ABSTRACT
As a Catholic Christian of the social gospel ilk, I live in the most interesting community in the United States of America. My home is in Brownsville, Texas. My front porch, facing south, is just over a kilometre from the Texas/Mexico border. Brownsville, sister city to the Mexican city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, is about 30 kilometres from the Gulf of Mexico. As I sit and write this chapter, a border patrol helicopter hovers overhead, filling the early morning with a racket that reminds me that I should be afraid. Although I live in a region that the FBI considers amongst the safest in Texas, a poll indicates that nearly half of the residents believe that this is a dangerous place. “With so many border patrol agents and national guard troops and helicopters and drones, well, something bad must be going on.”
