Boundaries

NOVEMBER 2000 + ITS EASY TO CROSS from El Paso to Cuidad Juarez. You don’t need a passport or even a drivers license. Just walk across the bridge that spans the Rio Grande, pay a quarter to the person hidden in the dark booth just over the Mexican side and then walk into the Mercado of the city. What’s harder is coming back. Then you need papers in order. But we were headed to the Mercado on foot to see firsthand the streets of Juarez.


The border is artificial. The two communities depend on each other. They share the same water, the same polluted air, the same history. What is new is the politics. In the old days the river flowed wild, sometimes changing its course and thereby changing the boundaries of Mexico and the U.S.A. Now the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo to the Mexicans) runs in a concrete channel. Sometimes it doesn’t flow at all, because all the water has already been used.


In nature exciting things happen at boundaries. The same is true here. Hence we have come to hear the stories of people who live on this boundary. We walk through Juarez. Except for the street merchants hawking their wares to us, everything is in Spanish. The smells seem richer, the houses more dilapidated, but also more alive. The first church we visit is open with many people wanting to see the “milagro” that took place there. We see our first beggars. Then we see the woman ahead of us, sitting at the boundary of the wall and the sidewalk. She asks for nothing. She is still and quiet. We all prepare to walk around her. Ahead of us an older, small, crunched over Mexican woman, sees the woman, stops, kneels gently and touches her face, both cheeks, with the sides of her hand, slowly.


Her action stops us. “Did you see that?” I said. They nod. “It was a blessing.” We continue on wondering what other blessings God holds in store, wondering where we will be asked to stop, to stoop and to reach out.


Jeffrey Louden