Columban Center Border Awareness Experience

I am grateful to be back in El PAso, on a different kind of mission. Our little group of 13 from Nazareth College arrived in El PAso late Saturday night to be greeted by Fr. Bob Mosher, from the Columban Mission Center. He will host  us for the week both in. El Paso & Juarez. 

Through the Columban Mission Center in El Paso, Texas, we will meet with organizations and institutions related to U.S./Mexico border issues — poverty, migration and human rights.

Our first stop on Sunday morning was Parroquia Corpus Christi in Anapra. Mexico. It was great to see Fr. Bill Martin whom I had met when I was in El PAso last time.

After Mass we met in the community center of the parish with a number of youth and volunteers from the parish to hear their stories about working in the factories in Juarez as a result of NAFTA. One of the outcomes of that treaty was for U.S. companies to set up border factories and hire people who were poor and pay them poor wages to benefit the company with no benefits and hard work and no ability to negotiate better working conditions and wages.One man told us he has worked 20 years in the factory and makes the same amount of money as the day he started but he is afraid to say anything because he could lose his job and not be able to feed his family.

Another challenge is because the pay is so poor many times families encourage their children to leave school and not go on to higher ed in order to work in one of these factories and contribute to the family finances; and the cycle of poverty just continues.

Something to note, the workers in the factories do piece work and the items are assembled in the U.S. so labels can say "Made in America". Whereas they should say, with the help of slave labor in Mexico!

We then went to the Library of the Good Shepherd which was started 20 years by Cristina. She is a woman who with less than a grammar school education herself and realized that the children in Anapra, a very poor suburb in Juarez, were doomed to continue a cycle of poverty without a decent education. The challenges were extreme poverty that kept parents from paying school fees, buy uniforms, buy books, etc. In addition, many children had no birth certificates because parents couldn't pay those costs and therefore the children were unable to even enroll for school.

With the help of the Columban Fathers, the Sisters of Charity I stayed with in December and their many connections, Cristina was able to help finance these needs, offer tutoring and on-going support to the children. She began with 12 children and today over 475 children have been helped through this little sign of hope. Today there are nurses and teachers, etc. giving back to the community because of Cristina. Never underestimate the vision of one and the help of many, especially God!

Please pray for all these wonderful people and their efforts to bring about justice. Please pray for our little group as we begin a new day here on the border.

In peace & gratitude,

Sr. Donna