Still Waiting for the Candy - Reflections on La Posada Sin Fronteras

Each year at Christmastime, all across Latin America, people gather to observe a tradition called las posadas.  The word posada means “lodging” or "inn" and in the ritual people re-enact the search of Mary and Joseph for a place to stay on the night of Jesus’ birth.  One group of people sings the part of Joseph, pidiendo posada – “asking for a place to stay.”  Others sing the part of the casero or “innkeeper,” at first refusing to offer refuge.  The tune is simple and easy to sing once you learn it:

JOSEPH: In the name of Heaven / I beg you for lodging / For my beloved wife / She cannot walk.

JOSE: En nombre del cielo / Les pido posada / Pues no puede andar / Mi esposa amada.

INNKEEPER: This is not an inn / So just keep going / I cannot open / You may be bad people

CASERO: Aqui no es meson / Sigan adelante / Yo no puedo abrir / No sea algun tunante.

 

In most parts of Latin America the participants in las posadas process from home to home through their neighborhoods, or perhaps from door to door around the perimeter of a church building, singing the song's many verses. Here in San Diego, though, people have been gathering for 19 years now to celebrate La Posada Sin Fronteras at Friendship Park, the historic meeting place on the U.S.-Mexico border, where we also gather on Sunday's as EL FARO: The Border Church / La Iglesia Fronteriza.

The posada takes on special significance when celebrated on la linea  that separates the two countries.  Here we don’t need to imagine a closed door – we have the fences and walls of the border itself to make tangible our very real separation. 

Eventually, after many verses, the posada song takes a jubilant turn.  When it dawns on the Innkeeper who in fact is knocking on his door, he experiences a sudden and heart-rending conversion.  He sings:

         CASERO: Is that you, Joseph? / And your wife is Mary? / Enter, pilgrims / I did not recognize you.
         ¿Eres tú José? / ¿Tu esposa es María? / Entren, peregrinos / no los conocía.

       CASERO: Blessed is the house / that this day shelters / the Holy Virgin / the  beautiful Mary.
        ¡Dichosa la casa / que alberga este día / a la Viren pura / la hermosa María!

As the inkeeper opens the doors and the two groups become one, the people join their voices in this closing chorus:

Come on in, pilgrims, come on in / You are welcome in this corner.

It may be poor, this dwelling / But I share it wholeheartedly.

Let’s sing together gladly / That Jesus, Mary and Joseph

Have come to honor us / Humble pilgrims – Jesus, Mary and Joseph

I give you my soul / And with it my heart, too.

 

Entren, santos peregrinos, peregrinos / Reciban este rincon.

Que aunque es pobre la morada / Se la doy de corazon.

Cantemos con alegria / todos al considerar

Que Jesús, Jose y Maria / Nos vinieron a honrar.

Humildes peregrinos / Jesus, Maria y Jose,

Mi alma doy, con ella / Mi corazon tambien.

We felt this conversion especially powerfully this past Saturday, as this year's celebration came on the heels of our success in re-establishing regular public access to Friendship Park.  Some 300 people sang the closing verse with gusto.

As we sang, though, I couldn't help but think how far we still have to go in the struggle for justice on the U.S.-Mexico border. The ritual of las posadas is meant to conclude with all the people eating together: chocolate and pan dulce and tamales.  And the highlight of any good posada is a piñata.  When broken the piñata showers candies on the children below, an ecstatic reminder that God will shower God's blessings where God will.

As we are forced to celebrate the ritual on the U.S.-Mexican border, la linea (or, more properly, el muro) allows for no grand entrance.   We sing the song.  We say our prayers.  We light our candles.  But there is no great fiesta and the gathering is punctuated by tragic testimony from migrant families separated by the United States' horrific immigration and enforcement policies. At the end of the night we return to our separate homes.   

 

Historically the Posada Sin Fronteras at Friendship Park has concluded with people throwing candy back and forth across the border fence, a defiant approximation of  the piñata. But as a part of our new accomodation with San Diego Border Patrol, we have had to surrender even this anti-climactic conclusion.   (Contraband" could be mixed in with the candies, we are told.)

 

And so I am left - at least for now - with a bittersweet taste in my mouth. We experience genuine satisfaction at La Posada Sin Fronteras, but our joy is incomplete.  We remain as if frozen in time, gathered on both sides of the line like so many children - our hands outstretched in anticipation of dulces that never fall.

 

Photo: Maria Teresa Fernandez