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 Health & Beauty | June 2006 
Mexico Visit Shows Need for Medicine, Not Giant Wall
 Robert Steinback - The Miami Herald
| | "I wondered if most Americans would berate these volunteers in Naco as un-American for showing kindness to poor Mexican citizens." |
Naco, Sonora, Mexico - Listen to the political and media fearmeisters, and the southern border of the United States is teeming with menacing legions of invaders poised to debase America at the first lapse of vigilance.
Yet what I saw in this dusty border town were human beings in need of basic medical care, grateful that a handful of motivated Americans was willing to come to their side of the border to provide free health screenings at an ill-equipped clinic.
When you actually meet the 27-year-old mother of three with aggressive arthritis and little money for ibuprofen, the elderly man with the dislocated shoulder who faced treatment without proper anesthetic, and case after case of untreated high blood pressure and diabetes - all just walking distance from the prosperity of the U.S. side - it's hard to know if the fervor to build higher walls and deploy the military to keep "them" away from us is more ludicrous or pathetic.
Volunteers from Phoenix-based Cathedral Health Services, a nonprofit mobile health screening provider, make five annual visits to this Mexican border town, and five to its tiny cross-border counterpart, Naco, Ariz. On the Arizona side, it's difficult to get patients to the services: Only those Mexicans with visas, or those who complete a tedious medical exemption application, can visit, said Cathedral founder and CEO John Mather.
On the Mexico side, the challenge is getting the services to the patients: The Mexican government won't allow the importation of needed medicines and supplies, and it limits the equipment the service can bring.
My visit to the Naco, Sonora, clinic in late May provided a jolting contrast to the current hyperventilated rhetoric about illegal immigration: Americans helping Mexicans, not fearing them, getting to know them rather than demanding barricades against them. Here was a flicker of old-fashioned American spirit: Compassion, not demagoguery; generosity, not hostility.
"We believe this is getting to the root causes of migration, to be able to sustain their living in their own communities with their families," Mather told me. "We need to be putting our energy into real solutions, not into more walls and fences."
" Instead of spending $39 million a mile for a fence, put that money into economic development in Mexico," said medical technician David Kennedy, as he tested Eloisa del Cid's elevated blood glucose level. He explained to her in Spanish how to adjust her diet, but I knew, as a diabetic myself, what she needed most was insulin. "Think," Kennedy said to me, "of how much a billion dollars would do."
Zenaida Lopez, the young arthritis sufferer, hasn't worked in several months. Her husband is employed - for the moment. I asked if she had money to buy the ibuprofen that volunteer Derek Burkum, a physicians' assistant student from Phoenix, was recommending. "At times," she said softly. "At times, no."
The border here is one of the busiest areas for illegal entry into the United States. For miles in either direction from the Naco crossing station, the border bisects desolate scrubland, yet busy state Highway 92 is only a couple of miles to the north. A quarter-mile west of the station, the 14-foot-high iron eyesore marking the border becomes a guardrail one can simply step over or through, and a few strands of easily clipped barbed wire.
Environmentally, visually and historically, scarring this desert with an endless barricade would be a tragedy. It would certainly make the casual border crossing more difficult. Local opponents of a fortified border warn, however, it would also make human trafficking more lucrative, cost more lives as migrants seek more perilous ways to cross, and add a new element of hostility between two ostensibly friendly nations.
More important, it would do nothing to address the quality-of-life imbalance that spurs illegal immigration. I wondered if most Americans would berate these volunteers in Naco as un-American for showing kindness to poor Mexican citizens. If not, how, then, can they be acting in the same American spirit as those who advocate a militarized Berlin Wall along the border? Can you care for and loathe people at the same time?
Robert Steinback, on sabbatical from The Miami Herald, can be reached at Robert@robertsteinback.com. |
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