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Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 3.1 (2003) 127-129



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Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail. By Ruben Martinez. New York: Picador, 2002. 354 pp. $14.00. Border of Death, Valley of Life: An Immigrant Journey of Heart and Spirit. By Daniel G. Groody. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. 224 pp. $24.05.

When I first came to National City, California, near the Mexican border to begin our Franciscan outreach to immigrants in the spring of 1998, I wondered, "What makes immigrants from Mexico & Central America take such deadly risks in crossing the border?" Within a week, my answer came. Two vanloads each carrying 35 men and women from Oaxaca, Mexico, had sped north across the US-Mexico border at San Ysidro through the southbound lane, led by their coyotes who had promised to deliver them to downtown Los Angeles. One of the vans pulled into an orchard in northern San Diego County just as an INS helicopter landed nearby. The immigrants were rounded up and sent back to Tijuana. The second van screeched into our neighborhood's shopping center and crashed into the window of the Lucky Store, sending 19 of the occupants to the hospital with injuries. The next day I was visiting Casa del Migrante, a shelter for immigrant men run by the Scalabrini Order in Tijuana. At 9 PM there was a knock on the door. Ten of the injured immigrants with bandages still on their heads asked if they could stay at the shelter. After they had been released from the hospital, they were deported to Tijuana and the police had told them about the shelter. As we got the men settled into their dormitory space, I asked them. "Why did you risk so much to cross the border?" Miguel spoke first: "In Oaxaca our farm failed and there was nothing to eat; there are no jobs in our area and I asked myself: "Would God want me to watch my five children die of hunger?' And I knew the answer to that question had to be 'No!' That I had to do everything I could to feed my family."

The hope for survival and a better life that pushes so many immigrants north is told with passion and depth by Ruben Martinez in Crossing Over. Beginning with the tragic car accident that kills three brothers of the Chavez family in Temecula, California, Martinez takes us back to their home town of Cheran, Michoacan. There we meet the Chavez brothers' family members, the local priest, the doctor, la curandera (healer) and the hundreds who pass through the town plaza wondering if their time for going north has come. "From the migrants perspective," Martinez insists, "the Chavez brothers and the thousands of other migrants who have died over the past decade in car wrecks or by drowning or from exposure have become martyrs in a cause: to have the freedom to move. Like Indian Joads, they have fled the Mexican dust bowl." But the martyrdom of the Chavez brothers has changed everything for their family in Cheran. Each one must ask if the decision to go north pays homage to the 3 brothers or only increases the anxiety of those left behind wondering if they made it across. Crossing Over is the book I have been waiting for for more than a decade to tell the story of what pushes folks to leave their home, the struggles they find in crossing the border, and what happens to them when they arrive. Martinez takes us on a journey to discover that two towns—Cheran, Michoacan and Warren, Arkansas that never had anything in common or any communication with each other are now bound in an intricate relationship of immigration. Warren is forever changed by the culture, language, traditions and values brought by the folks from Michocan. And Cheran is totally transformed by the silver SUVS, radios, hip-hop music and new cash that [End...

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