Page 54 - Catholic Extension Magazine Winter 2019

14. If we are honest, racism is really ed toil shall be sunk, and until every 19. This hatred of Latinos is not new.
about advancing, shoring up, and drop of blood drawn with the lash Ancient demons have been reawak-
failing to oppose a system of white shall be paid by another drawn with ened and old wounds opened. One
privilege and advantage based on the sword, as was said three thou- of my brother bishops has rightly
skin color. When this system begins sand years ago, so still it must be called racism ‘the ugly, original sin
to shape our public choices, struc- said the judgments of the Lord are of our country, an illness never fully
ture our common life together and true and righteous altogether’. healed’. The El Paso matanza is rem-
becomes a tool of class, this is rightly iniscent of a long history of importa-
called institutionalized racism. Action 17. The matanza in El Paso focused tion of hate here in this community,
to build this system of hate and in- our attention on the grave racism killings, matanzas and racism direct-
action to oppose its dismantling are directed at Latinos today, which has ed at Latinos, Asians, Blacks, Indige-
what we rightly call white supremacy. reached a dangerous fever pitch. nous, mulattoes and mestizos in the
This is the evil one and the ‘father Latinos now tell me that for the first southwest that goes back centuries.
of lies’ (John 8, 44) incarnate in our time in their lives they feel unsafe, El Paso historian Dr. Yolanda Leyva
everyday choices and lifestyles, and even in El Paso. They feel that they has observed that the El Paso matan-
our laws and institutions. have targets on their backs because za ‘is the predictable outcome of 200
of their skin color and language. years of a White supremacist idea’s
15. The theologian Father Bryan They feel that they are being made growth.’ It is a story often forcibly
Massingale has aptly named all of to live in their own home as a ‘strang- pushed underground.
this soul sickness. Truly we suffer from er in a foreign land’ (Exodus 2, 22).
a life-threatening case of hardening 20. In the next section I will attempt
of the heart. In a day when we prefer 18. Our highest elected officials have to summarize some of the history
to think that prejudice and intoler- used the word ‘invasion’ and ‘killer’ of white supremacy in our border-
ance are problems of the past, we over 500 times to refer to migrants, land community, though it is not
still find acceptable groups to treat as treated migrant children as pawns on exhaustive. A sincere reckoning with
less than human, to look down upon a crass political chessboard, insin- our past and lamentation over it are
and to fear. uated that judges and legislators essential for transformation. We need
of color are un-American, and have spaces in our churches and com-
16. A series of shootings -- Roseburg, made wall-building a core political munity to do that. As Bishop Mario
Charleston, Orlando, Pittsburgh, and project. In Pope Francis’ words, these Enrique Ríos noted when publishing
Oak Creek, just to name a few -- now ‘signs of meanness we see around us the definitive account of the racially
undeniably demonstrates that our heighten our fear of the other’. The motivated massacres of the Gua-
unwillingness to stamp out racism same deadly pool of sin that moti- temalan conflict, ‘The recovery of
continues to accrue debts being paid vates the attack on migrants seeking memory is irreplaceable in the work
for in blood, the blood of people of safety and refuge in our border com- of winning peace’. So the first step
color and those we deem different. munity motivated the killing of our for all of us in El Paso is to recover
Abraham Lincoln’s anxious premoni- neighbors on August 3rd. Sin unites a buried memory that lives in each
tion about the terrible consequences people around fear and hate. We of us. It is a story of race, deeply
of slavery seems to ring true -- ‘if must name and oppose the racism embedded in our society, yet deeply
God wills that it continue until all the that has reared its head at the center counter to Jesus’ life and teaching.
wealth piled by the bondsman’s two of our public life and emboldened
hundred and fifty years of unrequit- forces of darkness.

PART II

‘Heart-Sick’: The Legacy of Hate and White Supremacy on the Border
They open their mouths against me,lions that rend and roar.
Psalm 22, 14

Tú no vales. You don’t count. communities and Spanish colonists, a 22. A sober reading of the history
‘choque de culturas’. In that encoun- of colonization can discern both
21. We in the borderlands under- ter, an insidious message was sent the presence of a genuine Christian
stand in our bones the reality of like the report of cannon fire through- missionary impulse as well as the
hate directed at Mexicans and how out the American continent which deployment of white supremacy
people can be ‘othered’. Our faith reverberates to the present day: Tú and cultural oppression as tools of
community was born in the fraught no vales. You don’t count. economic ambition, imperial adven-
encounter between Indigenous turism and political expansion.