Appreciation Corbett offered sanctuary to
refugees
By MIRIAM DAVIDSON
To the Central Americans whose lives
he saved, Jim Corbett was a saint. To the U.S. government, he was a dangerous
subversive. To those who knew him, he was a thoughtful, quiet, unassuming man.
And to a world still struggling with the issues he confronted, his legacy is
only beginning to be known.
Corbett, a co-founder of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement to shelter
Central American refugees fleeing war and death squads in their homelands, was
memorialized Sept. 1 in a Quaker-style service at Southside Presbyterian Church
in Tucson, Ariz. He died Aug. 2, at age 67, at his home in Cascabel, Ariz.
Although he led a contemplative life as a rancher, writer and
teacher, Corbett rose to international prominence as a leader of the
faith-based movement to protect undocumented refugees from capture and
deportation by the U.S. government. He personally helped guide dozens of
Salvadorans and Guatemalans to safety across the border into the United
States.
Corbetts sanctuary co-founders, including the Rev. John Fife
of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, and Fr. Ricardo Elford, a
Redemptorist priest, recognize him as the guiding spiritual and intellectual
force behind the movement.
He was religiously all-inclusive -- catholic with a small
c, Elford said. His inclusive spirit reached out to the Earth and
animals as much as it reached out to people.
Corbetts moral philosophy of living simply and humbly in
harmony with nature was based on his Quaker beliefs in nonviolence and respect
for life, his studies at Colgate and Harvard, and his experiences as a rancher
and goatherd in southern Arizona and Mexico.
He was at home with cows, with sleeping on the ground, and
yet he was so, so smart, Elford said.
Corbett was drawn into refugee work in 1981, after a friend picked
up a Salvadoran hitchhiker who subsequently was arrested and deported. In
trying to determine the hitchhikers whereabouts, Corbett learned that
many Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees were suffering similar fates, despite
legitimate claims to political asylum.
Corbett and others began helping refugees to avoid capture, yet he
insisted that what they were doing was not civil disobedience. He
argued instead that it was civil initiative -- they were upholding
laws regarding treatment of war refugees that the U.S. government refused to
enforce. On March 24, 1982, Southside Presbyterian became the first church in
the country to declare itself a sanctuary for Central Americans fleeing
persecution.
The movement quickly gained attention and acceptance. At its
height, more than 200 religious orders and congregations nationwide, several
universities and municipalities, and more than 600 religious organizations,
including the National Federation of Priests Councils (representing more
than 33,000 Catholic priests) declared themselves in favor of sanctuary. In
1984, Corbett accepted the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award on behalf of the
movement.
Rejecting the claim that sanctuary was in fact upholding the law,
the U.S. government moved against its leaders. In January 1985, Corbett and 10
others, including two Catholic priests and several religious lay workers, were
indicted on alien-smuggling charges. After a six-month trial in Tucson, eight
were convicted of various felonies. All received probation. Corbett, who by
this time had taken a less public role in sanctuary, was among the three who
were acquitted.
Corbett retired to rural Arizona, where he and his wife, Pat,
founded an intentional community, the Saguaro-Juniper Association, which is
based on principles of land, plant and animal protection. The association
eventually grew to encompass 1,100 acres and includes a spiritual retreat
center called the Cascabel Hermitage.
Corbett continued to write and speak out against the
militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, the exploitation of undocumented
workers and the increasing numbers of Mexicans suffering and dying in the
desert. One day, he told a reporter, we will be as ashamed of
borders as we are of slavery.
He published one book of philosophy, called Goatwalking: A
Guide to Wildland Living, a Quest for the Peaceable Kingdom, and was
working to complete another when he was struck by cerebellar paraneoplastic
syndrome, a rare and fast-moving cancer of the central nervous system.
In Goatwalking, Corbett contemplated what his legacy might
be:
On the prairie, when the wind wails a dirge and snow sifts
in rivulets through the sagebrush, Ive hugged the sticky-pink,
death-chilled body of a newborn lamb under my coat, and its heart fluttered in
reply.
And on a desert mountain, amidst the hush of soaring
granite, Ive opened a forgotten spring. The few who remembered thought it
had long ago gone dry, but I found the hidden place and dug down until a stream
ran clear and cold in the summer sun.
So what are epitaphs to me? Ive shared lifes
warmth with a lamb. Ive opened a desert spring.
Indeed he did. And so much more.
Miriam Davidson is a Tucson-based journalist and author of
Convictions of the Heart: Jim Corbett and the Sanctuary Movement
(University of Arizona Press, 1988) as well as the recent Lives on
the Line: Dispatches from the U.S.-Mexico Border (UA Press, 2000).
National Catholic Reporter, September 14,
2001
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