Reflections from the Rio Grande Valley

Hey there Rural Assembly friends –

Taneum here. At Rural Assembly, we are committed to increasing awareness and empathy for rural issues and communities. As many of you know and have experienced, the past few years coming through and out of a global pandemic fundamentally changed the way we relate to each other. That’s why one of our team’s main priorities this year is visiting with our friends and neighbors – whether they are right next door or thousands of miles away. We have an obligation to intentionally connect with each other with open hearts. Personally, I believe that this is the key to navigating divisive conflicts, understanding each other better, and creating a culture of belonging.

Recently, a few of us from Rural Assembly, the Daily Yonder, and the Center for Rural Strategies were able to go to the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. I live in Washington State and often the southern border has seemed far away and fraught. Up until recently, my knowledge of the US-Mexico border was informed by national news reports and debates. It’s safe to say that what I thought I knew was riddled with assumptions and was not the full picture.

It’s easy for us humans to sink into separateness without even realizing it – and it’s even easier to make up stories about folks who we don’t know at all. That’s why it was such an incredible experience to hit pause on what I thought I knew about the border and instead spend time with old and new friends who pour their love and energy into a region which is often misunderstood or forgotten by outsiders.

Over the next three weeks, we’ll be highlighting some of our experiences and learnings from the Rio Grande Valley. I hope that you too will find yourself awakened to how connected we all are.

Take a look at my colleague Sarah Melotte’s reflection on a couple poignant moments from our trip and keep an eye out for more throughout the year.

Sarah writes:

In South Texas’ Hidalgo County, about half a mile due north of the Rio Grande, there’s a one-room United Methodist Church next to an old family cemetery. The church is white with wooden board and batten siding and a small red steeple. It’s a quintessential country church if there ever was one.

The chapel was built in 1884 by Martin Jackson, son of Nathaniel Jackson and Matilda Hicks, an interracial couple who fled discrimination in Alabama in the 1850s and whose ranch land (on which the church now stands) was a refuge for runaway enslaved people from the deep south. 

Arriving from all over the country, four of my colleagues and I had flown into Hidalgo County to visit rural organizing partners in several small towns of the Rio Grande Valley, the southern point of Texas that makes up the floodplain of the Rio Grande.

Read all of What a Borderland Church Taught Me About Belonging now at the Daily Yonder.