In the beginning, a concerned group of parishioners at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church decided that the men in Altar's town square, which is anchored on one corner by the church, looked like they needed a hot meal, explained Josefina Campuzano.
After the U.S. Border Patrol began enforcement campaigns in the 1990s at the most common points on the border for crossing into the U.S. illegally, in Arizona, California and Texas, Altar became a point from which people launched efforts to sneak in.
Its location near major Mexican highways and about 60 miles down a dirt road from a less densely patrolled section of the border west of the Nogales, Ariz., port of entry helped turn Altar's fading agricultural economy into one based on services to migrants.
In May 2000 when Campuzano and other volunteers from the church began cooking a simple meal once a week and taking it to the plaza, between 2,000 and 2,500 people a day were passing through Altar, explained former mayor Francisco Garcia Aten. The permanent population in Altar, in the state of Sonora, is about 14,000.
The parishioners were initially surprised when as many as 200 people would come forward for the free meals. They began asking their guests a few questions, compiling statistical data about where the migrants came from, how often they had tried to cross the border and what their needs were.
"After a few months we realized they needed more services --- medical care, emotional support, places to clean up and to sleep, somewhere to do laundry," Campuzano said.
With assistance from the Archdiocese of Hermosillo and U.S.-based Catholic Relief Services, the parish's ministry blossomed into a full-service center. It includes comfortable, clean beds for 20 people, a dining room offering dinner and breakfast, a small clinic, showers, a laundry room and a storeroom where guests can get a change of clothes, shoes and socks or a warm blanket.
"We hoped it would be an oasis in the desert," Campuzano explained to a group of visitors from the Diocese of Tucson, Ariz., which is directly north. The U.S. diocese and the Archdiocese of Hermosillo have collaborated on ministry to migrants for several years. Two trips in February and early March were offered to parish leaders from Tucson to give them a perspective on immigration and migrant ministry south of the border.
Father Prisciliano Peraza, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, said the goal is for the Centro Comunitario de Atencion al Migrante y Necesitado (Community Center to Aid Migrants and the Needy) to be "a place where migrants are served with dignity and joy."
"Our primary mission and our motive is the message of Jesus," he said. "We hope it embodies the call to serve the least of our brothers with love, charity, peace, brotherhood, justice and solidarity."
The center is a cheerful contrast to most of the town's commercially run guesthouses, where for about $4 a night, one might get only a metal bunk with a worn piece of carpet for a mattress in a house crowded with scores of people.
At one such place a few blocks from the community center, dozens of men sat in dark rooms and a small courtyard. A 42-year-old man who called himself Felix, from the Mexican state of Puebla, said he left his wife and three teenagers behind to try to get a better-paying job in the United States. His previous job raising cattle earned him about 4,000 pesos, or about $400, a month.
He had never tried to leave Mexico before, he said, and had no idea what to expect.
"I know it is a risk," he said. "But I don't know what the risks are. I have no idea what is going to happen."
Garcia, the center's human rights director, said volunteers interview each visitor, in part to ensure smugglers or thieves aren't taking advantage of the facility. But they also continue to track demographics and to brief each person on their rights under Mexican and U.S. laws.
According to statistics posted in the center's lobby, the majority of its visitors in January were from the southern Mexican states of Chiapas and Veracruz. Fifty-eight percent had only a primary education and 52 percent had been removed from the U.S. at least once. Twenty-four percent said they had experienced some sort of rights violation, such as being robbed or mistreated by government authorities.
A typical example of mistreatment migrants report while in custody in the United States is being held for more than eight hours without food or water, Garcia said.
In addition to the beds, meals and other resources, the community center has everyone who uses their services watch a presentation about the dangers of trying to cross the desert on foot, ranging from dehydration and poisonous snakes to hypothermia. A brochure distributed at the center, published by the Mexican consulate in Nogales, Ariz., warns in Spanish: "Cuidado (Beware), Mexicano, many of your fellow Mexicans have died crossing the Sonora-Arizona border in recent years."
"Many people don't have any experience with the desert," said Father Peraza. People who arrive by bus from more temperate climates don't realize that a gallon of water will never see them through three days of walking in 100-degree weather.
"They think they're going to walk for three days along a flowing river and under trees," such as they might in hilly Chiapas or Oaxaca, he said. Nor do the coyotes they hire bother to educate them.
Father Peraza said he wages a constant battle to replace posters about the dangers of crossing that he tapes up around the church; they get torn down all the time. One displays a map of the region showing distances between the border and "nearby" communities. For instance, it's nearly 60 miles of harsh, mountainous desert between Sasabe and Tucson, a trip coyotes might tell people they can walk in a day or two.
About 280 people are known to have died in the Arizona desert in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. More than 3,000 deaths of border crossers have been counted since the 1990s.
The back wall of Father Peraza's church also displays posters sent by family members seeking word of loved ones believed to have gone to Altar.
"Disappeared," they read, and include photos, names, descriptions and hometowns of relatives not heard from in months: "Ubaldo Suarez Meza, 16, from Oaxaca." "Florencia Marcos Rivera, last seen July 3, 2005, in Altar." ---CNS |