Annunciation House Newsletter - Winter 2005

SO MUCH HAS CHANGED, SO MUCH IS THE SAME

BY: Megan Hope

Climbing the steps to the lavanderia on Annunciation House’s partial third floor, I hear a familiar Mexican ballad blaring from the radio. Pinesol and laundry detergent scent the air, donated t-shirts (some from a junior high spirit club, now worn by petite middle-aged men) hang from pegs, a young mother wrings clothes over the sink as her daughter improvises a form of hopscotch on the red-tiled floor. Suddenly the déjà vu is intense: is it today, or nine years ago—or any day in between?

Indeed, so much at Annunciation House is just as I left it in 1996, after a year as a volunteer here and at Casa Vides. A sign in my handwriting about the whereabouts of baby blankets still hangs in the linen closet. The volunteer kitchen remains a sanctuary of early morning pots of coffee, late night dinners for newly arrived guests, and all-hour tale telling, laughter, and commiseration. And the stories of many of the 21st century Latin American immigrants arriving at our door could be pulled from the intake sheets of 10, 15, or 25 years ago: can’t find sufficient work at home, has a family to support, wants to earn some money in El Paso or go further into the U.S.

Nonetheless, in the first five weeks of my return, I’ve been struck by remarkable changes, too, such as 1) the drastic decline of the cockroach population, thanks to regular extermination provided by a former volunteer’s sympathetic (or horrified) parent; 2) the complete electrical rewiring of our 100-year-old plus building; 3) the enlivened visibility of Annunciation House in the discussion of peace and justice along the border—thanks, in part, to the development of an energetic and committed “core community” of longer-term volunteers.

Sadly, though, the change I am most aware of is the fear and disillusionment that sit beside the guests in our living room. When I arrived in 1995, just one year after the start the Border Patrol’s Operation Hold the Line, immigration enforcement here was focused primarily upon deterring immigrants at the border before entering the U.S., rather than containing them within El Paso to be picked up and returned or deported. As volunteers we heard stories about the “old days” when mint green Border Patrol vans roamed the streets of the city and students and teachers at Bowie High School were often stopped and asked for proof of legal documentation. A successful lawsuit against the Border Patrol supposedly ended the practice of stopping people in such an arbitrary manner, without sufficient reason to believe they had recently entered the country.

While it was never simple to find work, guests were not afraid to leave the house to look; for a time, they were even asked to stay out for part of the morning and afternoon, an arrangement that seemed safe and reasonable. It was not uncommon for guests to purchase or have sent to them bus or plane tickets. And, while not always successful getting through highway checkpoints or airports, we did receive phone calls a half-day later that happily announced, “I made it!”

But then the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred, perpetrated by people with visas who did not enter the U.S. through its border with Mexico. Undocumented workers died in collapse of the World Trade Center, and other undocumented workers helped to clear their remains. The old Immigration and Naturalization Service (now divided into three branches, all with new names) became part of the Department of Homeland Security. The Border Patrol began receiving bigger money for more agents, more enforcement, and the presence of agents within El Paso increased. On February 22, 2003, one of them shot and killed an Annunciation House guest, Juan Patricio Peraza Quijada, a few blocks from our house. A former volunteer told me it was the first time he had seen the guests in our house—people who have experienced economic disaster, civil wars, family disintegration, perilous crossings—be truly afraid.

Guests continue to leave the house, to look for the small and unsteady work that exists in El Paso, with trepidation. And with good reason. In my time back, an average of more than one guest per week has unexpectedly not returned for the night. We later learn they have picked up by the Border Patrol and returned to Mexico. Train hopping as a means of travel seems much more common among guests now, as well as hiding on trucks bound for locations further in. When guests who attempt these means do not return, or we receive no happy phone call, we pray that they’ve made it or are at least safe. Bus tickets are risky, airplane tickets unthinkable. Sometimes in my discussions with guests about their plans, I feel we are examining their risks rather than their options.

Still, for so many immigrants who arrive at our door the greatest risk is to not try, to not take the chance that here they may be able to earn a little more, find more regular work, send money to family members who are sick, under- or unemployed, or displaced from the rural areas where they used to be able to make a living. Corruption and imbalanced economic policies continue to bleed Latin America, necessarily drawing people to come and beg crumbs from a country they often already help feed. Even slim options are valuable when the alternative is illness or hunger.

Likewise, although in this time of hyper concern for “security” and hypo concern for civil liberties, volunteers and supporters of Annunciation House risk being labeled subversives or even lawbreakers, the greater risk would be to yield to a system that preserves a preferential option for products and people with power. I used to believe that the work of Annunciation House, being primarily “direct service,” was necessary but distinct from structure-challenging justice work. More and more, however, I think each opening of our door is an act of resistance, confronting governments’ Free Trade Area of the Americas with our own free-food-for-the-Americas plan, answering Homeland Security with the security offered in any home of real humanity.

And so, as steady as the scene in the lavanderia on any given day, our houses remain places of peace-building.