January 21st, 2025
I spent this past weekend in the perfect place for the moment. Knowing that today’s events would warp the national perception of the border, I went home to El Paso.
Among many places, I visited Rio Vista Farm in Socorro, a small community just east of El Paso. It carries special meaning for me. Not only does it hold lessons on the history of immigrants at the border, it was the place where my beloved friend, Helen O’Shea Keleher, worked for over 35 years, from 1929-1964. It was here that she helped raise thousands of orphaned and abandoned children. Once, the quiet courtyard was filled with little ones running and playing, singing and dancing, working in their community garden and enjoying the warm west Texas sun. They were all her babies, she said, children she committed to raising and educating, putting many through UTEP, and making sure all were prepared for white collar jobs. She never cared which side of the border they came from or the color of their skin.
Many years later, after growing up with my family in East El Paso, I would become the last of her “babies.” She sponsored the scholarship that paid for my education at UTEP, and she became my dear friend and mentor in the early 1980’s. She was proud of everything I did, and I loved her dearly. She was a strong, kind, caring woman who dedicated her life to the service of others.
Rio Vista Farm also represents a sad period in our nation’s relationship with our southern border. From 1951-1964, it served as an intake center for Mexican farm workers who were given temporary visas to work on farms across the country because of labor shortages. It was called the Bracero Program. The men endured long trips to the border to come here for a chance at a better life. The young women who worked at the intake desks said many had actually walked from their homes in central and southern Mexico to pick fruits and vegetables for American tables. And of course, when these people were no longer needed, they were simply sent back.
How little we learn from the history right in front of us. The same patterns, the same prejudices, the same rhetoric repeated over and over again. The story never changes. Those in power blame their own inability to solve our country’s real problems by scapegoating the poor and voiceless. Immigrants come to our border ready and willing to work in jobs no one wants, only to be mistreated and taken advantage of; used up and tossed away. These immigrants were invisible then; they are invisible now. Cleaning homes, working on farms, toiling in meat packing plants or construction sites, unnoticed and unappreciated, and now to be taken from their homes and separated from their children just to satisfy a political lie.
As I walked the deserted, windy grounds of Rio Vista, the only noises to be heard were the wind and a distant rooster crowing on a neighboring farm. In my mind, I could hear the voices of happy children from long ago, running and playing in the courtyard. And I could see the lines of weary men, far from home and family, dreaming of a better life. Two eras of often-forgotten border history collided in this small, dusty courtyard.
We keep repeating our own tragic history. We fall victim to the same prejudices and unwarranted fears that turn our neighbor into our enemy. And today, Inauguration Day, we are determined to make all the same mistakes again at the expense of millions of innocent people.
God whispers to us in places like Rio Vista. He reminds us of the intrinsic goodness of our fellow man, and of the hand of his creation in each soul that passed through this place. He calls us to remember that we are all his children, much like the little ones that Helen once raised in these same now-fading places. When will we learn to see immigrants as our brothers and sisters? They are people, just like us, whose only goal is a better life for their families. They are not our enemies.
For further reading on Rio Vista and the bracero program:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/21/travel/braceros-landmark-texas-rio-vista-cec?cid=ios_app
https://savingplaces.org/stories/revisiting-little-known-history-rio-vista-farm
Kathy Blalock Molinar