Posted on 01/17/2005 9:26:17 PM PST by Citizen James
ALTAR, Mexico — Along a northbound dirt road, a young couple clad in jeans and T-shirts jumps out of an idling van and walks toward the path's edge, making for a white concrete box with a wrought-iron cross perched on top. Dozens of candles are crammed inside the 5-foot-high altar along with statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. As the couple kneels before the display, a little boy runs out of the van and kisses the ground.
The humble spot about 60 miles south of the Mexico-Arizona border serves as one of the last places migrants worship before being shuttled to spots where they will attempt to slip illegally into the United States on foot.
On a quest for economic survival, some migrants traveling through the treacherous Arizona desert also find themselves embarking on a religious journey. Many rely on faith to sustain them through the trip's perils, praying at icons or lighting votive candles to remember those who died along the way.
Before jumping aboard moving cargo trains during the trip north, 29-year-old Carlos Enrique Cano Vanega and other Central Americans he was traveling with would pray by the side of the tracks.
"We began to entrust ourselves to God and asked that he would keep us safe," said Cano, a Honduran man who had journeyed to this Mexican community recently in preparation for an attempted trip to the United States.
People everywhere will often seek spiritual comfort during troubled times. And Latin Americans identify themselves as religious, even if they don't attend services regularly, said Jacqueline Hagan, co-director for the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston.
In the case of poor immigrants, reliance on faith is even heavier because they have virtually no other resources, Hagan said. "The only recourse they have is to turn to religion, and that's all they really have on the road as well," she said.
Before embarking on the trek into the United States, indigenous residents of the Guatemalan highlands seek counsel, about whether to make the trip and when to go, from evangelical pastors or the Black Christ, a dark-skinned depiction of Jesus common in parts of Latin America, Hagan said.
"Religion is their spiritual passport in the absence of authorization," she said. "They get sanctioned by God to do this."
While on the road, some turn to biblical passages that mirror their travels, such as those citing how the Israelites wandered through the desert under God's guidance.
For Cano and others on the train, reading the New Testament to each other brought comfort.
"You feel something ... you feel safer than being out there" without anything to sustain you, he said at a migrant shelter in Altar, a city that serves as a popular staging area for migrants planning to cross the border at Arizona.
Fifty-six-year-old Ernesto Garcia Mondragon frequented the Catholic church in town to pray for his nephew, who left Mexico bound for the United States. Three months after 19-year-old Olaf Avila Gonzales departed, the family had yet to hear from him.
"I went to ask for the miracle that God and the Virgin can grant me," said Garcia, a shop owner from San Ildefonso. "More than anything, I hope that wherever he is, he is alive."
The family still clung to the hope that Avila hadn't become one of the hundreds of migrants who die each year making the same journey. The names of some of those people are written on crosses nailed or tied to the tops of telephone poles along a route from Altar to the border community of Sasabe, serving as a reminder of the danger.
Migrants setting out on foot for the Arizona desert are often ill-equipped for the tough terrain and the lack of water, shade or roads. They don't know much about the desert, the frigid cold in the winter and searing heat during the summer, the snakes and spiders, and the bandas de bajadores — or rip-off crews — hiding in wait for victims.
Faced with such threatening reality, spirituality helps explain how they get through such a journey, Hagan said. "It's divine protection on an otherwise life-threatening and dangerous journey," she said. "It allows them to endure this hardship."
In the desert, volunteers who maintain water stations on the U.S. side of the border for illegal crossers have found hymnals, bibles and rosary beads scattered among the plastic water jugs, food wrappers, backpacks and clothes migrants leave behind.
At times, they've also discovered antlers atop their water stations, a symbol used by one indigenous group.
"To the Yaquis that is 'God bless you and your whole lineage,'" said the Rev. Robin Hoover, founder of Humane Borders, a group that operates some of the water stations. "It's a profound blessing."
Some items hold sentimental value, such as the scapulars occasionallyseen hanging on tree branches. The cloth necklaces have a prayer and a saint stamped on them and are often given as a gift to young people for confirmation.
"Why was it there? Was it for the next group of people who came through? Was it a person in despair?" asked the Rev. Bob Carney, a Tucson Catholic priest who works with migrants.
Migrants who make it deeper into Arizona have left religious graffiti on interstate supports. Those waiting to be picked up by smugglers leave the messages and drawings, Hagan said.
Once they reach their destinations, many will again frequent a church or shrine to offer thanks for their arrival.
And even if they don't make their destination before being caught and sent back, migrants often attribute how far they made it to religious intervention, Hagan said.
Many of the men who stay at the migrant shelter in Altar have been caught trying to enter the United States. With nowhere to rest or eat and hardly any money left, they wait there in the hopes that they can attempt another crossing, said coordinator Francisco Garcia.
Many tell Garcia, "Si Diosito quiere, lo voy a volver a hacer." ("If the Good Lord is willing, I'm going to do it again.")
Somehow I just can't find the tears. All they have to do to avoid the peril and such is stay on their side of the damn border. NO SYMPATHY
Could anecdotes like this be the reasoning behind Bush's bleeding heart policy?
Dangerous Border crossings for "undocumented immigrants":
I agree with your comments, but have heard how they rely on the smugglers, and do as they say. I know of a family that paid $3,000 for instructions on coming to America. Then paid another $1,000 when they made it to the border. Not speaking the language of our country, how would we expect them to understand the rules/laws? They are exploited by the ones encouraging &/or assisting them to cross the borders. The children get my sympathy.
Hey I want to help the Mexicans. I just want secure borders too.
Feh! Invaders as pillars of the community ping.
Oh, isn't the primitive's graffiti lovely. And look! They left buffalo testes hanging from your rearview mirror.
That means "thanks for letting us kill of some of your livestock, while we're trashing your property and Invading your country."
ping
This story reminds me, I sent 500+ rounds downrange last week, need to restock my supplies.
±
"The Era of Osama lasted about an hour, from the time the first plane hit the tower to the moment the General Militia of Flight 93 reported for duty." 
Toward FREEDOM
LDC, you came up with a great term for these kind of stories but it fell off my brain. Could you remind me and fill us in on the press's template strategy?
"Political correctness is the handmaiden of terrorism."
- "By smearing the overwhelming majority of Americans who support real borders as racists and xenophobes, the OBL obscures its deadly agenda: sabotaging our existing immigration laws and blocking any new efforts to punish those who abuse the system."~ Michelle Malkin
"A nation without borders is not a nation." -- Ronald Reagan
Um maybe the fact that they had to pay all that money and hide to get across the border would make a person suspicious of whether what they were doing was legal or not? Also most everyone that crosses has a relative or friend that has done it before and knows the ropes...The children get my sympathy and my tax dollar when I pay for their schooling and emergency medical care...
Also most everyone that crosses has a relative or friend that has done it before and knows the ropes...
And jihadists?
Ah, isn't that special.
Which part of the Bible tells us to break the law and steal from our neighbor? I wish someone would tell me so I could find "sanction" too.
If it is then I am sorry I voted for him. There are billions of people around the planet that would like to come here for a better life. Why is he only working to allow South Americans and Mexicans?
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