PART I -- Cristina on Her Way
Imagine if it is at all possible crossing into an unknown, volatile, and extremely unpredictable future -- an unknown landscape, an unknown "unknown," if you will, all because they killed your husband. They rapid fire shot him (whoever they are) in front of you, your three children, mother, brother and his three kids. The crossing has nothing to do with looking for a better economic life, or a job, or anything to do with money. She and her husband had jobs. She and her husband supported her family. They lived in Juarez, Mexico, and did not fit the typical profile of the immigrant who travels the expanse of Central America to find a better life. I have images in my own mind of centuries ago a man, a child, and a woman are warned that soldiers are coming to kill the child and they must flee from one poverty to another for the sake of staying alive.
In panic, one foot before another, a chain of human beings careen the bridge silhouetted by flood lights from every direction. Unlike many who have crossed before, she crosses where she can be seen, nothing to hide from the mercy of those who might incarcerate and deport her and her loved ones back to the men with guns from whom she really hides. Tightly clasping their hands, the youngest of the three is 6; mother is in tow, along with an older brother with his own three, the youngest four, the oldest 13 years. Crossing, face set like flint to the north, a brisk wind flutters flushed cheeks, but Cristina is un-deviated, like Lot's daughters leaving Sodom, not looking back for fear of "certain" (as opposed to an "unknown") death. Cristina and her flock advance toward the light and the men in dark glasses. Cristina ruminates over and over again the purpose of her advance. Cristina's vivid imagination needs no help as she knows that such a certain death would be like something from a Sam Peckenpah scenario, the movie, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, comes to mind of the kind of prolific, "crucificial," and gratuitous violence. Matadoristic histrionics await her at her shanty with a predictable Hemingway-like "death in the afternoon." The fact is that it would happen; maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but it would happen. A volley of shots to the head for her, sweet gift of quickness, but not until they (who ever they are) have slit the throats of hers and her brother's children giving them a few seconds to let the blood saturate the dirt and splatter blood and carnage without need to adorn the lentils with paschal hyssop branches.
And so this caravansarai of secret flight launches into another kind of red sea, Moses-like, in search of the promised land of the shiny Emerald City, beacon of freedom, and finally, "somewhere over the rainbow," in Kansas. Behemoths, dragons, nahashes (Hebrew for serpent) in the form of psychological emaciation, humiliation, and unconscionable marginalization encircle the ark of their momentary existence. For Cristina, hope beyond all hope rides the bucking bronco of the spirit within allowing only a sensation of light in the far distance. Cristina thinks of back there, back there where her children would be treated as abortions on a summer day. The killings are indiscriminately discriminate terminations of human life and it's done all the time. The more its done, the more the landscape is desensitized like trees that are instantly petrified as if they'd seen Medusa of the Argonauts of Hellenic lore. Her eyes are set upon a destination where her heart palpitates with trepidation at the thought of being overwhelmed with a voracious lack of welcoming, as though she and her family have a "mark of Cain" encrypted in their "profile-ability." Before she can speak in her defense, instant snap shots flash and blind them as they look in "mug shot" like stares and they are judged in terms of prejudicial circumstances based upon an inability to speak a language more imported than her native Spanish. She contemplates the shunning of her children treated as piojos, children of a lesser mammal to be eradicated, disinfected and still remain along the sidelines of the mainstream. Cristina anticipates the sea come rushing in too soon before she reaches to a precipice of stability on the other side. There she'd be engulfed or swallowed into an oblivion of a life in a country where promises like pie crust, are as easily made as they are broken. Cristina thinks, "if it were me alone, I'd probably pick the certainty of quick and violent death, but my children are with unformed personalities, and their prescience for adventure, and their idea of another world demand of her a higher level of self-sacrificial fortitude.
In between the imaginary line of the CONUS (i.e. Continental United States) that is in the middle of a meandering Rio Grande by "crossing" a bridge, a pontus, from which we get the word pontifex (bridge builder) a very Catholic term is the difference between a chance to live and a better than average chance of being murdered. But let's see where the story goes as the matron leader of these beleaguered pilgrims young and old, hearts pounding, eyes enlarged, fear transfixed, panic stricken, sweat dowsed and swarthy ... leads the caravan of adrenaline swelled venturers like pied piper eyes ahead. She leads, and then she pleads to all who'd move within the cross-hairs of her eyes, for help for her plight and flight into this gran desierto de sin conocer, the desert of not recognizing the possibility of no place like home, a kingdom of peace of mind. Cristina's plea for help and political asylum is without a clue to the chancelessness of it all. But in the irony of the flight into Egypt, this young Mary-like mother hopes near embolism in her throbbing veins -- the "calveric" course of life. This is her longest reach, like the woman extending arms through throngs of shoving people bent to touch the garment of a Nazarene, a reach of faith, impossible dreams, Don Quixote astride his mule in battle with the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, all in the midst of a unimaginable nightmare. There is no visible Christ to be seen in her reality, or pleaded with, or at least not so obviously. But she prays His presence anyway.
At the gateway to this famous "city on a hill" we call the El Paso del Norte, USA, land of the free and home of the brave, are men and women in uniforms who question, and for good cause, all who come their way. But like the troll or the ogre crying out "you shall not pass this way," many are turned away. You would think such bravery on Cristina's part would carte blanche qualify this mother for immediate entry. The automatons in sunglasses watch for all they've trained to look for, any sign of fraudulent intention. Cristina fully expects a disallowance of her honest desperate plea. She doesn't have the proper forms (sin documentos), and application for the freedom from her terror defined in moments of her borrowed time, before the bad men come to get her, since she saw the rampage ricochets of bullets graze and scar her shanty made of corrugated tin in the barrio. Mexico is a good country. Mexico is a friend of the United States. There is no political persecution in Mexico. So there is no political asylum, so Cristina thinks. All she is doing is trying to escape the inevitable, perhaps only buying time so she and her family can live another day.
Images of la migra, terminator-like seeking to obliterate "aliens," are in her head. The iron curtain of the west has already sent a signal that "they" are not wanted here. It is like the sign that says, private property, keep out, beware of dog, etc. The green gauntlet of la migra squeezes out the breath of those who would attempt to run it, and hope to somehow make it to the other side of a twilight zone: lacking: language, culture, money, transportation, food, clothing, and housing. But Cristina's risk is is less for prosperity, and more for posterity, and a hope for a "life" for children who are not yet responsible for themselves. In the meantime, the life-blood from her husband's body is still wet upon encrusting soil, soaking into the dry and barren clods of caleche within a field in an old dirt street barrio in Juarez, Mexico, named after Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Cristina is granted entry. The man in the green took off the glasses, spoke with her, saw her tears, and you could see a soul beneath the green-skinned uniform of dread that legend says would just as soon turn you back because you have not applied for freedom. Application for freedom. Hmmm. There's a neat concept. But this non automaton can see a fear, distress, and use the better angels of his conscience to award her temporary entrance to the "magic kingdom" although with many stipulations.So she is here along with the "horse of a different color" seeking safety more than freedom, sanctuary more than peace. You have to be able to live to experience either freedom or peace. All she wants right now is safety and protection. Perhaps it is divine providence who took a heart gilded with the stone of training and conditioned response and stripped its outer armor allowing him to hear the throbbing heart of motherhood in duress. But without this providence, I personally would never know Cristina, nor would I have the chance to help her in her daily struggles, or bless her living space along with all her family. And I too, like the legend of la migra could have been an ogre-troll and turned a plea for help away. It's a decision we all have to make at some point along the way when our garments are touched by the limits of desperation. And maybe Jesus is not visible because he's inside the person along their trek and his final disposition is the same as theirs. Jesus has no place to lay His head again, and again, and again. Or that man or woman who would pass Cristina through that desperate night might have been Jesus himself in the form of la migra. What irony!
Imagine. Yes, a tall order. I don't think you can really imagine in a manner that allows you to empathize a plight of true unknowing what the next few breaths bring Cristina because if you are reading this, you have a computer, and therefore, you already are outside the socio economic qualifications of anyone who can possibly truly imagine such pitiable lives on the lam. We cannot (myself included) imagine what it is like for this poor woman and her family with almost everything against her existence on either side of imaginary line. But choices are made between a certainty of death and a twilight zone of being able to stay alive and save the lives of her children. She has no knowledge of the so called yellow brick road, the emerald city, lions and tigers and bears oh my, ruby slippers, etc. Cristina though knows she is not venturing onto a movie set. She and her family know they are venturing into economically, sociologically and psychologically mountainous landscapes. Nevertheless, Cristina still believes, prays, and she hopes which is more than she could do in the dust ridden barrio she once thought of as hers and the dust ridden life she once had that she once thought that she had a right to. Will it be different on the other side? The hope is certainly there.
Now that she has crossed into safety, how will she survive? How will she negotiate the walls and impediments that stand between a life of peace of heart, and a life of miserable down-troddenness which even to her is preferable to the alternative awaiting her in the dust ridden barrio named for the woman of seven sorrows. Cristina now knocks upon my door. What to do? What to do? The decision is now mine.
Imagine if it is at all possible crossing into an unknown, volatile, and extremely unpredictable future -- an unknown landscape, an unknown "unknown," if you will, all because they killed your husband. They rapid fire shot him (whoever they are) in front of you, your three children, mother, brother and his three kids. The crossing has nothing to do with looking for a better economic life, or a job, or anything to do with money. She and her husband had jobs. She and her husband supported her family. They lived in Juarez, Mexico, and did not fit the typical profile of the immigrant who travels the expanse of Central America to find a better life. I have images in my own mind of centuries ago a man, a child, and a woman are warned that soldiers are coming to kill the child and they must flee from one poverty to another for the sake of staying alive.
In panic, one foot before another, a chain of human beings careen the bridge silhouetted by flood lights from every direction. Unlike many who have crossed before, she crosses where she can be seen, nothing to hide from the mercy of those who might incarcerate and deport her and her loved ones back to the men with guns from whom she really hides. Tightly clasping their hands, the youngest of the three is 6; mother is in tow, along with an older brother with his own three, the youngest four, the oldest 13 years. Crossing, face set like flint to the north, a brisk wind flutters flushed cheeks, but Cristina is un-deviated, like Lot's daughters leaving Sodom, not looking back for fear of "certain" (as opposed to an "unknown") death. Cristina and her flock advance toward the light and the men in dark glasses. Cristina ruminates over and over again the purpose of her advance. Cristina's vivid imagination needs no help as she knows that such a certain death would be like something from a Sam Peckenpah scenario, the movie, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, comes to mind of the kind of prolific, "crucificial," and gratuitous violence. Matadoristic histrionics await her at her shanty with a predictable Hemingway-like "death in the afternoon." The fact is that it would happen; maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but it would happen. A volley of shots to the head for her, sweet gift of quickness, but not until they (who ever they are) have slit the throats of hers and her brother's children giving them a few seconds to let the blood saturate the dirt and splatter blood and carnage without need to adorn the lentils with paschal hyssop branches.
And so this caravansarai of secret flight launches into another kind of red sea, Moses-like, in search of the promised land of the shiny Emerald City, beacon of freedom, and finally, "somewhere over the rainbow," in Kansas. Behemoths, dragons, nahashes (Hebrew for serpent) in the form of psychological emaciation, humiliation, and unconscionable marginalization encircle the ark of their momentary existence. For Cristina, hope beyond all hope rides the bucking bronco of the spirit within allowing only a sensation of light in the far distance. Cristina thinks of back there, back there where her children would be treated as abortions on a summer day. The killings are indiscriminately discriminate terminations of human life and it's done all the time. The more its done, the more the landscape is desensitized like trees that are instantly petrified as if they'd seen Medusa of the Argonauts of Hellenic lore. Her eyes are set upon a destination where her heart palpitates with trepidation at the thought of being overwhelmed with a voracious lack of welcoming, as though she and her family have a "mark of Cain" encrypted in their "profile-ability." Before she can speak in her defense, instant snap shots flash and blind them as they look in "mug shot" like stares and they are judged in terms of prejudicial circumstances based upon an inability to speak a language more imported than her native Spanish. She contemplates the shunning of her children treated as piojos, children of a lesser mammal to be eradicated, disinfected and still remain along the sidelines of the mainstream. Cristina anticipates the sea come rushing in too soon before she reaches to a precipice of stability on the other side. There she'd be engulfed or swallowed into an oblivion of a life in a country where promises like pie crust, are as easily made as they are broken. Cristina thinks, "if it were me alone, I'd probably pick the certainty of quick and violent death, but my children are with unformed personalities, and their prescience for adventure, and their idea of another world demand of her a higher level of self-sacrificial fortitude.
In between the imaginary line of the CONUS (i.e. Continental United States) that is in the middle of a meandering Rio Grande by "crossing" a bridge, a pontus, from which we get the word pontifex (bridge builder) a very Catholic term is the difference between a chance to live and a better than average chance of being murdered. But let's see where the story goes as the matron leader of these beleaguered pilgrims young and old, hearts pounding, eyes enlarged, fear transfixed, panic stricken, sweat dowsed and swarthy ... leads the caravan of adrenaline swelled venturers like pied piper eyes ahead. She leads, and then she pleads to all who'd move within the cross-hairs of her eyes, for help for her plight and flight into this gran desierto de sin conocer, the desert of not recognizing the possibility of no place like home, a kingdom of peace of mind. Cristina's plea for help and political asylum is without a clue to the chancelessness of it all. But in the irony of the flight into Egypt, this young Mary-like mother hopes near embolism in her throbbing veins -- the "calveric" course of life. This is her longest reach, like the woman extending arms through throngs of shoving people bent to touch the garment of a Nazarene, a reach of faith, impossible dreams, Don Quixote astride his mule in battle with the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, all in the midst of a unimaginable nightmare. There is no visible Christ to be seen in her reality, or pleaded with, or at least not so obviously. But she prays His presence anyway.
At the gateway to this famous "city on a hill" we call the El Paso del Norte, USA, land of the free and home of the brave, are men and women in uniforms who question, and for good cause, all who come their way. But like the troll or the ogre crying out "you shall not pass this way," many are turned away. You would think such bravery on Cristina's part would carte blanche qualify this mother for immediate entry. The automatons in sunglasses watch for all they've trained to look for, any sign of fraudulent intention. Cristina fully expects a disallowance of her honest desperate plea. She doesn't have the proper forms (sin documentos), and application for the freedom from her terror defined in moments of her borrowed time, before the bad men come to get her, since she saw the rampage ricochets of bullets graze and scar her shanty made of corrugated tin in the barrio. Mexico is a good country. Mexico is a friend of the United States. There is no political persecution in Mexico. So there is no political asylum, so Cristina thinks. All she is doing is trying to escape the inevitable, perhaps only buying time so she and her family can live another day.
Images of la migra, terminator-like seeking to obliterate "aliens," are in her head. The iron curtain of the west has already sent a signal that "they" are not wanted here. It is like the sign that says, private property, keep out, beware of dog, etc. The green gauntlet of la migra squeezes out the breath of those who would attempt to run it, and hope to somehow make it to the other side of a twilight zone: lacking: language, culture, money, transportation, food, clothing, and housing. But Cristina's risk is is less for prosperity, and more for posterity, and a hope for a "life" for children who are not yet responsible for themselves. In the meantime, the life-blood from her husband's body is still wet upon encrusting soil, soaking into the dry and barren clods of caleche within a field in an old dirt street barrio in Juarez, Mexico, named after Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Cristina is granted entry. The man in the green took off the glasses, spoke with her, saw her tears, and you could see a soul beneath the green-skinned uniform of dread that legend says would just as soon turn you back because you have not applied for freedom. Application for freedom. Hmmm. There's a neat concept. But this non automaton can see a fear, distress, and use the better angels of his conscience to award her temporary entrance to the "magic kingdom" although with many stipulations.So she is here along with the "horse of a different color" seeking safety more than freedom, sanctuary more than peace. You have to be able to live to experience either freedom or peace. All she wants right now is safety and protection. Perhaps it is divine providence who took a heart gilded with the stone of training and conditioned response and stripped its outer armor allowing him to hear the throbbing heart of motherhood in duress. But without this providence, I personally would never know Cristina, nor would I have the chance to help her in her daily struggles, or bless her living space along with all her family. And I too, like the legend of la migra could have been an ogre-troll and turned a plea for help away. It's a decision we all have to make at some point along the way when our garments are touched by the limits of desperation. And maybe Jesus is not visible because he's inside the person along their trek and his final disposition is the same as theirs. Jesus has no place to lay His head again, and again, and again. Or that man or woman who would pass Cristina through that desperate night might have been Jesus himself in the form of la migra. What irony!
Imagine. Yes, a tall order. I don't think you can really imagine in a manner that allows you to empathize a plight of true unknowing what the next few breaths bring Cristina because if you are reading this, you have a computer, and therefore, you already are outside the socio economic qualifications of anyone who can possibly truly imagine such pitiable lives on the lam. We cannot (myself included) imagine what it is like for this poor woman and her family with almost everything against her existence on either side of imaginary line. But choices are made between a certainty of death and a twilight zone of being able to stay alive and save the lives of her children. She has no knowledge of the so called yellow brick road, the emerald city, lions and tigers and bears oh my, ruby slippers, etc. Cristina though knows she is not venturing onto a movie set. She and her family know they are venturing into economically, sociologically and psychologically mountainous landscapes. Nevertheless, Cristina still believes, prays, and she hopes which is more than she could do in the dust ridden barrio she once thought of as hers and the dust ridden life she once had that she once thought that she had a right to. Will it be different on the other side? The hope is certainly there.
Now that she has crossed into safety, how will she survive? How will she negotiate the walls and impediments that stand between a life of peace of heart, and a life of miserable down-troddenness which even to her is preferable to the alternative awaiting her in the dust ridden barrio named for the woman of seven sorrows. Cristina now knocks upon my door. What to do? What to do? The decision is now mine.
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