AT THE BORDER between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, people come together once a week for communion across the dividing line. El Faro: The Border Church/ La Iglesia Fronteriza is held every Sunday on both sides of the border. For some families, it is their only opportunity to see loved ones who have been separated from them by immigration status.
The service is at Friendship Park, or “El Parque de la Amistad,” the piece of land that lies between the mesh border fence and the larger border wall that keeps the United States separate from Mexico. Usually, the outer wall is closed, cordoning off any opportunities for people on opposite sides of the border to connect. But for four hours each weekend it opens. For most people, the border is a place of division. But for Pastor John Fanestil, the borderland, or “la fronteriza,” is “a place of encounter.”
Fanestil, who preaches at First United Methodist Church of San Diego, has been running El Faro: The Border Church for almost a decade. He meets me at the trailhead of Border Field State Park, the 1,000-plus-acre San Diego nature preserve that borders the sprawling metropolis of Tijuana. In the summer months, you can drive all the way down to the border, but the trail floods when it rains and is often closed to vehicles in the winter. Today, it’s shut because of a sewage spill from Tijuana, so we hike down.
Fanestil was raised in La Jolla, an upscale neighborhood in San Diego, but says that his first real introduction to Spanish culture was in Costa Rica, where he did a year of seminary. His first appointment after ordination was in the inland border town of Calexico, Calif., which is adjacent to its Mexican sister city, Mexicali. He fell in love with the border culture, and after serving congregations in Los Angeles and Orange Country, he was placed in San Diego in 2004.
When he arrived, the outer border wall hadn’t been built yet, and Friendship Park was easier to access. An annual celebration of Las Posadas, a Latin American re-enactment of the nativity story, was held there. Then, in 2006, the federal government bought the border land to build a second wall and intended to close Friendship Park entirely. Activists fought to keep it open and negotiated with the Border Patrol to maintain partial access, but it was closed for several years as the wall was built. After it reopened, Fanestil celebrated communion at the border for the first time.
Communion undaunted by barriers
It’s a windy, overcast day in San Diego, and the marine layer at the coastline makes the temperature drop. We trudge along the heavy sand at the state park beach, and I’m struck by how empty it is—a rarity for Southern California at any time of year. Fanestil jokes that this is “the only empty beach in San Diego.” It’s true: Besides the two of us, the only creatures at the water are snowy plovers leaving delicate tracks in the sand. In the distance, I can see people relaxing at the beach in Playas de Tijuana, right across the border. The giant metal wall goes straight into the ocean and continues for about a hundred yards, like the inverse of a pier.
There are only about a dozen or so people when we get to the U.S. side of the border, along with two Border Patrol agents. One of the agents greets us and says that he’s already stopped two people trying to cross the border this morning.
The border fence mesh is so thick that it’s almost hard to see through, but dozens of people are on the other side of the border, along with booths, live music, and an immigration lawyer giving free legal advice.
Fanestil says that Border Church mainly takes place in Mexico, and the U.S. contingent is mostly there “in solidarity.” The service is much easier to access in Tijuana. There are no barriers, and a residential district is built right up to this part of the border.
Most people who attend the service are deportees living in Tijuana to be close to their families in the U.S. Families are clustered around the fence, talking to relatives on the other side of the border. The mesh is too narrow for people to hug or hold hands, so people exchange “besos de meñiques”—pinky kisses.
“The fence, for me, means death,” says Guillermo Navarrete. Navarrete is a pastor in Tijuana and runs Border Church on the Mexican side of the fence. These days, his main ministry is caring for those who have been deported from the U.S. to Tijuana.
“Jesus, in the last three years of his ministry, only went to the temple about three times,” Navarrete says, explaining the model for his work. “We spend time in the streets.”
He speaks passionately about the deportees, who arrive in Mexico with little but the clothes on their backs. For many, Border Church is their only opportunity to see family.
“People from every state in the U.S. and every state in Mexico have been to Border Church,” Fanestil tells me. People on their deathbeds come to say goodbye, while others bring their newborns to introduce grandparents to their grandchildren.
Passing the peace with fingertips
Fanestil plugs a microphone into a sound system to start the service, while Navarrete plays guitar. The service is bilingual, with most of it in Spanish. Songs are sung, prayers are offered, and Fanestil reads the gospel text in Spanish. It’s Epiphany Sunday, and the text is about the journey of Los Reyes Magos—the three kings. The story is apt: Soon after the Magi’s visit, Mary and Joseph flee Bethlehem and become migrants themselves to save infant Jesus from Herod’s wrath.
After the sermon, Fanestil offers up a prayer. “Turn this wall into the cradle of Christ,” he beseeches. “Remind us that the love of God is more powerful than any wall ... The things made by human hands will come and go, but the love of God will remain forever.”
We receive communion and share the “paz de Cristo” across the border. I touch pinkies with a woman in Tijuana, the fence so thick that it takes effort to make our fingers touch.
During the service, I chat with local activist Enrique Morones, who tells me that his faith has a huge influence on his work.
“Faith without works is dead,” says Morones. Morones was born in San Diego to Mexican immigrant parents and runs the faith-based organization Border Angels. He is Catholic and says that he tries to embody servant leadership in his work. He points to Fanestil as a good example of someone who “doesn’t go around telling people what they should be doing: He just does his thing.”
Morones founded Border Angels in 1986. The group is most famous for their water drops, where they leave water along the desert routes that migrants take when attempting to cross into the U.S. He claims that the San Diego border wall has contributed to the deaths of more than 11,000 migrants who died of dehydration trying to cross the border inland, where the deadly desert serves as the primary barrier. An investigation by humanitarian groups revealed that ICE agents routinely sabotage water that aid groups leave for migrants. When I ask about the Border Angels’ water supply, Morones says that they have had their water vandalized, but they do not know by whom.
Along with water drops, Border Angels also does outreach to day laborers, visits the graves of unidentified immigrants, and facilitates the opening of the border fence several times a year, so that families can hug. Crystal, a young woman who was at one of the border openings, is at the church service talking with her family. At the opening, she gets the opportunity to hug her daughter after being apart from her for almost a year.
Crystal says her main feeling, when she got to hug her daughter, was sadness—because she didn’t want to let her go.
“Nobody likes to be separated from their family,” she tells me in Spanish.
Faith deepened by solidarity
Border Angels has recently drawn criticism from the Border Patrol, due to an unplanned wedding at one of the door-opening events in November 2017 in which the groom turned out to have a drug smuggling conviction, and the Border Patrol threatened to stop opening the fence. But when I ask about the incident, Morones seems unbothered by it. He says they’ve delivered similar threats in the past, but they never last.
“Forget about the door opening: I want the wall to come down,” he says. “But it will.”
I’m surprised by how confident he is in such an anti-immigration political climate. President Trump launched his campaign on the promise of building a border wall, and the six prototypes for that wall are in San Diego, just a short distance from the park.
But the idea that the border needs to be completely controlled is largely a post-9/11 invention, even among conservatives. In 1971, First Lady Pat Nixon visited San Diego to dedicate Border Field State Park. Her security detail cut the barbed wire fence at the border so that she could greet the Mexican citizens on the other side.
“I hope there won’t be a fence here too long,” she is reported to have said.
Fanestil describes his ministry using the word compañerismo, which loosely translates as solidarity, or fellowship. He says he believes that the church should walk alongside people in their journeys, and that faith communities that don’t do that are missing something.
“Many people will never connect with religious communities that don’t do that, because there’s no point of contact with their lived experience,” Fanestil says.
Fanestil explains that differentiating between the sacred and the secular is largely an American concept, foreign to the Latin American communities he’s worked with. Instead, those communities conceptualize their whole lives through a religious lens, including their migrant experience. He says that this view of the world has helped to deepen his own faith.
“I feel like I learn and grow from my relationship with this community much more than I shape or teach,” Fanestil says.
Every Sunday, despite challenges
Sobering news for El Faro: The Border Church arrived in February 2018. The Border Patrol has restricted access to the park, now only allowing 10 people in at a time. If more than 10 people want access, they will have to be rotated in, in shifts, meaning some people will only have half an hour with their families.
“These restrictions have already hurt families,” Morones says.
Fanestil points to the Border Patrol’s anger over the border wedding as the reason for the restriction, though the Border Patrol claims it is because of agent shortages. Fanestil says that it is unfair to punish so many families for the wedding, especially since Border Church is not associated at all with the border opening events.
“It’s very frustrating,” Fanestil says. “Families are only going to get to see each other for 30 minutes, and a lot of them travel very long distances to get here.”
Currently, 10 people at a time remains the official policy, but as of September 2018, the agent on duty at Friendship Park can exercise discretion over how many people to let in. Fanestil says that in the past several weeks, his group has been allowed to enter the park for Border Church services without any restrictions.
Border Church has also had low attendance on the U.S. side because the stricter climate around immigration has led people to fear that they or their loved ones will be deported if they visit Friendship Park. Fanestil says that anytime there’s increased concern about enforcement of immigration laws, it discourages people from going to the park.
Despite the setbacks, Border Church will continue. “It cramps our style on the U.S. side, but our style has been cramped for a long time,” Fanestil says. Regardless of tall fences and tumultuous immigration policies, he will be at the border every Sunday, Bible and microphone in hand.
Carina Julig (@CarinaJulig) is a reporter from San Diego specializing in the intersection of religion and politics.
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