Street roots., January 23, 2009, Page 5, Image 5

Street roots
Jan. 23.2009
BORDERING, from page 4
peace and solidarity in Colombia, Cuba,
Mexico and Venezuela.
Gibler’s investigations in Mexico were
supported by Global Exchange, which gave
him a fellowship for two-and-a-half years to
serve as a correspondent, inserting into
the U.S. consciousness some of the hard
realities of life in post-NAFTA Mexico. He
made good on their investment by
reporting for Democracy Now! and
publishing in Z Magazine, among others.
His new book shows the range of his
investigations: he has devoured the work of
other writers, from Charles Bowden on the
drug trade, Noam Chomsky and Fanon and
Galeano on colonialism, Robin Hahnel on
the global economy, and Subcomandante
Marcos on the ongoing adjustments to
Zapatista policy and practice. Gibler’s 12-
page bibliography in “Mexico
Unconquered” is as good a reading list on
Mexico as you could find.
Poteet, without ceasing her WFP work,
was one of the first volunteers with the
Oregon New Sanctuary Movement in 2007.
Nationally, the Sanctuary Movement was
just getting underway, inspired by Cardinal
Roger Mahony, after he announced that
the Los Angeles archdiocese would
continue to provide humanitarian aid to
people, irrespective of their legal status, in
defiance of House Bill HR4437, designed
to turn undocumented aliens into
untouchables.
When Poteet volunteered to work with
this new movement, the first order of
business was to get the word out to
Portland-area faith communities. The idea
was to give them time for individual
reflection on the Gospel foundation of
offering hospitality, as Jesus did, to all
people, even society’s cast-offs. However,
before Poteet and colleagues Sarah Loose
and Marco Mejia could get outtospeak
with very many groups, U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (aptly, ICE)
forced their hand.
On June 12, 2007, ICE raided Portland’s
Del Monte Fresh Produce plant and
arrested 165 workers. Molt were hauled
off to the federal detention facility in
Tacoma, but 30 special cases, most of
them women alone with young children,
were processed here in Portland and
allowed to remain, tagged with monitoring
wristbands and waiting immigration
hearings. Catholic Charities Immigration
Legal Services, with many other lawyers
and legal groups pitching in, coordinated
assistance to frantic family members.
For the moment, thoughtful reflection
on the meaning of sanctuary was
suspended as Poteet and New Sanctuary
Movement volunteers rallied religious
people to help with clothing, shelter, food
and comfort to the “women of the
bracelet” who had been left behind to care
for their children - though forbidden to
work.
This story does not converge. Gibler is
on a book tour, talking with people about
Mexico’s critical issues - drugs, torture,
feminicide, hunger, and the wealth built on
slavery - while Poteet, now on staff 15
hours per week with the sanctuary
movement here, is doing outreach to more
churches, synagogues and mosques in
D f SIERTO
MM
H
&
Entran muerta a mujer
i
cadáveres
res en desierto
XU
land now called
"The conquest never
finished, but evolved and
transformed from Spanish
imperialism into an
internal colonialism
combined with forms of
economic domination
imposed by the United
States."
finding help?
Dial 2-1-1
Mexico (and.
throughout the
Americas) meant to
be frozen in the grip
PHOTO BY JOHN GIBLER
of hunger, trapped in
Recently deported migrant waits for a meal at a Nogales shelter.
the condition of lack,
Behind him, newspapers tell of migrant deaths in the desert.
to be children of an
emaciated culture
who
by their very
poverty ideologies
Portland, building a stronger network of
nature and
as
catechisms
for
people who can help.
constitution were
converting and
“We are still walking with the women
seen as deficient and
dominating
the
still
— JOHN GIBLER IN HIS NEW BOOK,
from the Del Monte raid,” Poteet points
thus simply destined
»MEXICO UNCONQUERED.»
uncolonized sectors
out, though their numbers are down to 12.
to wade through
of the population,
“They are public and they have
centuries of want and
both indigenous and
immigration court hearing dates,” she
suffering. Imperial domination has from its
nonindigenous, from the Zapatista rebels
says. She works to line up people who will
beginning and through its evolution
in Chiapas to the Raramuri in Chihuahua,
drive women to their court appearances,
depended upon naturalizing in one way or
from Mexico City Street vendors to the
and she continues to provide education in
another the horror visited upon the
teachers of Oaxaca. Second, precisely due
faith communities. “To look at what are
subjects of domination - “inferior” races,
to the neocolonial character of internal
the poor trapped in cycles of poverty - to
some immigration principles that we all
processes of exploitation, exclusion, and
be indigenous has meant to be forgotten,
agree on,” as she puts it
repression in Mexico, compounded by a
at best, or to be seen as an animal locked
On Gibler’s book tour, he steers people
deep and continuing history of United
outside the considerations of ethics, at
to start with Mexico’s history. His first
States military, political, and economic
worst.”
chapter, “The Historical Continuity of
interventions in Mexico, resistance
Since we are not about to bring back the
Conquest and Revolt” is a brilliant bit of
movements take on an anticolonial
Bracero program nor legalize drugs - both
redaction th at culminates in the two
dimension that challenges and threatens
of which would immediately ease suffering
the legitimacy of the fundamental tenets of
arguments of his book:
in Mexico - how about this: let’s make it
“First the conquest never finished, but
the state and leads to bold, creative,
as hard to move to Baja or Lake Chapala,
massive, and energetic social participation.
evolved and transformed from Spanish
where boomers love to retire, as it is to get
Mexico’s class war is a fight against the
imperialism into an internal colonialism
to the ConAgra plant in Kennewick, where
ongoing conquest, a social struggle for
combined with forms of economic
there might be a job making french fries.
dignity and autonomy.”
domination imposed by the United States.
We already have the fence.
“
Mexico
Unconquered
”
consists
of
three
Mexico’s political class uses various
nationalist economic, rule-of-law, and
211 info
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different kinds of texts. Gibler the scholar
reads, chews and synthesizes historical
material, as above; Gibler the journalist
interviews people. I particularly enjoyed
the fifth- and sixth-graders from
Guadalupe, Guanajuato, who answer his
questions about migration, and I was
overwhelmed reading the interview with
Gloria Arenas Agis, the guerrilla who now,
after so much struggle, lives out her days
in prison; and Gibler the activist shares a
recipe for washing tear gas from one’s
eyes.
By May, when Gibler is back in Mexico
(having toured San Francisco, Oakland,
Berkeley, Portland, Seattle and Austin),
Poteet (wearing her 30-hour-per-week
Witness For Peace hat) will be leading a
WFP “Migrant Trail Walk," where
participants can talk with community
activists and teachers in Oaxaca, and
accompany migrants on their final
day crossing the Arizona desert. To
prepare the delegation for this 12-day trip,
Poteet could assign nothing better than
Gibler’s book.
In the Yucatan earlier this month, I was
astonished to hear an American ex-pat
argue that the presidency of Vicente Fox
(2000-06) had been great for Mexico. A bit
snappish, perhaps, I pointed out that,
during that same period nearly half a
million people were forced to flee Mexico
every year, driven out by hunger.
“Oh well,” she responded glibly, “all the
Canadians and Americans are coming
down here, so we’re just changing places."
The detail she missed: in Mexico she
and her friends are not hunted like dogs.
Is that too harsh, “hunted like dogs”?
Consider this final reflection, again
Gibler’s:
“Since the arrival of the Spanish, to be
■ indigenous in the
W
u Ba B
Si B
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