Soon after moving to Arizona Mari and I got involved with the Borderlinks Border education program here in Tucson. It was founded and directed by Rick Ufford-Chase to educate North Americans about conditions on the US/Mexico border. BorderLinks ran day-long and week-long educational trips to and across the Border. The main concern was with the living and working conditions of the Mexican people. BorderLinks took United States people, mostly from churches, to the border to see for themselves the atrocious conditions of life there. As many as two or three church or college groups a month would spend a week traveling with BorderLinks on both sides of the Border.
After working with BorderLinks for a couple of years Mari was asked to direct its food program, which meant buying, growing, fixing, and serving meals to the various church and civic groups that came to Tucson to experience the border. I was asked to introduce a college-level “Semester on the Border” program to afford students the opportunity to get to know the conditions on the border in depth. Because of our experience with the Semester in Greece program we felt ready to rise to this new challenge.
The “Semester on the Border” was built around several college level courses offered by qualified college Professors and taught both in Tucson and at the BorderLinks Campus in Nogales, Mexico. I myself taught two college level courses, “Peace and Justice Studies” and “Liberation Theology”. A long-time BorderLinks supporter, Professor, Raquel Rubio Goldsmith, at the University of Arizona here in Tucson, taught “History of Mexico” and a third year graduate student at the University was chosen to teach both first and second year “Spanish”.
BorderLInks had recently acquired a large, fine campus building in downtown Tucson which served as both a College Program center and as the center for short-term visitor groups. This is where Mari focused her work as Food Co-Ordinator and where all the college students lived while they got their classroom work underway. The various short-term group visits were also housed in this large facility. The college students spent the first half of the semester in Tucson and then moved to the BorderLinks Center in Nogales, Mexico where they finished up the practical aspect of their course work. In my course on Liberation Theology we read Gustavo Gutierrez’ A Theology of Liberation and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In the Peace and Justice course we read Mohandas Gandhi: Essential Writings along with Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. During the students’ time in Nogales I travelled, mostly back East, recruiting. On the West coast I was unable to recruit any students from that area. I was successful at Holy Cross and Boston College up East, as well as DePaul University ere eager to was most successful at three small colleges in North Carolina: Meridith in Raleigh, Warren Wilson just outside of Ashville, and Mars Hill just north of Ashville. I flew and drove to each of these schools every semester making presentations to the students. In each case I would visit as many classes as interested professors would allow, and set up a table just outside the cafeteria during lunchtime. In class I would give a ten-minute presentation and invite students to meet me at my table. We did have a small, attractive brochure to pass out among interested students. With all this effort we were lucky to register a dozen students each semester. Nonetheless, the program thrived and our reputation grew as a viable educational experience for knowledge of the border reality.
We ran this program for four years until Mari and I decided it was time to retire. Actually, at that time an opportunity to teach for a year in China presented itself and we became eager to explore that possibility. Rick Ufford-Chase retired from BorderLinks at about that time so it seemed timely for us to do the same. Being part of this program, learning about and from the people struggling on the Border, has had a lasting impact on our lives, on how we think and act concerning such issues. We are much richer for having participated with BorderLinks.
3 responses to “SEMESTER ON THE BORDER – PROGRAM”
I enjoyed travel with Rick to Nogales and Guatemala.
I hope you will do a post on liberation theology.
You did a great work on the border, Jerry, and enlightening people about border issues will have its impact on the way things will be handled in respect to migrant issues. The correct social response nowadays, I think, is “Thank you for your service.”
I am a little disquieted by the theological justifications given nowadays for social action programs dealing with Latin America and other areas of similar poverty. I had to encounter all of these liberation thinkers when I was in the mission field, and I began to question whether the Marxist presumptions they seem to be entwined with are as relevant today as they may once have been. In Africa I heard frequently that all of their problems stemmed from the way capitalist northeners had used the resources of African nations, drawing national borders for their own convenience, destroying the micro economies of Africa. True dat, I think. But their revolutions were 50 years ago, and things are worse now than they were then. Now political upheaval and corruption as well as tribal conflict seem to be the problems. Aid pours into Africa by the billions to disappear into the pockets of the very few. The oppressed have also become oppressors. National borders in Latin America were set much earlier by revolutions, though Mexico, against a treaty with the U.S., was forced across the Rio Grande for a northern border much later. I don’t think Jesus identified the people to be saved by the Messianic kingdom simply as the poor but rather as those who awaited in faith and faithfulness the coming kingdom, poor or rich. He relied on rich people like Lazarus for his economic aid and saw to it that the widow’s mite was praised for its faith and personal generosity. With Sartre, I don’t think the analytical tool for social knowledge is simply a Marxist one. Many social problems arise for reasons other than economic and even political oppression. We should note the impact of the drug cartels, rampant political corruption, and avoidance of clear analyses of the situation in the poor South, clearly dividing the ongoing impact of colonialism from the upsurge of problems stemming from the decisions of the people themselves. Marx is not a good foundation for welcoming people to America, where scholars like Rawls give very much different reason for economic life. Can Latin America argue that the U.S. owes a capitalist-damaged populace an escape from their poverty and still understand a Rawlsian expectation to participate in a society that rewards a life-plan dedicated to rising economically upward by contributing to society and meriting through hard work and personal talents the station to which they arrive? An African business man once told me, “You have to help me in every way to succeed in life, because (and here he reached over and pinched my arm) this skin is white!” Thus, I think this Marxist “oppression adjustment” is too simplified to handle the contemporary situation of migrants. A lot of stuff has to be thunk. Duh….I feel stupid when I confront it all.
Hi Chuck and David – thanks so much for your suggestions, etc. I’ll see if i can follow up with a blog on my understanding of liberation theology soon :O) Paz, jerry