Pensar: Rethinking Ourselves as Neighbors

As I continue to think about the time I spent at the U.S./México border this past January, I am also searching for new ways to articulate how my experiences and conversations about immigration and the border have affected my way of thinking about these issues that, to some (including myself), are very sensitive and serious matters to be addressed.

I now move into the next part of my blogging series about my border trip: pensar. I've been struggling to write this section because I've been expecting myself to have fully processed the stories I heard and the things I saw and took in during my trip. Then I remembered, we will never be done thinking about borders, movement, migration—the conversations, if anything, have just begun and are far from ending.

In my previous post about the border trip, I reflected on what I saw and heard during my visit. Those conversations and sights have inciting within me many thoughts and questions about this thing we call a "border." Furthermore, within my own research of LGBT and queer studies, it's pushed me think more about how we're understanding movement from one space to another.

I can't get passed the idea that a "border" exists—what I perceive to be a human constructed idea that separates people from one another. A question that was raised during one of our conversations during the trip was, how are we acting as good neighbors? The concept of "neighbor" has stuck with me as I've continued thinking about how we interact with our migrant communities here in the U.S. and at the border. What is our role as neighbors? This question certainly raises theological concerns for the ways we think about immigration.

But even though scripture calls us to "love your neighbor as yourself," the performance of that calling certainly gets complicated. Does it need to be complicated though? I think we want to imagine that love is a simple idea. And in many cases it is. But does it need to be complicated when we think about immigration. I would argue that the way we respond to immigration is absent of love. As I witnessed migrants being deported without their shoes, their clothes, or even the rest of their loved ones that were traveling with them, I failed to see love in that moment. The sight was the antithesis of Christ's description of hospitality and love in Matthew 25:

'For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? ‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? ‘When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ “The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’ 

I think about this call to be a good neighbor also in terms of how we interact with our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer neighbors. Thinking about a culture of movement and crossing borders, I read the experiences of LGBTQs and migrants alongside one another. Both step into communities where they are unwanted and outnumbered. As a queer Chicano individual, I think I am more aware of these similarities, especially through my own personal experiences. When I step out my door, I enter in a hetero-dominated world. When I walk through the doors of my classrooms, I step into a White-dominated space. Within conversations I faced with questions about my sexual orientations, paired with, "You speak English pretty well."

"Where did you come from?" and "Go back where you came from!" Two statements I've only grown to loathe even more as I began thinking more about the connections and overlaps of immigration, borders, and queerness. We take a lot of concern with this notion of origin and home. We believe we're protecting our "home" from the migrants and demand they go back to their own "home." But if we return back to the understanding of migration as a means of survival, what and where is home? As a queer person, that word "home" is sometimes a scary place to go. I close with reflecting on the lines of Gloria Anzaldúa:

In a New England college where I taught, the presence of a few lesbian threw the more conservative heterosexual students and faculty into a panic. The two lesbian students and we two lesbian instructors met with them to discuss their fears. One of the students said, "I thought homophobia meant fear of going home after a residency."

And I thought, how apt. Fear of going home. And of not being taken in. We're afraid of being abandoned by the mother, the culture, la Raza, for being unacceptable, faulty, damaged. Most of us unconsciously believe that if we reveal this unacceptable aspect of the self our mother/culture/race will totally reject us. To avoid rejection, some of us conform to the values of the culture, push the unacceptable parts into the shows. Which leaves only one fear—that we will be found out and that the Shadow-Beast will break out its cage.*

The fear of going home. The journey para sobrevivir.  As we continue to think about how we're performing our roles as neighbors, let us ask ourselves if "home" is even an option. Or better, how are we allow this to be a new home, a sanctuary, and chance for hope and survival.


References:
* From Borderlands/La Frontera, pp. 19-20