by Tim Chávez

“Am I not here, I who am your mother? Are you not in my shadow, under my protection? Am I not the fountain of your joy? Are you not in the fold of my mantle, in my crossed arms? Is there anything else you need?”

— Our Lady of Guadalupe, in speaking to St. Juan Diego, Dec. 11, 1531 About a couple of months ago, Vita Hernández Chávez sent a check for $3,000 to benefit a Nashville church she would never see. The place of worship, however, was named for someone who had always been a central part of her life and those of her three sisters — and the Mexican people for almost five centuries.

Vita was married in Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Topeka, Kan., in a barrio called “The Bottoms.” It was located next to the John Morrell meatpacking plant and the maintenance yard for the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. In her neighborhood lived the hardest workers who received the least wages.

The church was a refuge of respect and protection from a mainstream society that denigrated the Hispanic presence needed to feed Topeka’s and the nation’s prosperity. That same history is being repeated in present-day Nashville, this time under the scourge of the heinous 287(g) deportation program.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Nashville opened last fall as a new refuge for the mushrooming Hispanic population in this Southern city and the oppression levied by local politicians seeking re-election.

A month ago, Our Lady’s was in danger of closing. The debt amassed to open the church and a depressed economy that stifled expected donations put Our Lady’s on the fiscal edge with an approaching June 30 deadline.

So from her bed, Vita Chavez got involved. Her gift and her story spurred an incredible response. Two churches in an adjacent, politically conservative county contributed $125,000. The nuns at the local Dominican campus gave $500. And a six-year-old named Elizabeth gave everything — $7 from her piggybank, money she had saved from the tooth fairy and tasks like cleaning the family car. Elizabeth said she gave because it was something God would like, and she wanted her friend from school to still have a place to go to church.

Miracles continue to happen. The latest came in the early morning hours of June 7. In her sleep, Vita Hernández Chávez passed from this world to the next, reunited with her sisters Rita, Paulina and María and their mother Luz Olmos Hernández, who died in 1960. The eulogy at Vita’s funeral invoked the following truth: much good for this nation still comes from Mexico.

Two of the sisters had three children and two had four. Together, the sisters are a model for the new wave of Hispanic immigrant women. Family needs came first. But once their children were old enough, two sisters headed into professional careers. Vita, the first of her family to graduate from high school, became a medical office administrator at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Rita was a librarian for the Alamogordo School District in New Mexico. They brought extra income into the family to send their children to college.

Paulina and María had dropped out of high school to support their younger sisters and brothers. That still happens in Latino families. The dropout rate is highest in this nation for Latinas. Somehow, we must convince parents to keep their daughters in high school. We’ll be working on that miracle in the coming months at Our Lady’s in Nashville.

In December 1531, in her only appearance in this hemisphere, Our Lady of Guadalupe told an Aztec Indian named Juan Diego to build a church to recognize her love for the suffering indigenous people. They had just survived three years of butchery from the Spanish conquest. The hilltop where she appeared was a wasteland five miles north of Mexico City.

The four sisters from Topeka would tell you that if not for the protection of the Holy Mother, they could not have survived the bigotry and poverty of their childhoods.

These women are our martyrs. That’s why we adore them so, why churches dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe exist across this country. Her presence assures us that good ultimately will prevail.

A memorial to the four sisters will be established inside Our Lady’s of Nashville as a place of inspiration for Hispanic women and teens. In gratitude to the Holy Mother, another $7,000 is being donated in Vita’s name to Our Lady’s to address its debt. ­Still, the church will have to take out a loan from the diocese, with monthly payments burdening the working-poor congregation.

Her white high school classmates didn’t expect much from a Mexican girl from “The Bottoms.” But she raised a family, had a long professional career, sent her children to college and into teaching careers in step with her beloved husband, Natalio, and encouraged her youngest child, that’s me, into a writing career.

Vita was very political and blunt. Honest, humorous, inspirational and giving to the end, she left everyone feeling special. In her new beginning, our loss is heaven’s gain. And four extraordinary sisters – under the protection of Our Lady of Guadalupe — have made it home. Hispanic Link.

(Tim Chávez is a regular contributing columnist with Hispanic Link News Service. He publishes a political blog at www.politicalsalsa.com. Contact him at timchavez787@yahoo.com to contribute to Our Lady’s in Nashville). ©2008

by Raúl Yzaguirre

Raúl Yzaguirre

As the eyes of the world remain focused on violent conflicts in the Middle East, one the United States’ closest international allies is under siege.

Mexico is embroiled in a widening war with our hemisphere’s most powerful drug cartels. That’s the message Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon delivered during a visit to Washington this week.

Authorities in Mexico report that more than 5,500 people were killed in 2008 in the wake of an unprecedented campaign to take down the kingpins who have been operating criminal empires in that nation with virtual impunity for years.

Tragically, President Calderon’s noble and resolute quest is a quixotic one. To paraphrase an old saying,

Mexico’s closest ally in this pursuit, the United States, also happens to be his worst enemy.

The growing power of Mexico’s drug cartels is directly related to the huge demand for drugs in the United States. Simply put, our fellow Americans are the cartels’ best customers and consequently the financiers of the ongoing slaughter of law enforcement personnel and innocent bystanders in Mexico.

The United States also is a major source of the increasingly powerful weaponry being used by drug traffickers, whom experts say have more powerful and sophisticated weapons than the federal troops and police assigned to combat them.

Mexican officials report that 90 percent of the guns they confiscate are purchased at stores and gun shows, then smuggled into Mexico.

Last month, outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates (whom President-elect Obama has announced will remain in that post) pledged that the U.S. will redouble its efforts to supply money, training and equipment to help Mexico “confront these criminals and protect our citizens” as part of the Merida Initiative.

The initiative is the latest in a series of unsuccessful efforts to stem the flow of illegal drugs into the United States and it is expected to cost about $1.4 billion. This week, President-elect Barack Obama announced that he supports the program.

Unfortunately, as with every other U.S.-backed international anti-drug initiative that’s come before it, the Merida Initiative is doomed to fail. A case in point: Mexico’s cartels are now the main suppliers of illegal drugs into the United States. That wasn’t always the case. Our southern neighbor earned this dubious distinction after the United States helped cripple the powerful Colombia based cartels of 1980s and 1990s. In other words, even though we won some battles in Colombia but we’re losing the war in Mexico.

The Merida Initiative will fail because the root cause of this crisis is not international drug traffi cking but drug addiction and drug abuse in the United States, which are fundamentally public health issues.

The current policy of attempting to control the supply of drugs entering the U.S. is a proven failure. Relying on stepped up law enforcement to curtail U.S. demand for drugs has only clogged our courts and prisons and produced more drug abuse.

­Mandatory drug rehabilitation, more education and prevention initiatives, and more research are the only proven solutions. Without a solution, the killing in Mexico will continue.

Mexico’s drug lords give law enforcement authorities and anyone else who stands in their way a choice: “Plomo o Plata.” Literally, lead or silver. (The lead is meant for the whole family.)

Mexico may be supplying the drugs, but the United States is providing the lead and the silver.

(Raúl Yzaguirre is executive director of Arizona State University’s Center for Community Development and Civil Rights. He served for 30 years as head of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s most influential Latino advocacy organization. E-mail: raul.yzaguirre@asu.edu). ©2009