Santa Cruz County Visit - Part One

Greetings from Portal Arizona!  We are staying with friends Barbara and Ron who live in an amazing straw bale home very near Cave Creek Canyon in the Chiricahua Mountains.  It is beautiful here.  We are about seven miles from the New Mexico state line.   It is a wonderful respite after a very busy week in Arizona.

After we left Borderlinks we drove to Rio Rico, a town near the Nogales border where we spent three nights at the Esplendor Resort.  The resort had a great pool, comfortable room and really poor internet connection.  I am spoiled and it cost us a pretty penny on extra data from our carrier to create a hotspot.  We moved back to Tucson a day earlier.

I had a wonderful visit with staff and programs of University of Arizona Santa Cruz County Cooperative Extension.  The irony is that I came from the border county of Whatcom in Washington to the border county of Santa Cruz.  Many thanks to Darcy Dixon and her fine staff for hosting me and for inviting me into their programs.  I had really good conversations with Darcy, her staff and some of the parents they serve in their Family Resource Centers.

Darcy and Drew, Border to Border County Directors

The first folks I met with were the nutrition educators, all of whom are deeply connected to the community.

Sonia, Alma and Melody

We had a wonderful conversation and I was able to get their insights into what they perceived as the needs in their community.  They told me that there was a great need for education about domestic and sexual violence.  The border can be very unsafe for women, especially those trapped by being undocumented, whether they are in transit or long term residents.  They told me that many of the undocumented women with whom they are familiar, come in a with a day pass and just do not return.  They have babies here and so qualify for housing and other benefits through their children.   One of the concerns from our parents in Washington is being able to address teen sexuality and prevention of early pregnancy.  I feel like I opened a Pandora's box with that topic on my two days of visits.  I heard many different opinions about teen pregnancy in the Nogales area and what needs to be done to help reduce the rates of 15-16 year olds who are having babies.  (Some of what I heard reminded me of work I had done over 20 years ago in Thurston County.  I was involved in a Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition.  The big concern then was that girl from a rural town saw pregnancy as socially desirable and an end goal for the future.)  More than one person stated that no sex education is being taught in the schools and they perceived that the young people do not even understand the simple biology.  Many said that it is not part of the traditional culture to speak of sex, reproduction or sexuality and that parents feel that if they bring the topic up, their youth will want to experiment.  Others reported that there are some folk superstitions that people invoke that make them believe they cannot get pregnant.  I heard from more than one person that it is very socially acceptable to have babies early and that it is viewed as an acceptable aspiration both by the youth peer culture and by some of the parents.  We met a young woman who is a single mom at one of the family resource centers who had two children and one on the way.  She lives at home and her parents are very supportive and involved in raising her children.  It seems very normalized in some of the Latino families.

I also had the opportunity to meet and speak with an Abuela (grandmother) at a Family Resource Center who is helping raise her 16 month old granddaughter.

Arlene, Delia and Armida
Nogales Family Resource Center

Delia had very strong values and expectations for her daughter.  She agreed to have the daughter  and granddaughter live with her as long as her daughter stays in school, works to support her daughter and (I think) does not have any more children until she is through with school.  The daughter is a junior in high school and was just short of her 16th birthday when she gave birth.  Delia reported that she is not happy about the high expectations her mother has because most of her friends who are also young parents are allowed to "be kids" while their parents take over the raising of their children.  Delia was taking a class for parents of toddlers and was taking home the information and teaching her daughter, daughter-in-law and other abuelas she knows.  She is a multiplier of the best kind.  She meets on Wednesdays and Sundays to transmit what she has learned to her family members.  She is very serious about impacting her community and the lives of the parents, grandparents and the young children in their lives.

Arlene in the picture above was raised in Nogales, went to university and earned two degrees.  She is a stay at home mom and comes to the center for intellectual stimulation and companionship.  Armida is a dedicated foster parent who is enhancing her skill set to better serve the high needs and challenging children she has placed in her home and is helping other foster parents develop skills they can use.  All of them spoke of the need for young people to develop a vision for the future.  It was my honor to meet with these women and the staff.

I have more stories to tell about my visit to Santa Cruz County but will stop for today.  It is Saturday evening and I am ready for rest.

Thanks for reading.