Mark Adams offered one small but promising answer to a large and complicated problem when he spoke on U.S./Mexican Border Issues May 15 at the opening presentation of the new Casas Adobes Forum series. Slow the flow of workers heading north by increasing job opportunities in the interior and helping farmers in southern Mexico stay on their land.
First, though, Adams briefly described the long history of social and commercial travel back and forth across the border, including migrants looking for work and better pay in the United States.
Sometimes migration was encouraged. The Bracero Program, which ran from 1943 to 1964, allowed Mexicans to work temporarily in this country (mostly in agriculture), using their earnings to support their families back home. When it ended, the Border Industrialization Act of 1964 offered economic benefits to US. companies who established assembly plants (maquiladoras) in border areas, attracting workers from the interior. Pressure on the border increased when the North American Free Trade Agreement (1994) and goverment economic policies led to job dislocations. This created massive growth of the border cities.
Adams, a minister, has worked for 13 years with Frontera de Cristo, a Presbyterian Bi-National Border Ministry based in Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora --- one of those crowded cities. Among the worshippers at the Agua Prieta chruch were a small group of farmers from Chiapas in Southern Mexico who had come there to work but longed to return home. They were encouraged to succeed in their vision--- joining forces to grow and market free trade coffee in their home valley and a micro loan provided financing.
Cafe Justo (Just Coffee), that cooperative of families who grow, process, roast and market their own coffee, has succeeded. It is now nine years old and self-sustaining, Adams said.
Farmers are replanting fields and improving the quality of the coffee beans they raise. Their leaders are developing the business skills they will need to increase roasting capacity and to expand sales beyond the church markets they now reach. Families can make a living farming their land. The can send their children to school. Young adults do not have to go north to find work. This modest prosperity is even reflected in new business growth in the small town that serves the farming area.
The Forum format offered plenty of time for questions of which there were many.
Addressing concerns about safety issues for travelers in Mexico, Adams said his work takes him to many areas. "Yes, there are places where there is violence; yes, there are travel advisories. This is where the people on the border find themselves. This is the time that God is calling us to live out the Good News in a time of bad news."
Adams sees little chance at this time for positive change in immigration law. There was the possibility of bi-partisan action early in the presidency of George W. Bush, he said, and Bush and President Vincente Fox of Mexico had discussed the issues but response to the 9/11 attacks pushed all that aside.
Although the Agua Prieta maquiladoras were hit by the recession, Mexico seems to be making a stronger recovery than the United States.
