On a chilly Saturday morning in the late south Texas spring,
a couple of hundred members of La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) gathered in their
union meeting hall. A group of old timers were churning out conjunto music, with the accordion
player getting peoples’ feet tapping; this despite a woeful bass player who
kept hiding behind the speakers, even as he pulled and plucked one wrong note
after another.
Fresh-baked Mexican rolls were passed out along with coffee,
and then people were bid to stand, and we were asked to join in reciting Cesar
Chavez’s Farmworkers’ Prayer.
We were all present at LUPE’s colonias’ cumbre (a colonia
is type of Texas border shanty town-- more than 300,000 people in Hidalgo and
Cameron counties live in colonias; a cumbre
is a summit meeting). This gathering of border neighborhood leaders who were
Union members, was being asked to decide the priorities for the next two
years’ of work. It was quite a serious group of people. They were being asked to give up a precious Saturday morning. A free morning for an
hourly-wage earner is as rare as a raise.
It was a mixed crowd, as well, with men and women, and older
and younger people equally represented. The leadership reflected that mix, with
the veteran Juanita Valdez Cox sharing time with rookie Daniel Diaz, and the
seasoned Martha Sanchez trading off with a young Yvette Sanchez.
After the introductions, and some laughter, and some applause,
the group got down to work. The spirit of Cesar Chavez, a man who had visited
this room during past cumbres, seemed
to settle down upon us all. Chavez, a deeply spiritual man, was, in the end, an
entirely practical person as well. The concerns put before the group were,
therefore, seemingly mundane: we need some form of state-recognized
identification for everyone, we need streetlights, we need parks, we need
English-language classes.
The practical aspect, though, was only one part of the exercise. Hardworking people who, at the end of a week have very little change to count, understand very well the connection of daily bread and justice. The wording of the resolutions
perhaps speaks best to that. For
example, a resolution calling on the group to work towards bringing more parks
to the colonias begins with the
statement, “Considering that our neighborhoods are filled with children from
whom the closest park is five miles or further away; and that most of our neighborhoods have no
sidewalks upon which children could walk or play…” a practical concern, and an
important one at that, but the resolution finishes noting that, “We are human
beings and have the same rights as those who live in cities to have safe places
for our children to play. . .”
Vest-pocket
parks as a human right—at first glance, this may seem a bit of a stretch, if
not an outright exaggeration, but the conversations around the issue made the
connections quite neatly. “Health care is a human right, but nobody can afford
to see a doctor, so we have to do the best we can not to get sick. Around here,
everybody has diabetes, everybody’s kids are fat (“gorditos están todos”). They need a place to run. That’s right—we
have a right to exercise!” exclaimed Doña María, one of the oldtimers.
The representatives from the colonias El Jay, Azul, Mi Sueño and Los Amigos
offered perhaps the most interesting—and challenging--resolution. These
representatives noted that life without a drivers’ license (or some other form
of official identification) in modern-day Texas is a nightmare. Without such an
i.d., one cannot open a bank account or cash a check. Auto insurance is much
more expensive if you don’t have a drivers’ license. Worse, in south Texas,
where there is as yet no viable public transportation system, it is impossible
to work without a car—yet undocumented citizens are forced by
circumstances—again—into breaking a law that they would happily obey, if they
could.
Why should the State of Texas offer a drivers’ license to an
undocumented person? Juan Lopez, a younger fellow, told me quite earnestly,
“The police WANT us to have an identification. They want to know who we are—and
that is fair. My daughter WANTS me to have identification, because she knows
that if I get stopped by the police, for any reason at all, then I could get
deported, and she would be without her daddy. And that is just wrong.” His
daughter had her arms wrapped around his leg as he spoke to me. She seemed to
me to be too young to understand any of these distinctions. As she smiled up at
her quite serious father, her eyes glowed with the only resolution, the only
commitment that matters in any of this—her love for her dad.
Despite the chill and the misty rain, it was a good morning
for a town hall meeting, for a cumbre,
for a gathering of neighbors, and for politics.
The delegates filed out of the auditorium, heading for their colonias and their homes, for the hard
work that is living out a dream. One little girl held her father’s hand as they
made their way to their car. Cesar Chavez, from up on high, offered the dad his
quiet smile of assurance. It will be all right, he seemed to say, it will be
all right.
