Demetria Martinez's blog

The Rev. John Fife, an immigrants' rights activist based in Tucson, Ariz., calls it "death by design." He's referring to the policy by immigration officials of sealing off traditional border crossing areas, leaving immigrants with no choice but to cross from Mexico into the United States in the most dangerous of areas. Fife's long-held observation has proven right once again. People forced to cross the border through mountains, canyons and other lethal areas are dying in ever greater numbers.

A new report from the Tucson-based Coalicion de Derechos Humanos indicates a dramatic increase in the number of human remains recovered on the Arizona-Sonora border. Between Oct. 1, 2009, and Jan. 31, 2010, the remains of 61 people have been recovered. This is a dramatic increase over the same period a year ago, when the total of recovered remains was 45. This year's count includes 40 males, four females and 17 individuals of unknown gender.

According to the Derechos Humanos press release:

I was getting ready to listen to President Obama's State of the Union Speech when I came across the heartbreaking news on the Huffington Post that historian Howard Zinn died of a heart attack at age 87. Howard Zinn Dies: Historian, Activist Was Early Opponent Of U.S. Involvement In Vietnam War.

The man who gave us A People's History of the United States will not be here to mentor us as we seek ways to end two wars and urge our leaders to stand up for a social justice agenda.

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana star in the animated movie "Avatar."I was dismayed to hear of Vatican criticism of the movie "Avatar," based upon the movie's central theme of humans versus nature. L'Osservatore Romano said the film "gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature."

The Vatican Radio said that the film "cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium."

"Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship," the radio said.

How well I remember: I’m in my 20s, seated on a picnic table at the park with a copy of the Bible in front of me — and a copy of Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father. I was reading through some Psalms, replacing mention of God as “He” with “She.” I saw myself as engaged in an experiment, a quest to find answers to questions that haunted me after reading Daly’s book.

Father Ricardo Elford of Tucson, along with attorney Isabel Garcia, founded a weekly vigil 497 weeks ago, to pray for those who have perished crossing from Mexico into the United States. Ricardo sent me a copy of the latest vigil liturgy.

The Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate itself, has nominated Maryknoll Fr. Father Roy Bourgeois and the the organization he founded, School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch), for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Read more about it.

This is a P.S. to my earlier blog about unprecedented international campaign to get CNN commentator Lou Dobbs off the air.

Latinos around the country have been celebrating Lou Dobbs’s announcement earlier this month that he is leaving CNN—this following an unprecedented national campaign to get him off the air. For years Dobbs has used his platform to skew facts about Latinos and immigrants—hate speech masquerading as journalism. But it turns out our celebration was premature: Democracy Now's Amy Goodman reported Tuesday, November 24 that Dobbs acknowleged on a radio talk show that he is exploring the idea of runniing for president in 2010.

This is a frightening prospect given the man's talent for fanning the flames of hate and fear. Here's just a brief look at the world according to Dobbs.

• He had long insisted that undocumented immigrants make up a third of the United States prison population, a claim he eventually admitted was not factual.

Latinos around the country are celebrating Lou Dobbs’s announcement earlier this month that he is leaving CNN -- this following an unprecedented international campaign to get him off the air.

For years Dobbs has used his platform to skew facts about Latinos and immigrants -- hate speech masquerading as journalism. For example, Dobbs had long insisted that undocumented immigrants make up a third of the United States prison population, a claim he eventually admitted was not factual. He has asserted falsely that immigrants are carriers of malaria and leprosy -- still more proof that Mexico is an enemy of the United States, he has said.

Worse, Dobbs has been open in his support of FAIR, the Federation for Immigration Reform which was founded by white nationalist John Tanton and which the Southern Poverty Law Center designated as a “hate group.” And he has expressed his admiration for the so-called Minutemen, armed U.S. citizens who congregate near the U.S.-Mexico border in search of immigrants. (A faction of the Minutemen has been charged with the May killing of 9-yeart-old Brisenia Flores and her father, residents of the border town of Arivaca, Ariz..)

As surely as leaves change color, autumn brings us renewed interest in all things Latino. As October is Hispanic heritage month, CNN ran a four-hour documentary about Latino life, and PBS brought us a program of Latino musicians, superstars all, performing at a black tie affair attended by none other than Barack and Michelle Obama.

But just as I was getting ready to uncork a bottle of wine and toast to my people's contributions to our great nation, I got an e-mail note from Redemptorist Fr. Ricardo Elford of Tucson. "This is maddening," he said. He then quoted a notice from United Farmworkers Workers:

After seeing Michael Moore’s "Capitalism: A Love Story," I wanted nothing more than to walk from the dark theater into a church to discuss with others what I had seen. Moore’s documentary, a brilliant expose of the ways the rich get richer and the poor poorer included clips of discussions he’d had with Catholic priests, both of whom called capitalism "evil."

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton also put in his two cents, explaining that the teachings and the life of Christ are simply not compatible with an economic system that puts profits before people.

In a perverse version of the Rapture, members of immigrant families, working here without documents, are getting "disappeared" by immigration officials through workplace raids, and other means. This has immigrants rights groups, along with some churches, urging families to be prepared.

Below are links to examples of forms -- one in Spanish and one in English -- being distributed by El Centro de Igualdad y Derechos in Albuquerque. I offer them for churches to pass out to members who might find themselves locked away, facing possible deportation and the break-up of their families.

The form, filled out in advance of a potential disaster, provides relatives and/or friends with instructions such as who to call to care for children left behind or to handle finances.

The Detention To-Do List to Pass Out to Parishioners: Preparing for Possible Deportation

• The English version
• The Spanish version

Would God back universal health care? In case you missed it, that’s the title of an op-ed piece that appeared in USA Today July 27 – a marvelous overview of how the God of the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims might weigh in on the health care debate.

"Things are heating up here," the Rev. John Fife emailed me this week. Fife, along with twelve other Arizona activists, has been charged with littering for putting out life-saving gallon jugs of water along trails where migrants face death. This is urgent in June and July, when temperatures often hover well over 100 degrees.

Isabel Garcia, a Tucson, Ariz., attorney whose work on behalf of immigrants has earned her international acclaim, has received a death threat from an individual claiming to offer a half million dollars to anyone who might assassinate her.

Yes! Two Latinos, eminent intellectuals, ascend--within a matter of days of one another--to unprecedent prominence in our nation's public life. I'm speaking, of course, about Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court and theologian Miguel H. Diaz, newly appointed U.S. diplomat to the Vatican. She is Puerto Rican, he is Cuban-American, and both are Catholic.

"Religion," said Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr, "has been much better at creating boundaries than creating bridges. It seems to me that the primary work of religion should be to build bridges across the boundaries."

Rohr is the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, N.M., where he is based. He made his comments at a May 17 prayer vigil, sponsored by the center at Holy Family parish in Albuquerque . The event, titled "Courage, Mexico, You Do Not Walk Alone!" was organized as a response to the troubles plaguing Mexico -- from maldistribution of wealth to drug cartel violence.

Rohr called upon people of faith to stand united with their brothers and sisters in Mexico -- and to stand against the spiritual and political borders that religion and government have historically reinforced. The presence of the U.S.-Mexico border, he explained, presents Christians with an opportunity to practice solidarity -- a mandate of faith present not only in the New Testament, but in the Hebrew and Muslim scriptures. "The border is what makes us one -- not our politics and our nationality," he said.

Tell me it’s not so. A group of men, with considerable intellectual gifts, toiled away to produce a six-page document condemning a non-invasive healing technique practiced primarily by women. I’m talking about a declaration issued by the U.S. Catholic Bishops Committee on Doctrine which admonishes Christians to refrain from practicing Reiki—a method of laying hands on or above an ill or injured person to help stimulate the body’s own healing mechanisms.

Catholic health care practitioners I’m in touch with are still reeling from the declaration, which was approved for publication in late March. It charges that those who put their trust in Reiki are operating in the “realm of superstition,” which “corrupts one’s worship of God by turning one’s religious feeling and practice in a false direction.”

“I fear we won’t be able to offer Reiki at our retreats—or that the practice will be pushed underground,” said one friend. A hospital chaplain who is a nun told me, “It’s a witch hunt.”