Adaptation: Our Other Selves

Dear Family & Friends:

I am writing with a bit of sad news today – the Clinica Guadalupana (where I was originally volunteering) closed this Thursday due to lack of funding. Negotiations are underway that the clinic might be taken over by a larger organization, but if that happens it will most likely not be for a few months. The closing of the Guadalupana is a loss for the community it serves. Geographically, they are located in a remote area without other non-profit clinics nearby. Healthcare-wise, they currently serve over 1,000 patients, more than 60% of whom do not have health insurance.

I have still been going to the clinic to help with what I can and have been awarded a glimpse of life there. Much needs to be done quickly to prepare patients for the gap they’ll face in coverage, namely copying medical records and making sure their medication supplies will last. As I watch the women at the clinic work tirelessly towards a goal that is impossible to meet, I am moved by their true compassion and generosity of self. Though staff members just found out last week they would soon be without work, I’ve heard no bitterness or anger. Instead, the air at the clinic is one of genuine worry about where their patients will get their medication (most of whom cannot afford it) and where they will go for care. You see, the Guadalupana is not merely a clinic – it’s a site of community. Patients I've spoken with have literally gushed in sadness and love when they realize the clinic is closing. I saw almost immediately where they were coming from. “It’s not a place for people who just want a job,” Sister Peggy remarked. “We’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work. The people who work there are really special. Annette (the clinical manager) carries people through the health care system.”

She carries them.

The women of the clinic are not simply administrators and receptionists – they are teachers who educate about basic health care within the context of their patients’ lives; they are advocates who navigate and bargain their way through a complex, profit-driven system for those who can’t do it themselves; they are bridges between complicated medical realities the equally but differently complex lives of the poor; they are cultural and linguistic brokers, crossing barriers and ferrying information in English and Spanish and all their implications. It is no wonder one woman began to cry when she came in to pick up her record. For patients without access to private healthcare insurance, the closing of the clinic is a safety net lost.

The Clinica Guadalupana

I have an image of the parting the Red Sea, immeasurably large and threatening walls of water held back as people somehow pass through unharmed. Like the women of the clinic and its patients, I have to believe all will come out safely on the other side… perhaps in a new and different place, and perhaps after some time has passed, but neither forgotten nor forsaken in their moments of immense vulnerability. What else is there to hope for?

I went to a Mass last night in downtown El Paso, presided over by local bishops and held in honor of a 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed by the Border Patrol last month. It was later shown that the boy was not armed, carried no drugs and had no criminal record. The mass was also held in response to the general increase of violence along the border, as unfortunately the boy’s case was not an isolated one. Factors behind this may include but are not limited to: the economic crisis and increased desperation to cross, increased hostility towards the “other,” as we all feel the panic of recession, and/or increasingly aggressive legislative efforts and military presence along the border (see: NYTimes: Governors Voice Grave Concerns on Immigration for a timely look at these issues). Whatever the reason, everyone feels the tension.

What comes to mind for me is chaos – large scale, overwhelming chaos that makes its presence known in the inane but constant moments of utter randomness: the prying, distrustful questions at the border that day, patrol agents watching over the Mass from a bridge, a machine gun poking out from a sand-bag barricade, immigration papers rejected, accepted, shuffled and lost for years, a mother and two-year-old daughter who leave and don’t return home, a district prosecutor gunned down in her car, the 23-year-old who did it, a car bomb exploding in Juarez last night at the scene of a police shooting. Perhaps it is the element of chronic unpredictability that makes collective violence so harmful to the human spirit. In a state of constant fear, who can be expected to thrive?

What I have learned with certainty is that we are each other’s proverbial neighbors. No matter how high the fences between us, nor the laws that say it is acceptable to deny another help, we are bound unmistakably to one another and, I happen to believe, especially to the poor. As long as our lifestyles and consumerism stand on the shoulders of the oppressed, a part of ourselves is also oppressed. Our lives, our goods, our health care, come at the cost of human dignity in many parts of the world. My hands are no cleaner than the next well-intentioned American's, of course, but sometimes it is about simply remembering that fact. I suppose we do the little we can – stay informed, recycle when possible, be kind towards just one other person, but we also have to stay grounded in the big picture. Doing so, I believe, presents a constant invitation (and perhaps moral imperative for those coming from a faith perspective) to work to change unjust structures. When the last remaining safety nets are removed, who will catch us if not those who are nearby, who are more able? If some of us are falling through, we're all falling through.

A Mayan phrase used in the homily on Wednesday stated this idea quite simply: “Tu eres mi otro yo.” You are my other self.

con amor,

elizabeth