A Flame of Hope for Mexican New York
December 13, 2002

By Tamar Jacoby

The runners rounded the corner of Fifth Avenue and 51st Street right on schedule at 10 a.m. Sweaty and slightly breathless, dressed in white jogging suits with red and green trim -- the colors of the Mexican flag -- they stopped in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral and proudly held their torch aloft. The crowd waiting on the steps, some in the same brightly colored sweat clothes, many waving pennants and carrying religious processional banners, let out a cheer. The flame had made it, unextinguished, from Mexico City -- a symbol of hope, faith, national solidarity, and the political aspirations of New York's burgeoning Mexican community.

By the time it arrived in New York yesterday, the torch had traveled 3,133 miles. The marathon-style relay began at the Basilica de Guadalupe in the Mexican capital, where in late autumn every year runners carrying similar flames disperse to their home villages, arriving on December 12 in time to celebrate the holy feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This is the first year a torch has come to America, crossing the border at Brownsville, Texas, and passing from hand to hand through Houston, New Orleans, Georgia, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C., before being carried over the George Washington Bridge and into Manhattan at 7:30 a.m.

For the thousands of Mexicans waiting at St. Pat's, the long trip was at once religious and political: a seamless blend of devotion and protest designed to draw the White House's attention to the plight of illegal immigrants, roughly half of them Mexicans, living and working in the United States. "We pray to you, God," they intoned during mass in the cathedral, "to help us move the hearts and minds of those who govern this nation to grant permanent residency to the more than 9 million undocumented workers who now enrich this country with their work, talent and culture."

The relay, known in Spanish as the Anatorcha Guadalupana, was organized by a grassroots New York group, the Asociacion Tepeyac. Jesuit in orientation and politically left-leaning, the network coordinates sporting and cultural events as well as social services for the relatively recently arrived but growing Mexican community in the city. In the late 1990s, the organization took up the banner of "unconditional amnesty," arguing that only that could ease the exploitation and other hardships illegal immigrants face as a result of their status in America.

According the association's founder, Brother Joel Magallan, this is "the top political issue" for the New York Mexican community. Estimated to number in the range of half a million people -- the 2000 census counted 343,000 in the metro area, but the Mexican consulate thinks the figure is probably closer to 600,000 to 800,000 -- this population is by all accounts between 90% and 95% undocumented. Few Mexicans in the region have been here longer than 10 or 15 years, and many are more recent arrivals. They work as busboys, in the construction trades, as gardeners and other kinds of day laborers. According to the Asociacion Tepeyac, they account for more than two-thirds of the city's restaurant workers -- generally the lowest on the totem pole. They tend to get by on substandard wages, enjoy no political rights and, because of their undocumented status, have to live in a shadowy underground world, often unable to open bank accounts, board airplanes, cash checks, enter government buildings, get library cards or drivers' licenses.

Still, however difficult their lives, the Mexicans inside St. Patrick's seemed anything but militant. Many had come with families, carrying their smallest children in their arms and trailing others. They prayed intently, sang softly and listened quietly to the homily by New York Bishop Josu Iriondo, breaking into a more political sounding chant only after mass, when the torch and the two large gilt-framed portraits that had accompanied it from Mexico -- one of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the other of Juan Diego, the baptized Aztec Indian to whom she is said to have revealed herself in 1531 -- were carried out into the street. Asked if they had come to the cathedral for religious or political reasons, not a single one answered solely political. "The two can't be separated -- just as we can't divide ourselves as human beings," Brother Magallan explained. "We are religious people. We are immigrants. We are undocumented immigrants. We are members of this community and members of the Catholic Church."

Like many, Zacarias Brito, 30, said that if anything he was drawn more by religion than by politics. He had come with his wife, who doesn't speak English, and his two small children, who are fluent in it. His 10-year old son, Adam, carried the American flag into the church alongside the torch from Mexico; Mrs. Brito carried the Mexican flag. The couple's daughter, who happens to be named Guadalupe, held an unlit torch that would later be illuminated so that Mr. Brito could run with it to the family's church, All Saints', in Flushing -- one of many flames that would be dispatched throughout the city at the end of the day. A small, friendly-looking man, Mr. Brito works in an auto body shop -- and, after more than 10 years in New York, remains undocumented. Despite the hardships he and his family live with, he is anything but bitter. "With papers, without papers," he said philosophically, "it's difficult, but it's not impossible. I have my work and my family, and I have God." Still, he strongly supports the idea of amnesty -- among other things, he points out, it would be good for all Americans if the undocumented were to start paying taxes.

When mass was over, the crowd streamed out of the cathedral and collected itself to march through the city. Denied a permit to walk or run in the streets, the procession, some five or six blocks long, snaked along the sidewalks of busy, midweek Manhattan: across 50th Street to Second Avenue, down Second to 14th Street, then all the way across 14th to another, smaller church, St. Bernard's, on the far West Side. (It was there that flames were dispatched to still other churches throughout the five boroughs.) The cheerful crowd grew ever more exuberant, marching briskly in the brilliant sunshine. And though some passersby who understood Spanish may have been put off by the chants -- "Long Live Mexico," "Up with immigrants," "What do we want? Amnesty. When do we want it? Now." -- the procession never turned rowdy or angry-sounding.

In fact, militant as the Asociacion Tepeyac and its rhetoric may be, it is far from the only group on the political spectrum arguing that America can ill afford to maintain an illegal population of 9 million workers and growing. A more mainstream coalition -- of business (including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce), labor (including the AFL-CIO), Democrats and Republicans -- has come together in recent years to make the same claim, although this larger network long ago abandoned the idea of unconditional amnesty, arguing instead for a system of "earned regularization" to register and eventually legalize immigrants who have been here for some time, working, paying taxes and otherwise playing by the rules. The idea is not so much to pardon people who have broken the law, but rather to bring them in out of the shadows, recognizing that they contribute to the country -- economically and in other ways -- and that it would be both safer and more in line with American democratic values to allow them to participate in society as full members.

Before September 11, President Bush came close to endorsing this idea, though its prospects have seemed to dim somewhat in the security-minded climate of the past 15 months. Still, the White House has not abandoned the concept -- it remains officially on the table in negotiations between the U.S. and Mexico -- and many groups, along with the Asociacion Tepeyac, are struggling to bring it back to a front burner.

Like other Mexican New Yorkers who came out to greet the torch yesterday, deli worker Teo Pareja, 27, was cautiously hopeful. "We're working hard," he said. "We never get in trouble. People like us are what this country needs." Mr. Brito, the body-shop worker, wasn't quite so optimistic. "I just hope the president is listening," he mused quietly. Still, he pointed out, neither he nor his American-born children were going anywhere. The half million plus Mexicans living in the shadows in the New York region are going to be a presence in the city -- and a growing one -- whether the nation recognizes them or not.

©2002 New York Sun

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