“I never even gave the United States much thought,” said José Luís Aguilar Rangel, 38, as he stood over his son’s coffin, which lay next to the coffin of his nephew Horacio. “But Mexico has abandoned us, betrayed us.

“Shame on them,” he said, alluding to authorities he described as too corrupt to ever bring justice or restore faith.

Alfredo Corchado – Dallas Morning News

Colonia Palo Chino is Juarez. It’s a reflection of the whole. It’s a place where shootouts happen and where people die. But more than anything else, more than any other label, Colonia Palo Chino is my neighborhood, my home. It’s where my new family resides, where I’ve spent most of the past 1 1/2 years of my life, had my most difficult battles and made it through more than I ever thought I could handle. It’s because I see God in every face and I feel the rumblings of Hope, the vibrations of Zion, the unforced rhythms finding there way to my spirit.

This is Juarez. Families. Boys and girls, young dreamers believing that anything is possible.

This is Juarez. Beauty in every face.

“When we look squarely at injustice and get involved, we actually feel less pain, not more, because we overcome the gnawing guilt and despair that festers under our numbness. We clean the wound–our own and others’–and it can finally heal.”

~Desmund Tutu

Clouds of fire descend on my city,
dismantle the tension of the darkness,
silence the night-howling.

Let the rain fall, swirling
clouds of glory over our heads,
silky rich in their elegant garments
brushing the faces of your weary children.

Burn away the thoughtless greed.
Scatter the enemy, mice
underfoot a lion.
Trembling vibrations of Zion.
Kingdom vibrations.

Story – Juarez Party Shooting

“We don’t play at the cantinas anymore because it is too dangerous. We do two funerals a day instead,” said musician Jose del Villar at the San Rafael cemetery after serenading a grieving widow, a black accordion strapped to his chest.

But residents have little hope. The only thing that the military presence has provoked here in Ciudad Juarez is more death.

- Reuters

There is a breathless moment in the early mornings in Ciudad Juarez when the the pink flush of dawn begins to glow on the horizon, bathing the streets in front of our house and the jagged desert mountains to the west in a calm serenity. The broken buildings look warm and uniquely Mexico. The moment is staggering and you have to be there precisely when it happens. Its like surfers describing that green flash of light the instant the sun sets on the ocean’s horizon: you have to be looking for it, you have to go out and meet it. The moment is a connection with purity and goodness, a clarifying burst of beauty in its undiluted form; it is hope taking the stage, like God’s face being unveiled before us for a millisecond. And for that millisecond, the atmosphere shifts, the air smells different and that flare from another world reminds me that I can go on.

These brushes with the deeper truth are always there, it is just more difficult to experience them within the rush and rumble of my day. I love catching these moments, quiet and alone in the patio, where I am infused with energy and the mountains of my day don’t seem quite so big. I have learned the hard way about being intentional in searching for these glimpses, the galvanizing connections, the intimate glances with God, especially living in a war zone. As I mentioned in Mornings in Juarez, the storm of death, violence and war can be an overwhelming cesspool of filth and residue that clings to my soul if I do not approach it from a centered perspective, God’s perspective. Otherwise I get trapped in the enormity of the statistics and the hopelessness, and spend the rest of my day buried under a pile of garbage, burdened and weary.

“Lost in the rain in Juarez…” Over 14,000 people have died in the last 3 years since Vicente Calderon stepped in as President of Mexico. 14,000 people. That’s over twice as many coalition soldiers that have died in the nearly 10 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The problems of Mexico and Ciudad Juarez are insurmountable if we go at them alone. We must approach them together, as family. Unfortunately, staring intentionally into the face of misery cannot be done casually, and sometimes it will spit right back in your face. It requires commitment, endurance and community. The deprivations of the earth are far too great for any one man to conquer.

Like most new and unfamiliar challenges, I had no bearing, no paradigm for what I was getting into by moving to Juarez. I remember my good friend Mike explaining that this was going to be the hardest thing that Misty and I had ever done in our lives. “Yeah, I know.” I told Mike. I had no idea what the (censored) I was talking about. I had no idea that just a few weeks after we moved to Juarez the tide of violence would surge up the sun-baked desert sand and pool in my new city. Nor did I anticipate that my entire being would meld to this city, in the midst of this wildfire, and that an outcast border town, with its trash and blood, would win my heart. The desert has changed how I live, how I respond to the needs around me. Ciudad Juarez is no longer a mysterious dusty smudge on a map or a blurb from a news story, it’s my city.

My spirit craves relief. The desert cries out for liberation. This afternoon is dragging on and the pain in my neck has moved closer to my brain, tender lightning storms brilliant in my skull. I just read about some more people being shot up and down. Another drug rehab place. 18 dead. It’s the 4th Drug rehab center to be attacked this year. Nobody in the business is impervious. There is no escape. No resignation to be placed on the boss’s desk. Ciudad Juarez and her lonely sons and daughters stare into the trash filled streets, the broken down buildings and tyrannizing military convoys. Over 1800 sons and daughters murdered, their blood staining the asphalt and the sidewalks that we walk over. Little girls watching their brothers spill blood out of their skulls, twitching bodies in the gutter. Little boys being shaped by whizzing bullets and the barbaric show that opens each new day in this unbidden drama… (My journal September ‘09)

From the west, Interstate 10 bends around El Paso’s Asarco, an old decaying smelter, and runs teetering over the Rio Grande nearly spilling into Juarez. It might be the most outlandish stretch of highway in the country as it flaunts its flashy curves over one of the poorest neighborhoods in our hemisphere, Anapra, Ciudad Juarez. The air over Juarez is often tainted brown with smoke rising from piles of burning garbage scattered across the city. The decorated mountainside rises in the Southwest with Benito Juarez’s whitewashed face painted on the rocky slopes. He smiles down upon the blighted city. My friends from Juarez say that it is a painting of Homer Simpson. My colonia is holed up directly under his worn out grin.

The distance between El Paso and Juarez is the width of a fence; houses face each other across chasms of self efficacy and the swollen rivers of pride and personal advancement. From above the Borderland is a sea of physical and spiritual poverty; over 2400 people were murdered on the dispirited streets of our city in 2009. El Paso urgently clings to the title of the 2nd safest city in the U.S., while Ciudad Juarez is being drenched in blood. The answers for this madness do not come easily, if at all, as Mexico is one of the most treacherous countries in which to be a journalist. Report the facts that are released by official sources, anything else is a death sentence. “In Mexico it is dangerous to speak the truth. It is even dangerous to know the truth.” (Atlantic December 09)

Sometimes I read through these articles, drifting through the words, the numbers and statistics like they were a grocery list: 2007 there was a record 300+ deaths. In 2008, that record was shattered with over 1600 murders. 2009 stands alone. But the problem with statistics is that they are ambiguous and nearly impossible for my mind to wrap around, and it frightens me that I can so easily ignore it all. So many miserable places in the world, yet most of the time I live spoiled nearly rotten, submerged in my comforts and my catered religion. It is only until I remember that within these statistics there are faces, names, voices; these are real people that have been murdered, flesh and blood, my brothers. “Statistics are human beings with the tears dried off…”

After living for over a year in Juarez I have had some face-offs with theses statistics and numbers, and I have had to make choices about how I am going to respond to them: from fear or from hope. And that is where the crux of living in a culture of despair and resign has been for me. Some days are submerged under the whitewater of a tenacious adversary, but most days the dream I carry for our fledgeling city burns like a hot coal on my tongue, hope coursing through my veins, and it’s hard not to scream out. We see the mess, it’s all around us, but we fight from victory. Darkness will not win. A brighter day is coming…

And now, God, do it again— bring rains to our drought-stricken lives so those who planted their crops in despair will shout hurrahs at the harvest, so those who went off with heavy hearts will come home laughing with armloads of blessing. – Psalm 126

The world is full of miserable places. One way of living comfortably is not to think about them or, when you do, to send money.

Tracy Kidder – Mountains beyond Mountains

Its 5:23 and the alarm on my cell phone is set to sound its melodious tune in 7 minutes, but I have been laying awake for the last 45. The house creeks under the dawn’s warmth. The last couple of nights the desert held its heat, the swamp cooler pumped sticky humid air all night and it feels better to get up than to fight the restlessness. I try to slip out of the room noiselessly, press some coffee, and sit down at the computer. I have a link on my Bookmarks Bar that says “News” and it is loaded with all of the local news sources. I open all of them in tabs and begin ripping through the headlines looking for the dirt. How many dead last night? How many more troops in the city? Anything about Colonia Palo Chino? God, I hope my mom doesn’t read these articles…

I used to do this to myself in the early mornings in Juarez. And as worn out as I am of hearing and reading about the violence in Juarez, I cannot ignore it. But like most miserable places on our planet, it does get ignored, forgotten, lost in the rank pile of ill news that is served up each day on our TVs, computers and kitchen tables. For a time, all I could think about was the war in our new city. I imagined how informed I was on the drug violence as I tore through several books on the subject and searched out new blogs covering the Borderland, Mexico’s cartels, and drugs. I even considered making a cartel time-line and sticking it to the wall; then I would be able to keep pace with the war. I am not sure what that is about me. I have always been a sucker for mobster films, and for  several years I had dreams about sitting down and picking Tarantino’s or Scorsese’s brain over a beer. Although my appetite for those films and stories has weakened significantly since moving to Juarez, something about that life intrigues me. The morning news would trap me in its dark hallways of violence and I could easily sit there for an hour, sipping coffee and reading the grueling details of a horrific history in Mexico, soaking up the bloody articles like a thirsty sponge. Misty stirring in the next room would usually flash me back to reality, bust me out of a dark world and release me to go on about my day. But there was always a filthy residue that would stick to me when I would walk away from that computer, and I would spend the next hours wondering why my spirit was heavy, why I felt so locked up inside.

The more I learned how deeply rooted and ancient the core of this war was that produced so much death in one city, the greater the burden settled on my spirit. It seemed that trying to do a single thing about the violence was like pushing a coal train uphill.

Somewhere along the line I clued in and began to allow God’s perspective to challenge the grime that was surrounding me. However well intentioned my previous pursuit of knowledge about this subject, I have adopted a new frame of mind, a new approach to staying informed about the facts that are so easily overwhelming. I don’t rush to the computer anymore to sift through the news like a ravenous dog, especially first thing in the morning. That may be obvious for most of you reading this blog, but I had never lived like this before; I had never lived surrounded by death and hopelessness, broken spirits, drug-addicts screaming and fighting in the street,  strangled bodies down the block. I had never been told before that people were talking about kidnapping us and that we needed to watch our backs.

I could literally see freedom from my rooftop, the border fence to a world of promise, yet I lived feeling like my hands were tied behind my back. This has been my reality for the past year and a half, and as bizarre as it is, love has bonded me to the Desert and her people. Everyone knows that Ciudad Juarez is not the charming South of the Border village that some country-folk artist might sing about, or even the enjoyable afternoon travel stop that it used to be, and the last thing that this city needs is another person bathing it in a hopeless light. For the next few posts I am going to be writing about our experiences living in “Baghdad on the Border” laced with bits of information about the War that is raging on our doorstep, but from love’s perspective.

]]> http://www.mmlindsey.com/archives/1369/feed 4 http://www.mmlindsey.com/archives/1442 http://www.mmlindsey.com/archives/1442#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:05:27 +0000 mmlindsey http://www.mmlindsey.com/?p=1442 Mexico, our weary sister, continues to struggle for a brighter day. In her fight she has captured our hearts; now we stand beside her, and we are not alone. Our friend Billie has become a powerful voice for the Borderland. She is a fighter for Justice, a carrier of Hope and Love. Billie and her husband fight for it. They live it. We are proud to feature her latest article from the AllVoices website.

The following article is originally posted at AllVoices, by Billie Greenwood.

You won’t catch US retiree Peter Edmunds, age 71, playing bingo or shuffleboard. He’s more likely partnering with Mexican middle school students. Age gap and language barriers didn’t stop them from joining forces with Santa to thrill tots in a traumatized bordertown this month.

Edmund’s involvement started last year when he and his wife Polly formed a nonprofit corporation called “Border Partners.” Their goal was to improve the standard of living in Palomas, Mexico–a small border town besieged by unemployment and drug cartel violence.

A Toy Truck Project Partnership

This month Edmunds, a retired contractor who lives in New Mexico, loaded his pickup with power tools prior to Christmas. He struck a deal with the ninth graders at the Palomas Middle School as another in an ongoing series of projects. “If you make one toy truck to give to the town’s Christmas appeal program, you can make one to take home to give to a little brother or sister,” he told them.

He enlisted the cooperation of the school’s shop teacher to conduct the toy making workshops during school time in the shop classroom. He solicited sponsorship from border lumber and hardware stores for toy materials. And he found adult volunteers, both US and Mexican, to lend watchful eyes and helping hands as the students used power tools for the first time ever.

Edmunds is pleased that some volunteers are former graduates of the Palomas Middle School themselves. They translate for him and are indispensable in working with the students. “My Palomas volunteers are really key to our success,” he emphasizes.

The students themselves did all the toy making production: putting the toy pieces together, drilling holes for axles, making the wheels and finally painting the trucks they built, designing them to suit younger kid’s tastes.

This project results, says Edmunds enthusiastically, are “world class!” He explains: “The ninth graders learned some woodworking skills and had fun expressing their creativity in paint. Seventy kids in Palomas will get a beautiful work of art: a toy for Christmas. Does it get any better than that?”

A traumatized community

High profile and brutal crimes have plagued Palomas in recent months. Town mayor Estanislao “Tani” Garcia was abducted and assassinated in October. The whereabouts of prominent Palomas dentist and businessman Ricardo Fierro, who was kidnapped in broad daylight Thanksgiving week, still remains unknown. The dusty border town is besieged with high unemployment and its ensuing poverty.

Border Partners addresses that poverty with a number of projects. They foster small worker-owned businesses and promote use of low-cost, sustainable technologies to conserve scarce resources.

This is the first time Border Partners has partnered with Santa Claus and the Palomas ninth graders. But since it worked out so well, it likely won’t be the last, says Edmunds. The project was so popular with the students that he suspects every grade in the school would want to participate next year.

Brimming with ideas to combat poverty and improve life in the town, Edmunds insists on working with–not doing for–the people. That philosophy is the backdrop of the toy truck project, “What I’m trying to do is empower the kids: to help them realize that they can be part of the [improvement] process.”

Edmunds and Border Partners: Making life better in Palomas this Christmas…one toy truck at a time.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Border Partners website

Our friend Jenny recently entered in to battle with breast cancer. As you can see by her expressions in the posters above, Jenny is a fighter, a warrior, a powerful spirit. Jenny is an artist who has developed an absorbing approach to canvass while living in El Salvador for the past seven years with her husband Dave, and now her two lovely children. Jenny’s art reflects her passion for all of God’s children to grow in His love and justice, and her expression of the beauty of creation is capturing and refreshing. She describes her paintings from her El Salvador Series like this:

The paintings display the beauty, struggle, despair and hope that have defined our experiences in El Salvador. Some are based on very personal experiences while others unveil my struggle with social, political and/or economic difficulties that Salvadorans face.

We have always admired and respected Jenny’s passionate and open spirit. Jenny and Dave have been quite an inspiration to us over the years and we are proud to be their friends. We are fighting with them in full confidence that, in Jenny’s words, love will conquer all!

If you have not seen their link on our blog, now is the perfect time to check out their site. You will be inspired, challenged and certainly impressed by the incredible gifting of art and expression that you will find. They also have a Cure Cancer Store that has some incredible items featuring the art above.

Jenny donated 10 inches of her long locks to Locks of Love, keeping a pink strip as a statement of firm determination. It has been an extraordinary process this past couple of weeks to watch as Jenny and Dave stand unyieldingly in the hope of our Good Father, that He is taking care of them in the midst of this battle, that His desire is healing and restoration, that He is Good, all the time!

Thank you, Dave and Jenny, for your beautiful inspiration and display of the heart of God through this journey, your joy in the midst of suffering, and your persistent pursuit of life, promise and hope. Keep fighting.

Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. -Matthew 6:10

Staring from behind the bars I saw
withering leaves, corpses on the street. Stepped on by a
sullen and hopeless tribe mechanically existing
through their meaningless days like naked mannequins
in the window of an empty store.

Dead leaves, crushed without a thought
of the life that had once blazed within the veins of the
delicate skeletons, only move now with the
wind and the boots and the shoes; marionette puppets,
lifeless and broken.

Colors forgotten overnight. Summer, a dim memory,
a withering dream, a speck at the bottom of
deep and empty brown eyes. Eyes fixed on the next step.
Eyes that know nothing except survival and the tears of
their cold and hungry children.

Forced to whisper the legends
of summer in the night, mothers somberly sing
fairytales to fatherless children
curled up on their
cardboard beds.

1900 bodies.
1900 mothers
shuffling through their days
while the mutilated flesh of their
murdered sons
hangs like gothic decorations in the dusty
closets of their hearts.

1900 families
left to expend their existence
within the dead space between fall and winter,
the icy cold moments before
the snow cleanses the earth.

Silenced by the burden of being born
into a world governed by masters of death,
their lives flung here and there by the blurred authorities;
the Cartel the President the President the Cartel;
as the media sews the corrupted seeds
of fear and control, the boney
hand of death, leading generations of
boys to the killing fields.

There they tend the bails of powder.
White destruction, the crop that pays – a shimmering mirage,
dancing lies, smiling, death’s skeleton
draped in robes of gold and crowned
with jewels- it’s the only escape
from gray streets.

There they can at least pluck the
leaves and watch them spin and twirl
to the frozen streets below while the tired masses
walk over them, crush them, scatter the dead,
ashes in the wind.

Until the mob that hugs
that rusty fence tears it down, dead branches
at the base of a rotten tree, screaming from the
highest limb the redemption song,
awake the sleeping bride,
fat and clumsy
in her bed.

Drip the blood of your sons into
the river that divides hope from survival, life from existence.
Shake the fence until the Zócalo can stand it no more,
until the dead bones rattle back together, and
life-blood and tears return to the corpse,
the healing from
the Spirit, to the Soul, to the marrow.

Scream until spring,
brimming with green and rain, burns through
your sunless world and your moonless nights.
And the leaves sift back into the soil, turning it black and
rich and fertile. A place of new birth,
rest, feeding the desert, washing away the pain of injustice,
the scattering of souls to end
and the gathering of
family to begin.

Billie Greenwood – Allvoices.com

Back in April we posted a short video from The Newspaper Tree about the “War on Drugs”, the failed approach to a seemingly endless war. Our friend Billie posted an incredible article about how this war has deeply wounded our border community. She highlighted a conference that took place on Sept 20-22 (this week) at UTEP (University of Texas at El Paso) addressing alternative approaches to the drug-war that President Nixon started forty years ago. It is sad to say that for 40 years we have been tripping all over ourselves in failed attempts to counter the drug problem. The U.S. has over 2 million citizens in prison, the largest prison-industrial complex in the history of civilization; most of those people are in for crimes directly related to economics and drugs. We have to change the way we have been fighting against these issues.

Watch the video and check out Billie’s thoughtful article at The Border Explorer.

Dear Child of God, if we are truly to understand that God loves all of us, we must recognize that He loves our enemies, too. God does not share our hatred, no matter what the offense we have endured.

Desmund Tutu

Still not sure how Chris sniped this photo; comes with his tactical training, I suppose. Anyhow, this is one of my favorite shots of the summer. It is a sad manifestation of the dilemma in Ciudad Juarez: Guns vs. Peace. A city crying out for hope, submerged, but rising up from beneath a heavy layer of bullets, blood and boots.