HIDALGO, Texas (RNS) — In a warehouse about two miles from the Mexico border, silver-haired men moved pallets of food with a forklift. Under a Spanish-language banner reading, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever,” a white board listed papaya, beetroot, red bell peppers and tomatoes and other fresh produce. On this and every Thursday, the volunteers at Border Missions, a Christian ministry, serve 350 to 400 food-insecure community members who receive a free hot meal, worship together and take groceries home.
One of the men is 87-year-old Francisco “Panchito” Ramirez Guajardo who discovered Border Missions on one of his daily visits to lay flowers at the grave of his wife of 47 years at the cemetery next door. Like many who first come to Border Missions for a meal, Ramirez then began to volunteer, and he has brought his adult children and neighbors. “I love them all as if they’re my family,” said Ramirez of the community who have supported him in his grief.
In Hidalgo County, where the 26.9% of people living in poverty is more than twice the national average of 11.1%, Christian faith binds communities together as they serve one another and advocate for better resources.
Quoting Jesus’ teaching in the New Testament’s Book of Acts that “it is more blessed to give than receive,” Mario Ramirez, the operations manager at Border Missions (no relation to Francisco), told RNS, “Being able to serve and help other people fills us with energy and makes our lives very joyful.”
Border Missions makes a significant impact in low-resource communities in Texas, but the vast majority of Thursday participants actually cross the border from Reynosa, Mexico, to join what the participants view as “their church.”
Francisco “Panchito” Ramirez Guajardo, left, and Yolanda Aleman volunteer with Border Missions in Hidalgo, Texas. (Photo courtesy Megan Gonzalez)
Midwestern evangelicals Harold and Katherine Morgan decided to found Border Missions in 1956, after a successful tent revival in what is still a traditionally Catholic area. “Mrs. Morgan never asked what kind of religion you are. She always believed in God and that the God she has is the same one everyone has,” said Lydia Weaver, whose mother was among the first Reynosa residents to adopt Border Missions as her church. Lydia Weaver has been attending since she was two.
Weaver called it “a miracle” that nearly 70 years later Morgan’s great-granddaughter, Megan Gonzalez, a Catholic convert, is extending that legacy as co-director with her husband.
Gonzalez said her faith has grown as she stepped into the role, trusting God to work out the details. On the days that the donated food that fills their warehouse gets low, she picks up the phone and starts calling companies, relying on God’s favor, she said, adding, “We’ve never not had enough.”
With all that is “freely given” to Border Missions, “we give with no requirements, no expectations,” Gonzalez said. “This is God’s grace. He’s given us this to bless you and to know that he still cares about you and loves you,” she said.
Megan and Roland Gonzalez with their children. (Photo courtesy Megan Gonzalez)
Gonzalez, pushing her son Jack in a stroller as she tours the facility, said, throughout the rest of the week, some 80 registered ministries also rely on Border Missions to feed their communities throughout the Rio Grande Valley.
One of them, the House of Love and Justice, is led by Caly Fernandez, a grandmother of four and a Presbyterian with a long career in public health. The daughter of a doctor, Fernandez is passionate about bridging health care disparities in the Rio Grande Valley.
Recently, she said, she has been grounding her work in the writing of B. Hunter Farrell, director of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s World Mission Initiative, on co-development, which rejects the idea that the powerful “givers” grant life-giving aid to needy “receivers.” Rather, Farrell wrote, “there are only human beings desperately in need of God’s grace in Christ.”
Fernandez explains, “I don’t want to go in and do things for you. I want us to work together, and I want us to collaborate and use our God-given gifts to help in the community.”
While she has worked on both sides of the border, as executive director of the House of Love and Justice, Fernandez focuses on Hidalgo County’s colonias, neighborhoods originally settled by low-income Latinos that often lacked basic services such as running water or sewers. Fernandez says the county contains 947 colonias, with 11 experiencing extreme poverty.
Twice a month, Fernandez takes produce to three of those 11, working together with community health workers from Texas A&M University’s Colonias Program. As the produce is distributed, they talk with families about their other needs and coordinate services alongside other partners, which have included women’s hygiene supplies, classes in fertility awareness, water purification and garbage disposal and recycling, know-your-rights training for migrants, and advance planning for children if parents are deported, as well as material support and social services for one family that has already been separated.
In the coming months, Fernandez plans to provide mental health first aid, a space for women to gather for Bible study and fellowship, women’s leadership training, summer vacation Bible study and gardening classes for the youth. She’s also advocating for a planned county public transportation pilot program to be implemented and joining groups trying to preserve SNAP nutritional assistance.
Because so many families with mixed immigration statuses inhabit the colonias, Fernandez worries that families may begin to increasingly avoid medical care and is exploring how to meet that need, possibly through specialized medical missions.
A dog wanders through La Piñata colonia, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024, in Hidalgo County, Texas. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)
Her dream is to build a community center in La Piñata, where well-built homes stand next to ramshackle trailers, and stray dogs roam mostly unlit streets. But with $80,000 needed just to buy the land for the site she has picked out, the dream feels out of reach.
La Piñata, founded in 1993, is not technically a colonia. The government narrowly defines colonias as communities within 150 miles of the border developed before 1990 that have poor-quality housing and infrastructure. Starting in 1990, Texas developers were required to install water and wastewater services in new subdivisions.
But Noah Durst, an associate professor of urban and regional planning at Michigan State University, said millions of subdivision lots on the urban fringe throughout the U.S. may not officially be colonias, like La Piñata, but have comparably poor conditions because of similar building practices. In such places, a developer sells empty lots with minimal infrastructure, often financing the sale at high interest rates, with a contract or deed that allows prompt repossession of the property.
Caly Fernandez. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)
Fernandez thinks it would make a huge difference for the nearby city of Donna to annex La Piñata, which would give residents access to city services like animal control, police and street lights.
Eddie Anaya, a Catholic lawyer and lifelong resident of a colonia called Las Milpas, got involved as a young man with Valley Interfaith, an affiliate of the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation, because his Mexican immigrant mother, Carmen Anaya, was one of its co-founders. When he was growing up, Anaya said Las Milpas had no water, sewers, street paving or lighting or police force.
Anaya chauffeured his mother around the state and interpreted for her at meetings with other Texas IAF affiliates as they championed 1989 state legislation that provided funding for water and wastewater infrastructure, which Anaya said stimulated other improvements in the community.
In Las Milpas, where the Catholic Church is the center of community life, Anaya said, conversations after Mass shaped a political agenda for the whole community through Valley Interfaith and backed by the Diocese of Brownsville. “ When you organize around Scripture and put it into action, that not only strengthens the community, but also makes people understand the Gospel much better,” said Anaya.
They also learn that as a community they have the power to change their circumstances. “Really the main objective of the organization is to teach people to do for themselves,” said Anaya, “to educate them to fight for their issues.”
The story Anaya tells of Las Milpas is a prime example. Anaya’s mother and other allies wanted Las Milpas to be its own city, but in 1987 the nearby city of Pharr annexed Las Milpas. It took decades of organizing for Las Milpas residents to transform Pharr’s political culture to get the kind of respect — and the infrastructure — that truly made them feel like part of the city.
Las Milpas colonia had little infrastructure in the early 1980s. (Photo courtesy Eddie Anaya)
In 2015, Valley Interfaith pushed the city further, adopting a six-point plan for Las Milpas, calling for a bridge to link the neighborhood to a park, funding for workforce development, building a library and recreation center, curtailing predatory lending, more bus service and paving more neighborhood streets. With an election coming up, the group invited city commissioner candidates to an accountability session at St. Francis Xavier Cabrini Catholic Church to commit to work with them.
When two candidates didn’t show up, Anaya and other leaders launched an intense get-out-the-vote campaign, with a youth contingent registering more than 500 voters after Mass. Those two candidates ended up losing by fewer than 50 votes each. Less than a year after the accountability session, Pharr broke ground on a library in Las Milpas.
Pope Francis has met three times with leaders of Industrial Areas Foundation groups, including a delegation from Valley Interfaith in 2022, where Anaya was there to witness the pope applauded the group for living the Gospel by “walking with” suffering people.
The recognition has inspired them, but there is much work still to do. Delfina Villarreal, a resident in a colonia south of McAllen, told RNS that communities there are still struggling to secure drainage for flooding and sidewalks, but they hope faith-based organizing and getting out the vote will make all the difference. “Here we are all working for each other,” said Villarreal.
People attend a worship service at Border Missions, Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024, in Hidalgo, Texas. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)
