Common ground

Today was my last day at the clinic in Anapra. It feels so easy to be welcomed into another’s world, especially with the barriers of language broken down and a mild understanding of culture. I am free on a number of levels to come and go, move fluidly between my world and theirs and always, at the end of the day, step back into a more comfortable place.

Really though, as I waited in the long, hot border line home today with the sky soaring overhead and a metal fence protruding from a random patch of desert, I thought about how arbitrary this border was, about all the things it cannot contain or divide: sky, wind, natural ecosystems, love, hate, people (they’ll come no matter what) and the human connection. The desert looks exactly the same on both sides of the border, the common ground we’re all standing on. We all feel the heat, breathe the same air and get dusty when the wind blows. We’re all subjected to the same rainstorms, which fall without discretion at this time of year.

And yet, clearly, this construct has very real consequences. I heard Anapra referred to today, lovingly if possible, as “One of the ugliest places in the country.” I had to laugh, and agree that that was true. It is a pretty desolate-looking place – garbage strewn everywhere, dirt roads, everything seeming to be broken down, abandoned and in ruins. Even topically, it is a world away from the verdant cotton and pecan fields of New Mexico, irrigated by local government so that life grows for acres. Below Anapra's surface, I would venture to say that the region’s political and social realities are not ill-depicted by the town's image. One of the women at the clinic reported today, for example, that over the weekend a family was on their way to downtown Juarez to buy things for their daughter’s quincinera (15th birthday) when, misunderstanding a soldier’s signal, they proceeded to drive through a checkpoint. The soldiers “sprayed the car with bullets,” killing the girl whose birthday was to be celebrated. Another woman said that yesterday, a childhood friend of hers and his younger brother were shot and killed in the neighborhood. She heard shots, went up the street and saw his body. He was trying to get out of the narcotic life he’d gotten into, and his thirteen-year old brother just happened to be with him. Another woman recounted how she was downtown with her children this weekend and they were playing outside at a park. Her kids came running inside when they heard shots ring out in the air. What amazed her, she said, was how she could feel their hearts pounding in their chest. Slowly, after a short time, they returned outside to play. Sure enough, someone had been shot a few blocks away. It’s been reported that priests are being threatened not to hold funerals for the deceased, or rivals will show up and start shooting at the funeral.

As incredulous as it sounds, these are just the stories I heard today, reported by a small group of individuals. There are many, many more untold, here and around the world.

I’ve often asked people since being here what they believe it will take for the violence to stop. Today, I think I received one of the most far-sighted answers to date: “A generation of kids who grow up and are sick of the violence, and refuse not to participate in it.” An entire generation that has been sacrificed to violence, victims of a situation they could not possibly have had any hand in creating.

Years and years and years from now, perhaps we’ll find a way to love ourselves out of this, up and over the things that keep us divided.