Crossing the Border

Every night I lay awake thinking about all the stories and thoughts I want to share about our travels then a new day begins and the layers go deeper and I haven´t expressed any of it.

I am going to take you back to the day we landed in Brownsville the Texas/Mexican boarder town where we met Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a friend of a freind of ours and had agreed to have us leave our car in her yard. She provided us warm hospitality with a room for the night, breakfast in the morning and a ride across the boarder into Mexico and our first bus station.

Elizabeth works for Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) which is a non-violent direct action religious group that brings people to witness and intervene where human rights are being violated. Elizabeth is a CPT guide leading tours in Palestine every year showing people the realities on the front lines where human rights are violated regularly. Her tours are organized with the intent to recruit more people to work with the many activists on the the various projects that CPT is engaged in.

She told us many details about the wall along the southern boarder of the US that the Bush administration is trying to rush to complete before he leaves office. The wall would be constructed by Boeing corporation who also built the wall in Palestine that brutally imprisons Palestinions daily. Similar to Palestine if this wall is erected both sides of the boarder will live in more of a militarized state, as areas around these types of walls do become heavily militarized. The wall in Texas, if erected would cut through a section of the University campus of Brownsville. Does that mean students would have to scale the wall to go to classes? The logic can´t be explained because there is none. It is also very discouraging to hear that workers in the Maquilladores factories still only make at the highest wage about 50 dollars a week. That is impossible for anyone to live on, as we are finding out here in Mexico prices are not that much cheaper than in the states.

There will be a week march in protest of the wall and for migrants rights, from March 7th until March 12th, the marchers will walk over 100 miles along the designated wall site eductating and rallying more resistance for this disastours project. We had considered joining the march and possilby reporting on it but that would mean having to rush our time in southern Mexico which we decided not to do.
However if others can join or cover any part of this critical event contact CMP and find our more information.