Trails of Hope and Terror: Testimonies on Immigration Paperback – September 30, 2009

The telling of the stories from personal interviews is relentless. The narrative of this book grows out of conversations with people in desperate situations on the trails of immigration in the Mexican town of Altar, 60 miles south of the border, and in the Arizona desert that migrants cross against perilous odds. Story after story is translated and told from the perspective of immigrants, church workers, theologians, students, family members and those looking for work and a better life. Chapters include topics on borders, economics, myths, families, politics of fear, perspectives, and ethical responses. There is a poem, a prayer or a song in each chapter. The use of testimonies allows the discourse on immigration to come alive (to be incarnated) for the reader. For some in the United States this might be a debate about defending borders and keeping some faceless unknowns at safe distances. These testimonies give them humanity. This is the story of justice and mercy and is connected to real people who risk their lives to feed their children. It is about people whose livelihoods are destroyed by global economic forces beyond their capacity to change them.

wonderful!

Good perspective from many points of view regarding the unfair and inhumane U.S. immigration policies.

Very powerful reading

Everyone who cares about social justice has to read this book. With Trails of Hope and Terror, Miguel De La Torre has written the definitive book on the need for comprehensive immigration reform. It is a heartbreaking call to action on behalf of those who are literally and legally shunned by the United States of America. Normally, the undocumented cannot speak for themselves, but De La Torre uses the technique of testimonials to give flesh and blood to his advocacy.The testimonials force us to answer the following question: what would we do if we couldn't feed our children without breaking the law? When NAFTA throws farmers off their land, and maquilodores on the border fail to provide living, steady wages, so many migrants seem to have no choice but to head north. De La Torre describes the migrants as heroes because they literally climb mountains and cross rivers and deserts for their families. Their treks invariably lead to pain, heartache, and often death. The picture of fourteen year old Josseline Hernandez, whose body was recently found in the desert, haunts the reader. So do the the plaintive stories, songs, and poetry of the migrants themselves.Although Trails of Hope and Terror is a relatively short book, it is packed with information relevant to the immigration debate. It shows how NAFTA pushed nearly two million Mexican farmers off their land and towards the United States when they could not compete with subsidized American farmers. According to De La Torre and his testimonials, the tightened border of Operation Gatekeeper has only exacerbated the problem. Migrants still make it into the United States, but on a much more deadly path. Because the trip in is so difficult, nobody leaves anymore. When the border was more porous, migrants came and went with the growing season. Now, ironically, the border keeps them on the northern side. No one wants to make that trip more than once.The book is most impassioned and moving in its analysis of the place of the migrant in scripture. According to De La Torre, himself the son of an undocumented immigrant, the Old Testament calls for humane treatment of the alien no less than 38 times. Most directly in Leviticus the Jews, themselves once unwanted foreigners, are told to "love the alien living among you as yourself." In the testimonials, De La Torre's witnesses repeatedly point out that Christ was a migrant as a child, on the run into Egypt in order to escape the clutches of King Herod. Most pointedly, again and again we are reminded of the verses in Matthew 25 in which Christ comes to us in the form of the thirsty, the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned. Our response to him determines the fate of our immortal souls. And so it is for the soul of our nation as we encounter the undocumented, insists this voice crying in the wilderness of the Arizona desert, the scholar, activist, and social prophet Miguel De La Torre.