Some Religious Aspects of the Hispanic Experience

SOME RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE HISPANIC PRESENCE

Rev. Joseph A. Fahy, C.P.

(from talk given 3/11/03 at Berry College)

Hispanic Apostolate

Archdiocese of Atlanta

St. Lawrence Catholic Church

319 Grayson Highway

Lawrenceville, Georgia 30045

Recently the Census Bureau figures indicated that Hispanics constitute the nation’s largest minority, now numbering, as of mid-2001, 37 million, or 13% of the nation’s population. According to the 2000 World Almanac, the United States today ranks fifth among the Spanish speaking countries of the world, after Mexico, Spain, Argentina, and Colombia.[1]

On December 12, 1983, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Catholic Bishops of the United States issued an important pastoral letter, The Hispanic Presence: Challenge and Commitment. “At this moment we recognize the Hispanic community among us as a blessing from God,” the bishop stated. With conviction and gratitude, he acknowledged the “special gifts which Hispanics” bring to our nation and Church. Among their special gifts which enrich our common American heritage, molded to such a marked degree by the rich legacy of immigrants, among them the ancestors of most of us, are the following: a profound respect for the dignity of each person; a deep reverence for and commitment to family; a heartwarming sense of “fiesta” or joyful celebrations of familial, religious, and national; a grateful appreciation of God’s gift of life; a profound sense of God’s loving presence in all the dimensions of life; and a moving devotion to religious figures such as Mary and their patron saints, and particularly, to the crucified Christ with whom many identify.[2] The United States Bishops’ statement, Encuentro and Mission (2002) repeats the statement of 1983: “Hispanic Catholics are a blessing from God and a prophetic presence that has transformed many dioceses and parishes into more welcoming, vibrant, and evangelizing faith communities.”[3]

The elegant Spanish language is neither new nor foreign to many places in the present-day U.S. including Georgia, where this writer exercises a priestly ministry. Spanish was the first European language to be spoken in large areas that now constitute this nation. In 1540, Hernando De Soto’s expedition passed through parts of what now is Georgia. Spanish Jesuit and Franciscan priests founded missions along the coast and interior during the 16^th and 17^th centuries, decades before James Oglethorpe founded the English colony of Georgia. Even earlier, Juan Ponce de Leon landed on the Atlantic coast, possibly near Daytona Beach, naming the area “Florida” for the day he went ashore—Easter Sunday or Pascua Florida. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his expedition searched in vain for the fabled seven cities of Cibola during the early 1540s, traversing parts of present day Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The Spanish names of the cities, counties, rivers, mountains, and states, such as Montana, Colorado, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida, are witness to immense areas at one time or another under Spanish sovereignty, “at least half of the continental United States.”[4]

In the ongoing debates, often quite strident, concerning the incendiary issue of immigration, the compelling reasons triggering massive migration to the U.S. are often omitted or muted. Concentration in the media is frequently focused on the problems caused by migrants. The acclaimed work, The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, points out the great need for the press, “the newsroom,” to reflect the diverse views on important issues of American society. “Shrunken coverage leads to a shallower public understanding, more chance of abuse for the country to resolve its most difficult problems.”[5]

Pope John Paul II echoes these wise observations precisely in the context of immigration. The pope states in his message, “The Church and Illegal Immigrants” (July 25, 1995):

In fact, there is less and less talk of the situation of emigrants in their countries of origin, and more and more and more of immigrants with respect to the problems they create in the countries where they settle. In this perspective, it is very important that public opinion be properly informed about the true situation in the migrants’ country of origin, about the tragedies involving them and the possible risks of returning. It is necessary to guard against the rise of new forms of racism or xenophobic behavior which attempt to make these brothers and sisters of ours scapegoats for what may be difficult local situations.[6]

Their irregular status cannot allow immigrants to lose their dignity. They are “endowed with inalienable rights which cannot be violated.”[7]

The scope of this presentation does not permit a lengthy treatment of the forceful motives generating massive emigration. One of the most prominent reasons, obviously, is economic necessity, massive poverty. In the late 1990s, the purchasing power of over fifty percent of all Mexican households was less than five thousand dollars. Among the areas where maquiladoras (assembly plants) are scattered throughout the U.S.-Mexican border, thousands live in shacks of discarded materials, without running water or interior plumbing, and with scarce electricity; campesinos dwell in sprawling, overcrowded shanty towns and slums of densely populated municipalities municipios and cities. Not only in Mexico, but also in other Latin American nations, inflation and devaluation of already depressed wages decrease the purchasing power of meager salaries, inflicting intolerable hardship upon the masses of the marginalized. Immense numbers of Latin Americans suffer from malnutrition, with a corresponding high incidence of infant mortality. Various countries have double-digit unemployment and underemployment figures, even among skilled workers and professionals.[8] Not all those who have immigrated were destitute; some of them had some secondary education, but were not able to advance to a professional position, or earn sufficiently for a better life-style for themselves, their children, and their parents. A suffocating, constraining, and violent machismo was “one of the primary reasons that so many women were heading north…”[9] Repressive regimes allocated a disproportionate amount of national resources to the military rather than to the basic needs of their people. The continual flight of capital investment, and payments on huge external debts, contributed to a drastic slowdown for needed domestic investment in the construction of the basic infrastructure indispensable for a steady broad-based economic development.

Other tragic features of the “institutionalized violence” which reigns widely in Latin America, prompting continuing emigration, are the following: high rates of illiteracy in some countries; the cultivation of profitable exports such as cotton, coffee, sugar, tin, oil, flowers, and drugs, instead of concentration on basic food staples; endemic violence; inequitable land-tenure systems; growing concentration of wealth in fewer hands; greater profits for foreign investors; soaring prices for vital commodities; rampant corruption; and inaccessibility to health care and education.[10] Others have abandoned their homelands because of the ravages of catastrophic natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes.

The U.S., to a large though not exclusive degree—the U.S. possesses allies in national elites—has been responsible through its often oppressive economic, political, and military policies for this neocolonial and dependency system assuring a favorable climate for U.S. investment, the availability of basic raw materials, and the maintenance of markets for U.S. goods. The U.N. Truth Commission Report (1993), verified by released intelligence reports, attributed the major part of the numerous assassinations, kidnappings, tortures, mutilation, and disappearances which in the 1980s violently snuffed out 70,000 Salvadoran lives, to the nation’s armed forces and its allies, the death squads, supported by the U.S. In Guatemala, approximately 200,000 violent deaths, approaching a verifiable genocide of the country’s largely indigenous peoples, have occurred since the U.S. supported the overthrow of the nation’s first democratically elected president in 1954—the immense majority of these crimes perpetrated by the military and its allies.[11]

The above litany of causes, among others, help us to understand better the ongoing exodus fleeing misery, poverty, and violence in search of a better, a more human quality of life, as did many of our ancestors who settled here. The rate of traumatic death among desperate migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexican border continues despite the formidable obstacles of a beefed-up Border Patrol and the frequent erection of strong barriers. This daily tragedy dramatically demonstrates the compelling reasons for thousands of desperate migrants to expose themselves to the danger of death and harm by suffocating in trucks and boxcars, drowning, heatstroke, thirst, dehydration, hypothermia, gang violence, abandonment by guides, coyotes, snakes, scorpions, and inhospitable U.S. citizens.[12] “The immigrant experience represents a special case of mourning in which mourning revolves around the loss of loved ones and places… The immigrant simultaneously must come to terms with the loss of family and friends on the one hand, and cultural forms (food, music, art, language, for example) that have given the immigrant’s native world a distinct and highly personal character…on the other hand.” Undoubtedly this is the painful experience of almost every mature migrant![13]

The 2000 Census of Population has revealed that the U.S. received the “greatest wave” of immigrants in its history, with almost 14 million new migrants between 1990 and 2000, a figure far exceeding each decade of the Great Wave from 1890-1920. Between 1900 and 1910 the U.S. admitted 8.8 million immigrants, the largest number in our history until the 1990s. Immigrants were employed in essentially every major industrial sector during the 2000-2001 period. As mentioned, “The economy of the U.S. in the 1990s was overwhelmingly dependent on male immigrant workers for its employment growth.” With a declining and aging of the workforce of native-born American laborers, immigrants arrive at the ages of peak work performance, their late teens, 20s and 30s, usually without elderly dependents and with a strong work ethic.[14]

“Nearly one-half of the growth of the nation’s civilian labor force between 1990-2000/2001 was attributable to recently-arrived immigrants at lower ages than native-born workers.” The newcomers are willing to work long hours for reduced wages, for example, in many of Georgia’s key industries: poultry plants, construction, carpet mills, agriculture, hotels, restaurants, landscaping, meat packing, and numerous other small and medium businesses. American jobs have been saved. Without this available workforce, many of Georgia’s enterprises would have been closed; reduced production, profits, and personnel; or relocated (going “offshore”). Hispanic purchasing power in the state has escalated to over 5 billion dollars, as a growing number have purchased homes and opened their own businesses. Hispanic remittances to home countries are in the billions and have strengthened sluggish economies and limited emigration to the U.S.

The Judeo-Christian Scriptures enjoin care and concern for the alien and immigrant residing in the midst of the community. Several commentators of the Old Testament have stated that no command is repeated more frequently in the Old Testament with the exception of the imperative to worship the one God. The stranger and immigrant were particularly vulnerable to discrimination and exploitation, as are the numerous immigrants dwelling in our country. The Bible—the Old Testament—stresses how the merciful God, Yahweh, continually manifested and mandated upon Israel a special care for the poor and the oppressed, with explicit mention of the need to be concerned for the precarious situation of the alien and foreigner living in or near the community. “When aliens reside with you in your land, do not oppress them. You shall treat the aliens who reside with you no differently than the natives born among you. Have the same love for them as for yourselves, for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt. I, the Lord, am your God” (Lev. 19:33-34).

The Scriptures, the inspired Word of God for our Jewish and Christian brothers and sisters, challenged and called upon Israel to treat the immigrants and strangers among them with the same compassion, care, respect, and love with which Yahweh acted toward them, liberating the people from the brutal yoke of slavery.[15] That same inspired Word now challenges us as Church, nation, states, local communities, and individuals to manifest equal concern for justice, compassion, respect, and acceptance of our immigrant brothers and sisters who frequently flee economic and political injustice, and physical and cultural deprivation in the hope of obtaining a better life, as did many of our own ancestors.

As an infant, the Christ Child, in order to escape a cruel death, fled to a foreign land and experienced the uprooting and pain of emigrating to an alien culture. An important factor facilitating Jesus’ profound sensitivity to all types of people was His 30-year residence in the northern part of Israel, called Galilee, at the time Galilee of the Gentiles, a region rich with a cosmopolitan, heterogeneous mix of peoples, cultures, and religious orientations, a crossroads of caravans from different areas.[16] St. Paul in his letter to the early Christian community of Ephesus in Asia Minor emphasized that Jesus during His life broke down barriers between different peoples, as well as unjust sexist, and oppressive relationships between men and women (Eph. 2:14-16).

On November 14, 2002, Pope John Paul II made a historic first papal address to the Italian Parliament. In his address, the pope covered a wide range of current issues, with deep respect for the lawmakers and reverence for Italy’s splendid cultural and religious traditions. He stressed the “growing need for concord, solidarity, and peace” among nations. He commented on Italy’s drastically declining birthrate and the aging population, which in the future will impose human, social, and economic problems. The pontiff mentioned the problem of unemployment and the tragic prison situation in which “inmates often live in conditions of appalling overcrowding.” “The Church is ‘Catholic’ or universal not only in a geographic sense, but because it is called to be open to and sensitive to every human being, to every race, culture, and nationality, without discrimination, breaking down barriers as did Christ. In the Church (Catholic, universal) no one is a stranger.[17]

The Churches in the U.S. must also be conscious of the conditions and problems of Hispanics, comment upon such issues, and employ their resources to alleviate and, hopefully, solve and eliminate abuses and injustices.

One of the ongoing issues facing numerous Hispanics, particularly those of the first generation, recent arrivals, is the challenge to learn English. Many of this first generation are urged to learn English, and are criticized for not acquiring fluency. As a Roman Catholic priest privileged to serve the rapidly growing Hispanic population in Metro Atlanta and north Georgia, I emphasize the advantage and need of learning English. However, it is difficult for many adults to attain even a basic fluency in English for various serious reasons: limited formal education; long hours of arduous work; proximity to their native lands, especially Mexico, facilitating periodic visits and frequent communication in Spanish with relatives and friends; cherished hopes and dreams of one day returning home, which diminish the incentives to learn English; the growing presence of Spanish-language media, radio, press, and TV, such as the sophisticated channels Telemundo, Univision, and CNN Espanol (radio programs and newspapers in Spanish are often present in small towns where Hispanics have settled); heavily Hispanic neighborhoods; a large transient population; and often great distances to English classes. Religious groups should be creative and generous in sponsoring classes in English, with competent, trained, and native English-speakers as teachers.[18]

The Spanish language is a most important aspect of ethnic identification for numerous Hispanics. “The missionary tradition of The Church has always sought to evangelize (teach) people in their language as it is by the mother language… that one can reach the soul, mold it in the Christian Spirit.”[19] “The liturgy of the Church (its official prayers of worship) must not be foreign to any country, people, or individual,” so for the foreseeable future religious services, particularly the Sunday Mass or liturgy, must be celebrated in Spanish where such a need exists, as it does in many areas of the country. The summit of the Church’s activity is the celebration of the Eucharist, where the faithful are nourished by God’s word and the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood—our Latino brothers and sisters have a right to access the celebration of these treasures of Word and Sacrament in their own language.

On February 10^th, about two weeks ago, the New York Times printed a very important article for the Spanish-speaking community: “For Hispanics, Language and Culture Barriers Can Further Complicate College” (02/10/03). “Only 16 percent of Latino High School graduates (as mentioned above) earn a four-year college degree by age 29, compared with the 37 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 21 percent of African Americans, according to a recent study of census data by the Pew Hispanic Center.”[20] Intimately related to this low rate of college graduates is the extremely elevated percent of Hispanic dropouts from high school. The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research issued a report (2001) indicating that only 32 percent of Hispanic youth receive a high school diploma or its equivalent, such as a GED. This figure corroborates the findings of another important document, “No More Excuses:” The Final Report of the Hispanic Dropout Project (1998): Nearly one in five of our nation’s Hispanics between the ages of 16 and 24 who ever enrolled in a United States school left school without either a high school diploma or an alternative certificate such as a GED, according to the most recently available data from the United States Census Bureau. If we consider all of this nation’s Hispanics, including immigrants who never enrolled in U.S. schools, the Hispanic graduation rate reaches a staggering low 30 percent in Georgia. “While just 56 percent of all U.S. immigrants, Hispanics account for nearly 90 percent of all immigrant dropouts… Hispanic dropout rates have remained largely an invisible problem to all but Hispanic students, their parents, and their communities.”

Some of the reasons for this high dropout rate are the following: many do not begin to leave school because of the economic needs of the family, as they hope to contribute financially by work; numerous young people have few role models with a secondary education; low stereotypical expectations of some teachers and school counselors translate into self-fulfilling failures; an often crowded home environment is not conducive to serious and continual study; a shortage of teachers and advisors who are bilingual, or are not knowledgeable about Hispanic culture in general, or the situation in which students live; absence of meaningful parental involvement with teachers; early marriage; fear by indocumentados of detection and deportation; lack of psychological counseling which some immigrant children need; deficient English proficiency; fear of gangs; many immigrant children live in economically depressed areas where schools are overcrowded, with limited current educational materials and under-trained faculty; and the perception that further education will not help them to avoid bleak job opportunities, or to enter college.[21]

If the U.S. is to remain competitive in attracting national and international companies and high-tech industries, the country cannot afford to ignore the basic education and job training of a large part of its youth. The necessary investment in adequate curricula and job training, tailored, when possible, to the particular difficulties and needs of Hispanic youth, is the key in forming a skilled workforce and harnessing the economic potential of our Hispanic youth for profoundly enriching our nation, for not increasing a restless underclass, closing the widening gap between rich and poor, and promoting upward mobility of many talented young people. The churches must be aware of this tragic high rate of Hispanic dropouts, and support politicians and educators in promoting effective educational and job training programs.

Numerous employers, desperate for laborers, risk indictments and heavy fines for hiring undocumented immigrants. Mention has already been made of the great dependence of key industries, as well as of small and medium businesses, on millions of immigrants, legal and illegal.

On November 15, 2001, 41 Catholic bishops of the South, including 13 from Texas, issued a pastoral letter, “Voices and Choices,” commenting on workers and conditions in the poultry industry. The letter focuses on the lack of “voices and choices” of those who work in the poultry industry, thousands of whom are Hispanics. The bishops do not “mean to single out this one productive business as unique.” The pastoral letter uses “the poultry industry as an example of other businesses, in agriculture and manufacturing, which share the same challenges, whether furniture is being made, produce picked, or livestock raised under contract. This pastoral letter is about awareness, not answers”—an important observation for us all, whether Catholics or not! The incidence of repetitive motion injuries among poultry process workers, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, is five times higher than in manufacturing generally. Sixty percent of poultry companies surveyed were found in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Over fifty-one percent of the plants failed to pay workers for time spent in job-related tasks such as cleanup; over fifty-four percent of plants deducted money from workers’ salaries for protective clothing which companies agreed to purchase. Healthcare personnel employed by the plants often refuse to certify that injuries incurred at work are employment-related. Many injuries on the job are not disclosed for fear of firing. Since the majority of the workers in the processing plants are African Americans, women, and Hispanics, unionizing is extremely difficult, or practically impossible. Those who promote the introduction of unions risk the loss of their jobs. Poultry growers “must spend large sums of money to build, and later update the facilities where the birds will be raised. Such investments usually call for a mortgage on the family farm in the case of small growers.” The plant determines what the grower will be paid, “once expenses for supplies are deducted.” The bishops stress that the “workers have basic rights—to decent work, to just wages, to form and join unions, among others. The economy exists for the human person, not the other way around.” May the bishops’ pastoral letter help generate courageous and creative efforts by government and industry to make the necessary structural changes and viable legal protections, by giving a “voice to the voiceless,” to promote just wages, respect, safe working conditions, adequate medical care, the right of workers to organize, suitable compensation for injuries received at work, and fair pensions.[22]

Church leaders should strongly encourage and support national, state, and local political and business leadership in raising the minimum wage, $5.15 per hour, which is the salary of numerous Hispanics.[23] It is almost impossible for a worker with such a reduced wage to cover basic family expenses, without another job or the aid of a working spouse. In many cases Hispanics do not receive benefits, or few—no health care, no paid vacations, few or no sick days, no pensions, little or no compensation for injuries incurred on the job. Thousands of Hispanic children do not have health insurance, and have limited access to physicians and health care.[24] Politicians should be encouraged to foster legalization, under just and specific conditions, of the status of millions of undocumented workers, so essential to the economy, for the standardization of wages, to end the daily experience of the “shadowy life” of fear and anxiety, so as to reduce the widespread markets of forged documents, (documentos chuecos) to make more available essential social services, and to aid unskilled American workers who suffer certain disadvantages in competition with indocumentados.[25] Thousands of Hispanics who have lost their jobs, or have had their hours of work downsized during the current economic downturn, are in desperate need of financial aid.

“Hispanic poverty while significantly improved during the 1990s, remains twice as high as the overall poverty rate.” Hispanics are heavily employed in areas of the economy hit especially hard by the downturn, such as retail trade and manufacturing. Lack of both formal education and of skills ill equip many to change readily to a different occupation. By December 2001, well over a million Hispanics were out of work.[26] The number of Hispanic “casual corner laborers” or “day laborers” has substantially increased; many are not entitled to unemployment benefits.[27]

Brief consideration will be devoted to several aspects of Hispanic religious devotion. Holy Week, especially Good Friday, has always been extremely important and solemn for the poor of Latin America. The entire Passion or suffering of Jesus is vividly expressed in realistic iconography: paintings, procession, drama, and lifelike statues. This incredibly rich devotion to the suffering of Christ, a truly sublime treasure and priceless heritage, often considers the crucified Lord in isolation, without seeing the Passion’s intimate connection and culmination in relation to the entire life and ministry of Jesus. While enriching and adding dignity and strength to countless lives, devotion to the sufferings and crucifixion of Christ, divorced from an awareness of their ultimate causes, which is the fidelity of Jesus to the will of God as He conceived it, at times has produced apathy, passivity, and fatalism in the face of injustice, and a failure to struggle creatively, courageously, and continuously for liberation from individual, communal, and structural oppression. The Theology of Liberation considering the ministry of Christ stresses the spirituality of the non-violent struggle for freedom from all types of injustice, and the courageous endurance of the harsh suffering which such efforts usually entail--witnessed by deaths of numerous journalists, teachers, catechists, labor leaders, lawyers, priests and bishops, among them Archbishop Oscar Romero, who valiantly denounced and non-violently struggled against oppressive regimes and unjust structures.[28]

Another very important aspect of the religious life of millions of Hispanics, by no means exclusively of Mexicans, is the deep devotion to the Virgin Mary, particularly under the title of our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patroness of the Americas, or now, America, as Pope John Paul II declared in his last visit to Mexico. The year 1531 marked a decade since Hernan Cortes with his motley expeditionary force of Spaniards and Indian allies conquered Montezuma’s empire. The conqustadores massacred thousands, and made masses of rubble of numerous buildings of the metropolis Tenochtitilan, the precursor of the megalopolis Mexico City. In the tragic aftermath of devastation and defeat, thousands more perished and entire towns were depopulated by periodic epidemics of smallpox and other infectious diseases brought to the New World by the Europeans. The indigenous people had no immunity against such new ailments. In the midst of such widespread despair, sense of meaninglessness, chaos, and desolation, “Holy Mary, Mother of God our Queen, appeared to a poor and dignified Indian, Juan Diego.” Mary appears as one of the indigenous peoples, taking on the lovely dark-skin pigmentation of the native women, brown-eyed and black-haired, with a perfect beauty that never overwhelmed. The black band about her waist indicates that she is with Child. She addresses Juan Diego by name, not in the elegant Castilian of the conquerors, but in the expressive native language Nahuatl, conversing with him as a mature man, with dignity, respect, affection, gentleness, and maternal familiarity. She expresses to Juan Diego her ardent desire that a church be built at Tepeyae in the outskirts of the city, where she “will show and give all people all my love, my compassion, my help, and my protection.” When he conveys this message to the bishop, Mary’s image is imprinted on the coarse cloth of his tilma or mantle which survives to this day at her sanctuary in Mexico City.[29]

During his fifth pastoral visit to Mexico in July 2002, Pope John Paul II canonized or added to the catalogue of Saints the humble Indian Juan Diego. The canonization evoked widespread and warm enthusiasm, pride, and gratitude among millions of Hispanics in their respective patrias and here in the U.S., particularly, but not exclusively among Mexicans. According to ancient tradition, Juan Diego was the faithful messenger of “Holy Mary, Mother of God” in December 1531. Juan Diego, one of the powerless, whom the powerful often do not believe capable of leadership and responsibility, was empowered to be Mary’s special messenger to one of the new leaders—a remarkable reversal of roles! “God chose those whom the world considered absurd to shame the wise” (I Cor. 1:27). Juan Diego’s canonization honors the 12 million indigenous peoples of Mexico, and other millions who live in Central and South America. The pope considers Juan Diego as a “protector and advocate” of the peoples of the Americas or America, millions of whom have emigrated to the U.S. May millions of North Americans mobilize their ample resources, human, cultural, spiritual, and material, with selfless generosity and creativity, to serve these our Hispanic brothers and sisters who deeply enrich us by their presence. We Americans should be, when necessary, the “voice of the voiceless,” supporting justice for them, recognizing their presence as indeed a “challenge and a commitment…a blessing from God.”[30]

Bibliography

Brading, D.A. 2001, Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe. Cambridge Press.

Chavez, Leo R. 1992. Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society.

Holt, Rineheart and Winston, Inc.

De la Garza, Rodolfo, and Lowell, Briant L. Sending Money Home: Hispanic

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Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2001. Nickel and Dimed. New York: Henry Hold and Company.

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Encuentro and Mission: A renewed Pastoral Framework for Hispanic Ministry, 2002.

U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Meeting. Washington, D.C.: Origins, CNS Documentary

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Galilea, Segundo. 1984. The Beatitudes: to Evangelize as Jesus did. Maryknoll, N.Y.:

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John Paul II. “The Church and Illegal Immigrants.” 1995.

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Krauze, Enrique. 1997. Mexico Biography of Power, A History of Moderns Mexico,

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Martinez, Ruben. 2001. Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail. New

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O’Neill, William R. and Spohn, William C. 1998. “Rights of Passage: The Ethics of

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PERIODICALS (Citations must necessarily be brief)

The New York Times

“Outside Do-it-Yourself, Store, Men Yearn to Do it for Them,” February 12, 2003

“For Hispanic, Language and Culture Barriers Can Further Complicate College,”

February 10, 2003

“Hispanics Now Largest Minority, Census Shows,” January 22, 2003

“Illegal Immigrant Death Rate Rises Sharply in Barren Areas,” August 6, 2002

“Skeletons Tell of Gamble By Immigrants,” October 16, 2002

“Human Cargo Again Treks From Mexico North to U.S.: More Security Increases Peril

and Cost of Trip,” November 24, 2002

“Meatpackers’ Profits Hinge On Pool of Immigrant Labor,” December 21, 2001

“Ambivalence Prevails in Immigration Policy,” May 27, 2001

“A Perilous 4,000 Mile Passage to Work,” May 29, 2001

“Latinos Gain Visibility in Cultural Life of the U.S.” September 19, 1999.

“Hispanic Promised Lands Broken Promises,” May 25, 1991.

USA TODAY

“Dropout Rate a Challenge,” February 10, 1998

“Time Scarce to Study Language,” March 5, 1997

THE GEORGIA BULLETIN

“Jesus Knows Immigrant’s Pain,” December 15, 1994.

[1] NY Tines, “Hispanics Now Largest Minority” January 22, 2002; Encuentro & Mission

[14] Immigrant Workers and the Great American Job Machine pp9-35

[21] No More Excuses, pp5,21-31 USA TODAY, February 10, 1998