LETTER FROM THE FIELD
THE SHEPHERD OF JUAREZ BY CHA D N IELSEN PHOTOGR A PHY BY WESTON COLTON
I N O NE O F T HE WO R L D’ S D EADL IEST CITIES, RAVAGED BY THE PANDEMIC, PA S T O R J O S E A N T O N I O G A LVA N RUNS A 25-YEAR EXPERIMENT IN MERCY AND RADICAL EMPATHY.
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black Lincoln crawls along a divided highway, skirting the sunbaked mountains west of Juarez. Behind the wheel, Pastor Jose Antonio Galvan argues with his phone until it starts streaming a sermon. And the hand of the Lord set me down in a valley full of bones, a voice says in Spanish — the pastor’s own voice, recorded in a makeshift studio at his facility 8 miles southwest of the city. He grins, satisfied, and turns his wayfarers back to the road. At 69, Galvan cuts a striking figure. Black suit coat over a dark sweater and broad shoulders. Silver locks flowing against caramel skin. The recording continues, reading from the Book of Ezekiel: And he said, make the bones hear the word of the Lord. Galvan jabs a finger for emphasis, because he serves a congregation of people often left for dead, their minds ruined by drugs, lost to age or shattered by violence. The pastor feeds them, rehabilitates them and comforts them on their deathbeds at the center he founded, where he’s spent the past 25 years scrambling to provide disadvantaged patients with basic necessities. With no institutional backing, every aspect of the Vision in Action Rescue Asylum feels like a miracle. Galvan relies on a few kindred spirits, but leans heavily on patients who’ve become nurses, cooks and bookkeepers, or those few he trusts to drive a pickup and run errands. “People call them human garbage,” the pastor often says, “but I call them hidden treasures.” The Lincoln passes a hillside emblazoned with whitewashed block letters: JUAREZ THE BIBLE IS THE TRUTH READ IT. The city unfolds below, a labyrinth of improvised barrios spreading through ravines, over mesas and across a broad plain toward the Rio Grande. A blue face mask languishes on the console. Galvan survived COVID-19, but his asylum may not. Donations are harder to come by during the pandemic. The phone loses its signal, the sermon cut short. “You’ll have to hear the rest later,” he says, veering off the highway.
• I • Juarez is a mecca for practical religion. People of faith treat the sick, teach the children, shelter the migrant. They build houses and run food banks, day care centers and rehab facilities, women’s support groups and youth 38 DESERET MAGAZINE
soccer teams, filling gaps in a perpetual humanitarian crisis, fueled by poverty, explosive growth and crime. Decades of violence have sealed this border town’s reputation as one of the world’s most dangerous cities — an emporium of vice and contraband, where drug cartels rule from the shadows, where gangs and corrupt police act with impunity. That culminated from 2008 to 2012, when nearly 11,000 were reportedly murdered in a city of 1.3 million (now 1.5 million). Others simply disappeared. About a third of the city’s residents reportedly suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Suicides doubled from 2010 to 2017, with 33 attempts each day. Dr. Jesus Antonio Moreno Leal, an on-call psychiatrist at Vision in Action, blames the drug war, abusive authorities and crushing poverty. “Imagine all that these families have suffered,” he says. “When you can’t even feed your children, you don’t have a decent place to live, it erodes your mental health.” Most have nowhere to turn. There are two psychiatric hospitals in Juarez. One is run by the state, with limited capacity despite consistent funding — and it’s temporarily closed for the pandemic. The other is Vision in Action, where cops and rehab centers send the hardest cases.
• I I • From a hotel in downtown El Paso, Texas, I watch the lights of a Homeland Security helicopter as it tracks the border, east to west. Otherwise, it’s hard to tell where one city ends and the other begins. Tall buildings give way to smaller ones that fade into a carpet of lights and the darkness beyond, where Galvan’s Vision in Action awaits. The next morning, the pastor pulls up outside, driving the Lincoln Continental he calls his only luxury. Galvan lives with his wife in modest Sunland Park, just over the New Mexico state line. Several times a week, he drives south. My seat slides back and we pull away. In about 15 minutes, we drop over the Bridge of the Americas, one of four connecting the two cities, and breeze through customs. They don’t even check our passports. Across town, we head west on Federal Highway 2, passing shanty towns known only by their position along the highway (Kilometro 28, Kilometro 30). As Juarez grows, many newcomers find an empty spot of ground and build shelter with whatever materials they can scavenge from the piles of scrap that dot the landscape. It’s not uncommon to raise a family in a cardboard hovel without electricity or potable water. Only the bus is reliable, passing each morning to carry the fortunate to jobs at the maquilas, factories where they print circuit boards, build headlights or package surgical gloves for $9 a day.
