who endure it as a fact of life.
“This is the land of stolen futures; the
land of stolen families, stolen villages; this
is the land of the eviscerated present,
where possibilities hang dry and collapsed
in the air, still visible, haunting,
unattainable: here all paths lead through
the desert, across an invisible line drawn
in the heat, into another world — a world
known here as “el otro lado,” the other
side — a world where survival implies at
least tacit acceptance of the law of
transnational apartheid,” writes John
Gibler, author of an important new book
on Mexico. “No one is spared.”
“Our three main goals,” says Beth
Poteet, speaking as coordinator of Oregon
New Sanctuary Movement, “are to change
hearts and minds, to be ready to respond
to immediate needs, and to really start to
change immigration policy.”
Gibler, 35, is an activist, an author and
U.S. citizen whose new book, “Mexico
Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and
Revolt,” was just released by City Lights.
For the last several years, using Mexico
City as a base, he’s been roaming around
the country writing about the trouble
spots he is irresistibly drawn to - Chiapas,
Oaxaca, Ateneo, Juarez. His book
eloquently and movingly answers the
question: Why do they come here?
Poteet, who graduated from Spokane’s
Whitworth College in 2001, settled in
Portland four years ago and began
volunteering with Witness for Peace. The
following year, she went on staff 30 hours
a week as the WFP Northwest organizer.
Founded in 1983, Witness for Peace was
a prayerful response to the discouraging
news that the U.S. government was
financing the Contras in their fight against
the revolutionary Sandinistas in
Nicaragua. WFP sent thousands of peace
activists from many different religious
groups to witness the CIA-directed
warfare in Nicaragua and to accompany
the people in their struggle. Since then,
WFP has also developed programs of
See BORDERING, page 5
Recently deported
migrants eat lunch
at a Catholic soup
kitchen in Nogales,
Sonora.
PHOTO: COURTESY
JOHN GIBLER