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Perspectivas/Occasional Papers • Fall 2006Perspectivas/Occasional Papers • Fall 2006me sirven de almohada (I carry my roots with me all the timerolled up I use them as my pillow.).” 2I concur with Fernando Segovia’s honesty about the situatednessof our theologies, reflected in his admission that “[a]t a fundamentallevel I have used my life story as a foundation for mywork.” 3 My migratory experiences are not accompanied by theconcomitant dangers and injustices lived by refugees and thoseamong us who lack the proper documents. This is thanks to decisionsmade by grandparents on both sides of my family whomade their journeys to insure their children would be bornand/or raised in the United States. But my family story is not allthat different from so many in this latest wave of migrations toNorth America. My Slavic father’s oldest brother came as a toddlerand earned his citizenship by serving in the U.S. Army andsurviving World War II. My uncle’s experience is not unlike anumber of the 30,000 plus foreign nationals in the U.S. militarytoday with dreams of becoming citizens through their service. Mymother’s parents detoured through Cuba from Spain, victims ofrevised U.S. immigration policies. They married and conceivedtheir firstborn in Cuba, and, like so many today, their migration tothe U.S. bears unexplained contradictions in documentation. Butfrom their journeys my inheritance includes a fondness for plátanos(sweet fried plantains), an inexplicable level of comfort inthe Spanish-speaking Caribbean, the word guagua 4 and theresponsibility to wear a white shirt as a sign of solidarity and as areminder to a commitment that transcends generations. 5Migrations are not objects of disengaged study, they are sources oftheological reflection that emerge from mi vida cotidiana (mydaily living). And as a Hispanic theologian, rooted in an appreciationof teología y pastoral de conjunto, I see no demarcationamongst theological disciplines that sets pastoral theology andpractical concerns as separate and secondary fields of study in thechurch and the academy.52One of the advantages of doing theology latinamente 6 is thatour recognition of lo cotidiano (the daily) as locus theologicusallows us to accept the reality that all theology is local. 7 Thereforeto reflect on migration abstractly, removed from the context of realpeople and communities in complex situations, is counterintuitiveand unproductive. Our local theologies arise from our communitiesof accountability, and we need to remember that in the contextof migration to, from and through the United States, Puerto Rico,Mexico and Canada our communities and churches comprisemigrants and their families, border patrol agents and federaljudges, politicians and policy-makers of all stripes, the conflictedand the xenophobic, the fearful and the threatened, minutemenand activists, companions and those struggling to live as goodneighbors. With this complexity of our communities in mind, Iwould like to focus on four challenges for theological reflectionand praxis latinamente; first, retrieving the lost memories of lasluchas (the struggles) from past migrations; second, cultivatingdynamic solidarity across difference; third, changing the languageand rhetoric that surrounds im/migration; fourth, avoiding thetemptation to spiritualize border-crossings.Retrieving Our StoriesAuthor A l f redo Véa, in his novel The Silver Cloud Café, poignantlydedicated to migrants, challenges the cultural amnesiathat plagues the United States:You must seek out remembrance, for ours is a land ofamnesiacs who pretend that there is no past; thatAmerica is a multi-cultural land when, in truth, it is ananticultural place that has ever been blessed with persistentand enduring cultures that have survivednever-ending efforts to drag them out of sight; pushthem out of mind; to imprison them in the past. 853
Perspectivas/Occasional Papers • Fall 2006Perspectivas/Occasional Papers • Fall 2006Later in the book he goes on to unmask the price paid for suchforgetfulness, “Americans run away from their old names, theirold dialects, from extended families, from relationships. They runfrom languages, from people of color. The aggression of racismand the hatred against the bakla are more ways of running.” 9All theology is local! “This is America. When Ordering, SpeakEnglish,” proclaims the laminated sign in South Philly’s Geno’sSteaks, proudly placed by the owner, Joey Vento, grandson ofItalian immigrants. 10 Vento’s conviction grounded in a flawedunderstanding of his own country’s immigration policies prior to1921, is not the exception in our churches and communities.Reflected in the sentiment is the sad reality that our ecclesial institutionsmay well have contributed over the years to an assimilationand white-washing of countless migrants to the point wherethe sacrifices and struggles of emigrating ancestors have been sanitized,romanticized and idealized. This leaves the descendantswithout the context necessary to be in solidarity with or even toleratethe presence of those who come seeking the very samethings that their elders sought. As theologians, ministers, andmembers of communities of faith, how do we heal cultural amnesia?How do we provide the tools, resources, space and supportnecessary for our communities to begin the risky prospect ofretrieving their own, our own, stories?Dragging the Middle to the EdgeAll theology is local! At the end of June 2006 in the Catholicdiocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a pastoral visit by Bishop EdwardSlattery uncovered “a sense of disruption,” articulated by a numberof the founding English-speaking members of a parish upsetwith the proactive outreach initiated by a relatively new pastor. 11The bishop himself also came under fire for celebrating confirmationpredominantly in Spanish. As the meeting became more54heated, Slattery was shocked to hear a parishioner declare “Yes,and I’ll drive a bus,” in response to whether or not all those withoutacceptable documentation should be deported. “You havesomething to learn here,” the bishop replied, “and it’s theGospel.” 12Beneath the layers of fear was not only ignorance about theChurch’s social justice teachings but an experience of displacementon the part of some in the Anglophone community. The disconnectbetween the church’s teachings and the lived experienceof this particular community is mirrored across the Catholic continuumin North America. The inability of ecclesial leadership tocommunicate this profound tradition of social justice in a concretemanner that makes sense to the grassroots remains an obstacle tothe task of justice. For over a century, the Catholic Church hasdeveloped and continues to proclaim a dynamic tradition groundedin a respect for the fundamental dignity of all human beings,insured by defense of basic human rights, including the right tomigrate. Yet this tradition sadly remains unknown or ancillary tothe majority of the faithful. This ignorance leads to the conclusionexpressed by a frustrated parishioner to Bishop Slattery, “TheCatholic church should have a plan.” 13For our churches to have any impact beyond the immediatesigns of our tiempos mixtos, 14 we must move and sometimes dragthe center to the edge and the edge to the heart of the center. 15 Yet,lest we forget, the middle that requires some dragging alsoincludes nuestra comunidad latina (our Latina/o community).The reality of our community’s growing affluence, influence andvalue as a market audience is a source of pride and tension. Lalucha (the struggle), for increasing numbers of our people (ourselvesincluded considering the privileged position of scholars),entails aspiration to and maintenance of a comfortable materialexistence. However, the focus of Hispanic ministry in many ofour churches attends necessarily to the needs of the least of our55
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