JCRC Visits Nogales, Sonora
Last week, I was invited to participate in an all-day tour in Nogales, Sonora with folks from Santa Cruz Valley United Methodist Church and Border Community Alliance (BCA), a Tubac-based nonprofit dedicated to bridging the border and fostering community through education, collaboration and cultural exchange. BCA works closely with the Fundación Empresariado Sonorense A.C. (FESAC), a Mexican community foundation that focuses on community development in the border region.
Our group of a dozen people gathered bright and early (8:30 a.m.!) on the Arizona side, where we were met by Ann from BCA. She walked us through the border crossing to meet our driver and our Mexican tour guide, Alma Cota de Yanez, Executive Director of FESAC’s Nogales Project.
FESAC works in partnership with BCA to emphasize and amplify important work and “good news” stories from across the line. Over the course of the day, we visited a small Methodist church whose pastor does extensive outreach in the men’s jail; a remarkable migrant shelter, Casa de la Misericordia y de Todas las Naciones, whose school, kitchen, and robust art program serve 112 people from all over the world for months at a time; and an extraordinary factory, the ARizona SOnora BOrder Projects for Inclusion (ARSOBO), that manufactures prosthetics, hearing devices and all-terrain wheelchairs and whose employees are all folks impacted by similar disabilities.
We visited some of the poorest areas of Nogales but we also saw new “affordable” housing, where matching funds from the maquiladoras (factories) and the Mexican government put home ownership within reach of thousands of people. We drove through fancy neighborhoods on the hills above town, and we learned that the wide-spread road construction that makes travel a nightmare is designed to mitigate the extensive, often deadly, flooding that plagues Nogales during times of heavy rainfall. Most importantly, we learned that each of the projects we visited works to center the people they serve. Their assets-based approach encourages agency, self-esteem, and resilience among people in dire need of assistance.
At the end of the day, we gathered at the Nogales landmark, La Roca, for coffee, flan, and to share our personal reflections. I was struck by the Jewish values that could be teased out from this multifaith, multicultural experience: that of limmud (learning), that encourages us to embrace curiosity instead of holding tight to our preconceived notions; b'tzelem Elohim, the belief that all people are created in G*d’s image and possess an equal, essential humanity; and tikkun olam – our obligation, as Jews, to repair the world, often through social justice and social action. This effort can only succeed through kehillah – a robust, engaged community working together to make the world a safe and just place.
We hope to follow the lead of Santa Cruz Valley United Methodist Church and offer similar tours in the near future. In the meantime, please follow the links above to learn more. Thank you, Reverend Meredith, for the invitation to such a meaningful trip.