For many years, the Mexican border has been a source of political controversy in the United States as well as with respect to the relationship with our southern neighbor and third-largest trading partner. However, the problem reached a new international level of attention when Pope Francis recently became personally involved by visiting the border twice and from both sides within the past year. Furthermore, in this election year, the overall problem of illegal immigration and the debate over whether the Mexican border needs more walls or bridges is dominating American politics and presidential debates. While the media tend to focus on securing the border and dealing with the problem of illegal and uncontrolled immigration, these important issues are rarely discussed in the context of the root causes of this problem. The Mexican border, which already includes both walls and bridges, is only a reflection of a much deeper problem of U.S.-Mexican relations.
When people are willing to risk their lives by attempting to illegally cross a closely guarded border, they usually do so because the conditions at home are unbearable. In this case, people are trying to escape extreme poverty, violence and political unrest. Many aspects of the internal situation in Mexico are beyond our control, but being Mexico's largest and by far most powerful neighbor, our foreign policy has often contributed to many hardships that Mexican people face.
When Mexico joined the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which virtually eliminated tariffs and enabled large American corporations to penetrate the Mexican economy, conditions for many middle- and lower-income Mexicans became worse. Large American agricultural conglomerates, with the help of the subsidized and now tariff-free U.S. imported corn, drove many small Mexican farmers and meat-producing firms out of business because they could no longer compete. Some of those displaced farmers especially from the Veracruz region, who lost their business due to the sharp drop in pork prices caused by massive imports of U.S. companies, eventually found jobs at pork processing plants in the U.S., working for the same companies that led to the destruction of their family farming businesses back home in Mexico.
The implementation of the NAFTA agreement benefitted many large American corporations but led to the loss of approximately 120,000 jobs in the pork industry alone, and overall about 2 million Mexicans were forced to leave their farms. According to World Bank records, the 35 percent rural poverty rate in Mexico before NAFTA ballooned to 55 percent in the few years after NAFTA took effect.
Correspondingly, the rate of illegal immigration from Mexico rose throughout the second half of the 1990, reaching its peak in 2007 (according to the Pew Research Center).
Extreme poverty and inability to find jobs to support families also creates a fertile ground for unrest, conflict and violence. The Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in 1994 was directly linked to the Mexican approval of NAFTA, as more than 3,000 impoverished indigenous people protested the fact that they would bear a disproportionate amount of the costs associated with the trade agreement and the necessary economic adjustment which accompanied it. Suppressed by the military, several hundred people died in the largest ethnic conflict in recent Mexican history.
Poverty and joblessness also tends to support and intensify the drug war, in which the United States is directly involved by being the main consumer of illegal drugs. Insatiable U.S. demand for illegal drugs makes this multibillion dollar business profitable, yet it is the Mexican people who bear most of the cost of drug-related violence. The U.S. also continues to be the main supplier of weapons, especially semi-automatic military style assault rifles, which can be easily purchased in border states with permissive gun laws, but which would not be available for purchase by civilians in Mexico.
Furthermore, the Mérida Initiative, which has launched an active U.S. military and CIA involvement in the fighting of drug cartels in Mexico, brought more heavy military equipment as well as training, which, although well intentioned, often benefited a corrupt police, which actually worked for the cartels. In some cases, the Mexican military, acting in law enforcement roles in regions particularly affected by drug cartel violence, has used the new equipment and training to suppress the local population indiscriminately or had their American-supplied arms stolen by the cartels. It is estimated that the drug war has claimed more than 150,000 lives, many in nameless graves, below the radar of mainstream media reporting.
None of these issues can be easily resolved, but they all need to be addressed and remain inseparable from any political discussion about Mexican immigration. We need to understand the context of how our own policies affect our southern neighbor, to focus our foreign policy on improving the living conditions in Mexico, and to make a coordinated effort with the cooperation of the Mexican government to address the issues of violence and poverty. Otherwise, the Mexican border will continue to reflect the torment of the most desperate people, and remain a source of hardship, suffering and political controversy.
Dr. Kamila Valenta is a member of St. Gabriel Church in Charlotte and a part-time professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, where she teaches ethnic conflict.
I have come to see these 40 days leading up to Easter not only in the liturgies that arise from them or in the meager fasting obligations the Church asks of us Catholics, but also in the way I see those around me. Lent has become for me more about awareness of the human condition and the very people I encounter who reflect it.
Lent is in the face of my friend Blue, who, as a schizophrenic with a limited IQ and a past of thievery, is finally off the streets, out of prison and in a group home up in Elon. I will be with him some in these 40 days and his laugh will lead me to Easter.
Lent is in the face of the man in a church basement meeting who says for the very first time, "My name's Joe, and I'm an alcoholic."
It is in the beautiful range of the faces of autism in our families and in the blessed faces of our Down Syndrome citizens, 90 percent of whom, when the mother tests positive, are killed in the womb. Joy hides in Lent just as it shines in the eyes of those lovely babies who make it out alive to teach their parents how to live.
Lent is in the face of the man in the aftermath of a stroke who is walking ever so slowly the indoor track at the YMCA, courageously bringing himself back to his family and friends with God's help, one very small step at a time.
It is also in the face of the older gentleman at the back of the church just before morning Mass, emptying his change for the week in the poor box.
It is in the refugee mother staring across a rickety skiff at her young son, his yearning eyes a desperate prayer.
Lent is in the curious and eager faces of the RCIA candidates and catechumens who are walking these 40 days step by step to the front of the church to receive Our Lord in the great miracle of the Eucharist and thus into the eternal grace of our Holy Mother Church.
It is in the faces of all the sorrowful, watching loved ones being ravaged by cancer, unable to protect their fragile mortality or ease their pain, or in the face of aching loneliness in the newest widow, who still calls a spouse's name or reaches across to the empty place in the bed at night.
I see the face of Lent in the figures of the Stations of the Cross, frozen there in the agonizing hours of Christ's Passion and in His face staring at me over the years from the gifted hands of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Rubens, Hofmann, Murillo, El Greco and Chagall.
Accordingly, Lent is in all our mirrors, in our honest contrition, in our resolute hope, in our silent apologies and in our silent forgiveness.
Lent is here to make me aware of the "sacrament of the moment," to remind me to cry out like the psalmist for my God to cleanse me and to hide His face from my faults so that my humbled bones may rejoice. It tells me that all I encounter has God's seed and that to love is to suffer. Lent also says to me that our suffering will end and we will be rendered white as snow.
And I have finally, I think, found out that Lent is itself the transforming face of Easter.
Fred Gallagher is editor-in-chief at Good Will Publishers Inc. and an author and former addictions counselor. He and his wife Kim are members of St. Patrick Cathedral in Charlotte.