McAllen, TX - (March 3, 2008)

By David Saavedra

Currently, Texas and especially South Texas is getting a great deal of publicity with the visits by the Democratic presidential candidates. Both Obama and Clinton have pledged that they will not allow the wall/fence to be built along the U.S. Mexico border if he or she become president. We in South Texas continue to oppose the violence of building such a wall and have started joining with other peace and justice groups who are taking nonviolent action to oppose it.

On another front, our community is faced with the problem of domestic abuse. In general, our society wishes that this problem did not exist, but it is a growing problem. The Hope Family Health Center has an increasing number of referrals involving undocumented women and men who are being abused and who have no access or limited access to resources in dealing with this painful issue. Many of these families live in colonias where numerous immigrant families reside. The threat of deportation for all these families is very real and only adds another layer of secrecy to this serious problem.

As a way of responding to the problem of domestic abuse, the Center’s counseling staff have started a Spanish language Compromiso group with about 10 individuals. All of the participants are also receiving individual therapy so that the group experience is an adjunct to the therapy. I have also enlisted the help of Cynthia Anguiano who is a graduate student in social work and brings a wealth of knowledge about culture and teaching. Cynthia was born in Mexico City and has traveled extensively all over the world. With each session, it has been interesting and exciting to see how most of the members of the group have made changes in their behavior and in their perspectives related to violence.

Our Center will also start a series of non violence pro bono training sessions for another nearby nonprofit (Migrant Health Promotions) for about 25 promotoras de salud (health promotion workers). These are community workers that go into the colonias to educate and direct families to resources that may need. The training will also be done in Spanish and are slated to start later this month and will use the Compromiso curriculum. This is exciting because they became interested in the training after I conducted an introductory training session for about 100 promotoras in December of 2007.