Local opinion: A volunteer's experience of Casa Alitas, a Tucson migrant shelter
It's a common platitude that one receives more in giving to others than in self-serving endeavors. As a previous volunteer with Casa Alitas, a migrant shelter and house of hospitality that sprung to life out of a humanitarian necessity, I have known this to be true, witnessing for myself the way that caring for our guests — uprooted asylum-seekers with little more than the clothes on their backs — enriched the lives of the volunteers. As I reflect on the history of Casa Alitas, I'm struck by the unlikely and special nature of what was accomplished since 2018 or so, the thousands of lives that we served, the remarkable community in Southern Arizona that arose to respond to the plight of hungry and desperate souls from all around the world.
I could name countless unsung volunteers and staff for the success of the shelter, but the former director, Diego Lopez, deserves to be mentioned first. He organized and inspired the overall effort, orchestrating the diverse and cacophonous group of volunteers, staff, and challenges into a unified symphony of purpose. I don't doubt that he made mistakes and misjudgments in the process, but he always privileged the gospel spirit of love, service, and compassion above all else — Casa Alitas is a Catholic organization, after all.
Under his leadership, the biblical mandate to love the stranger, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, was always the fundamental code and creed that we sought to honor and put into practice. No matter our responsibilities and tasks — I was involved with support at bus stations and the airport — the fundamental purpose was always to aid and walk with migrants on their exodus, and none of this would have been possible without Diego Lopez's management.
On the eve of a presidential election, we now find ourselves in unsettling waters when it comes to immigrants. Anti-immigrant sentiment, both in the U.S. and abroad, is at a feverish pitch, and some of the most hateful prejudices come not from agnostics or atheists but from many who profess faith in Christianity. Pope Francis, with his finger on the pulse of the times, has spoken out in warning and reproach, calling it a "grave sin" to repel immigrants. (See his speech at the G7 summit on June 14.) In his judgment, speaking as the voice of 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide, the central narratives and laws of the Bible — the Exodus, the ordeals of the patriarchs, the Prophetic books, Babylonian Exile, the flight to Egypt of Mary and Joseph, the parables of Jesus, et.al. — concern the painful history of migration, exile, and diaspora, a movement of whole peoples in search of peace, justice, and security.
To reject and dehumanize those who flee oppressive conditions elicits the condemnation of the Bible, as in the case of the Ammonites who refused the Israelites, as they fled bondage in Egypt, the basics of food, water, and safe passage. Jesus, in this same prophetic spirit, denounced those who would reject the stranger: "I was a stranger and you rejected me," says the protagonist of the parable in Matthew 25, "for whatsoever you did not do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did not do for me."
Whatever our differences in religion, class or ethnicity, the volunteers that I have worked with at Casa Alitas have been immersed in this biblical spirit, doing what we can to care for the poor and deprived of the world. Hearing the testimonies of so many of our volunteers, I can say with confidence that this work has brought out the best version of ourselves, helping us to give birth to the better angels of our nature. Our guests, in the end, have given us as much as we've given them, their adversities, sufferings, and hopes becoming the kind of bread and wine that has fed and lifted our own spirits.
Alejandro Nava is a native Tucsonan. Nava received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and is currently professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona.
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