Caravans and Caring 

We all have heard that a caravan made up of peasants and, among other people, thugs, drug dealers, terrorists and MS13 members, is headed north to our border with Mexico. These people are, we are often cautioned, armed to the teeth, just like the soldiers in Pancho Villa’s or Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s armies once were. Again, we hear, an invasion is approaching. Fear reigned then and again fear reigns in our country.  

We are told that we now can relax — a large army of our solders has been sent to protect our borders, to protect us, our children, our way of life and even our honor. I am not writing, however, to defend the decision to send the army to the border nor am I writing to oppose it. Nor do I want to belabor the point of why people are fleeing from Central America. I am not going to point my finger at any role we might - or might not - have played. My sole point is to explain a bit more who is in the “caravan” of people — who actually is coming north. 

It might be important to begin by pointing out that thugs, MS13 members and terrorists would never be found among this group of poor, hungry, thirsty and desperate people who are making their way north. These people not only are walking but many are carrying babies and many are leading small children by the hand. They are walking slowly. Many, if not most, came from small and often remote villages. They didn’t  receive daily newspapers. They didn’t hear the latest news about our decisions regarding asylum.  Many lived in huts with dirt floors and no electricity. They had no computers 0r television. They were poor, often living on the food they could grow or raise on small plots of land. They headed north because they had heard of the golden city on the hill - the modern day Seven Cities of Cibola - and they headed there in desperation and with hope. 

Why didn’t these people have just applied for a visa? This is the question we regularly hear people ask. For the poor, however, obtaining a visa has always been a virtually impossible task. It is difficult to travel by bus and find your way through a big, bustling, and bewildering city where our embassies are located. It is even more difficult, being dressed in the humble clothes of a peasant, speaking a dialect of one of the Native languages, to get into the lines and through the door of an embassy. There was no money to pay for a visa even if they had been able to get through the door of an embassy. 

These people descended from proud ancestors who built magnificent cities, cities that put to shame most European cities of the time. Their ancestors built tall pyramids, designed highway systems, created craft guilds and magnificent art, and they developed amazingly accurate calendar systems. They are, like their ancestors once were, a creative and intelligent people. They, like many of our ancestors, just need a chance to develop that creativity and intelligence. If given that chance, they, like our ancestors, could contribute to the development of this country and, if we are willing to listen to their voices and stories, contribute to its healing.

We all know that we did not always have an honorable history even though we all know that this country was built on the labor, creativity and intelligence - the blood, sweat and tears - of immigrants. The Irish, fleeing the potato famine in which an estimated million people died, were greeted by taunts and were said to be dirty, poor and disease ridden. Newspapers claimed that the Irish would rape our women, commit crimes and take jobs away from Americans. This did not prove to be true and the thousands of descendants of these early Irish are now proud to claim Irish ancestry. We locked the Japanese in internment camps. During World War II, we turned away the ship St Louis with its 900 Jewish passengers. Of those we rejected, some (26 people) found refuge in Cuba, some found refuge in England and South America, and 254 died in the Holocaust. When it was proposed in congress that the US take in 20,000 Jewish Children a cousin of President Roosevelt, also the wife of the US immigration commissioner, testified that these 20,000 charming children would all too soon grow into 20,000 ugly adults. These people were also desperate, fleeing a life that had become dangerous and intolerable. 

We again are being asked if we would take in the tired and the poor, the tempest tossed yearning to be free? Again we have said no. No one needs to ask me to cry for all these people. I do cry for them. And I cry for us as we seem to have again lost our heart and our way. If we wish to heal the chasm that now divides our country perhaps each one of us needs to listen again to the music written by Rodgers and Hammerstein that tells us: “You've got to be taught to hate and fear...you’ve got to be taught to be afraid... of people whose skin is a different shade.” We each need to ask ourselves who we hate or fear and who taught us to do so. 

           

When women marched in Phoenix, the one woman we heard about had gained her 15 minutes of fame because she marched bare breasted. Some observers referred to her as lewd and immoral, suggesting she was asking to be assaulted. Others said we should focus on her heart and soul and not whether her top was plunging. She wasn’t, this group insisted, “asking for it”.

While we can’t know what she was thinking when she walked out her door and joined the march, we can be pretty sure that she was not thinking she wanted to be assaulted. Women don’t want to be assaulted. We can assume, however, that her aim was to attract attention and at that she was successful. That does not mean she was asking to be raped.

Trying to look at this objectively, the first step of influence, of getting attention and eliciting a response, negative or positive, is attracting attention. Animals know, perhaps instinctively, that attracting attention makes them vulnerable, that attracting attention can lead to death or rape. That is why so many have protective coloration. Humans, of course, are more complex. We have bigger brains and more complex behavior and culture. The function of breasts, for humans and other female animals, is to nourish an infant. Here, in the U.S., however, breasts are seen as sexual objects. Bare breasted women inhabit the pages of men’s magazines presumably because men find them enticing. While breasts are not ignored in other, very different types of cultures, the males see breasts in terms of their function – feeding an infant. When I lived with a tribe in a remote part of the Ecuadorian jungle, the women, traditionally, had gone bare breasted. At that time, shortly after outsiders began to enter the area, only older women continued that tradition. Younger women, when asked why they covered themselves, said that they felt uncomfortable -- outsiders stared at their breasts. The local men, as far as I could determine through observation and conversation, did not refer to breasts as sexually tempting. They referred to them as milks. Culture, in other words, seems to have a strong influence on what women do publically and how males interpret what they do and, given opportunity and depending on character, subsequently respond.

A great many women, including fully clad ones like Catholic sisters in habits and women in burkas have been assaulted. What this suggests is that women themselves, not just their breasts attract the attention of males. Women are vulnerable to assault when they are in a powerless position and in the presence of a male who does not exercise self-control. Clearly we are not talking about most men, only some men.

Going bare breasted in public does attract attraction. Doing so may have positive effects -- commentary in the local news and possibly a starring role in a Hollywood film. It is equally likely, however, that showing your breasts -- when they are seen as sexual objects -- can make you vulnerable, attracting the attention of someone you never would want to meet.  Simpler animals can teach us important lessons if we open our minds to learning; attracting attention can be dangerous.