Preaching in/and the Borderlands. Группа авторов
emotional results of this madness, the ways in which we are drenched into paradoxical relations between feelings and actions, syndromes and disconnections, spiritual injuries, mental illnesses and resentments. How do we access these orbits and convolutions of emotional difficulties when we are the very ones who conjure psychological work as unnecessary and waste of time? As rage is a respondent to all of these calamities, we must muster our own selves, go deep into our own hearts and learn how to deal with it. So, our first movement is towards our soul so we find ways to keep the devouring mouth of rage to destroy us. Once we can understand that and deal with it, we can channel the energy of rage into forms of resistance and transformation and create paths of liberation.
Stay Connected to the Ground
Our ancestors were deeply connected to the earth, they knew their deep relations were done with the ground on which they lived, the animals around them, the waters, the fish, the birds, the seeds, the sky. Our modern life doesn’t allow us to stop and connect with anything. Many of us are always running with projects and deadlines. Many are just trying to survive, just one step away from being completely rolled over by this economic situation. In whatever way, we must learn to pause, sit next to a tree and hear what the tree can tell us. As Job instruct us: “ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you.”11 We need to change our whole theological edifice and start from the ground, finding ways to deeply connect with the earth, gain our wisdom form the bio-system and those who have dealt with it for a while. Against the hydro-agri-business system of extractivism. What is the point of fighting for a world that is about to cease? We need to expand the notion of Martin Luther’s King’s beloved community and understand a community with the human and non-human and in a form of life together that does not entail the exclusion of anyone.
Knowing Our People
Our people rise, our people resist and protest. In the most wonderful ways. Our history is filled with moments in history when our people rose and created new worlds. They are resistance everywhere! Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico is resisting! The Teachers Movement also in Mexico is resisting! The Landless Movement in Brazil resisting! The Argentina’s Anti-Austerity Movement and the women are resisting! The students in Nicaragua are resisting! The campesino movement in Colombia is resisting! The environmental movement in Honduras is resisting! The queer movements everywhere are resisting! The indigenous communities everywhere are resisting!
And we also resist according to specific challenges with lots of fun. Let me tell you one story. Do you remember when lawyer Aaron Schlossberg shamed a staff person at a Manhattan eatery?” He shouted something like: My guess is they’re not documented, so my next call is to ICE to have each one of them kicked out of my country. If they have the balls to come here and live off my money—I pay for their welfare. I pay for their ability to be here. The least they can do—the least they can do—is speak English.12 All stupidities he said . . . Surely he called for a reaction. What happened in the next days is that “the city came out with several apt responses, one of which was a street party outside his flat—a protest in true Latino form. Lots of people went to the front of his apartment and brought a Mariachi band, tacos trucks, Pinatas with his face and loudspeakers playing reggaeton and Latin pop, with flags of all Hispanic countries. It was a fantastic party!13 We have to know our people well. We are blessed to be part of this fantastic group of people!
Creating an Aesthetics of Life and Death, Tears and Joy
At, under and around the wall, we laugh! We laugh hard! We laugh in time and out of time. We laugh in place and especially out of place. We defy death with our stubborn laughter. We laugh during the day and cry when night comes. We laugh and cry together. When there is the news of a son that was fund alive in the desert, when somebody goes to a detention center, when someone has crossed the desert safe, when someone is raped. We laugh and cry without ceasing!
The borders and the economic crushing of our communities are maddening. So, to find life out of this maddening process we must laugh and we must continue to do theologies as a network of support and sustenance to our people. God is fundamental to our people and we have this gift and this demand to help our people, with our people, to create knowledge, discourses and practices of faith that will defy the maddening and destruction of our communities. So, our theological work is unique.
Our theological work is filled with ambiguities and contradictions. But we don’t shy away from it! We don’t try to even it out or cut the edges so we can create a good proper European theology. Our theologies are broken, nonsensical, ridiculous, outrageous. Half sophisticated, half old fashion. Half written, half spoken. Half conscious, half unconscious. Half clear, half obscure. Half tears, half laughter. Half discourse, half songs. Half academic, half something else, whatever the fuck we want! We do what we want! Don’t tell us what to do or not to do. We know it! The problem is that the academy might not consider it proper because we live in the midst of a magical realism. So, go figure us out! Usted estan todos despistados.
In our theologies, we decolonize the content, the format, the procedures, and the establishment of theological and religious thinking. We dress the way we want and we continue to be scholars. We call on different voices and nobody knows. We draw maps for the feast14 that the gringos read y se preguntan: Estan locos estes cucarachas? Que estan haciendo?
They don’t know that our laughter is like the redeeming power of God in Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ himself a laughter out of place. We are also homo ridiculous! That kind of ridiculous way of living/thinking that troubles the status quo. We console by laughing and admonish by crying. Our accent is our resistance, our smiling faces our gentle dismissal. We are a ball of incongruences and complexities because our lives are incongruent to this white system of thinking; our complexity comes from a mixture of people, sources, images and practices.
Tears and joys compose the main sources of the Latinxs communities. We preach and pray when we write our theologies and when do theology when we pray and preach. Our ears are attached to the ground, and our people matter more than our ideas. We see our people’s brutal suffering; we see the thin line of our social fabric being destroyed faster than ever. We are at the edge of despair every single day. We hang on a thin rope over the abyss. Nonetheless, our tortillas and tamales, our singing and our fiestas will keep us going. As a Mexican avuela used to say: Satanas quieres que desaparescas! But we won’t! We will take our place in this world and continue! For we carry the esperanza transgressora de Oscar Romero. We carry and produce theologies that pulse life in the midst of death, that mark and show the ambivalences of life and death from our people’s main structures of life; namely, a life lived within utter necessities and demanding hopes, continuing disasters and ongoing faith, tears and pain, but also joyful songs of alegria. As the poet Geraldo Eustáquio de Souza said:
Giving up . . . I’ve seriously thought about it but never really took myself seriously,
I have more ground in my eyes than the fatigue in my legs,
more hope in my footsteps, than sadness on my shoulders,
more road in my heart than fear in my head.15
Living for us is a practice of resurrection! For we are seeds! Keep finding people and communities and places where your seed can resurrect! Find the reservoirs of life and give water to your people. Bring matter to what matters. Bring to life what does not matter. Speak beyond positivistic structures, speak and write in ways that go beyond the object/subject relation.
Concluding . . .
We now must come back to the words of Jesus.
“You see all these buildings, these policies, this brutality, this empire, do you not?
Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’
Meanwhile, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. Do not give up! Don’t fall into desperation! Because “this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” This is just the end.
‘Then they will hand our familias over to be tortured and