Thread: The new face of Appalachia

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/disp/st ... 77205.html

Oct. 21, 2006, 10:58PM
The new face of Appalachia
As Latino immigration, legal and illegal, reaches the rural Southeast, passions, jobs, politics and pulpits are changing in towns such as Morristown, Tenn.

By KIM COBB
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

MORRISTOWN, TENN. - She sits toward the back of the storefront church, her silver hair and aquarium-blue eyes shining in the low light.

Elaine Solomon likes the way the place makes her feel. She likes the families swaying, clapping and singing with raised hands to a ranchera-style praise band.

"Su santo espiritu ha llegado, oh dulce espiritu de Dios," they sing. Your holy Spirit has arrived, oh sweet Spirit of God.

There are plenty of places to find God in Morristown but few places for a 70-year-old woman to learn Spanish. So there she is, week after week at a Latino Baptist church, learning the language of the newcomers, the people some of her neighbors call "the invasion."

"Somebody needs to learn to talk to these people," she said.

Latino immigration has been changing the face of the United States for decades. Immigrants follow certain jobs, and the fastest-growing Latino communities these days are in Southeastern states such as Tennessee.

But no one in Morristown expected it to come here. Framed by the Appalachian Mountains and an insular culture of mostly white residents, much of east Tennessee is an old, familiar photo in a worn frame: winding roads, clapboard houses and mile after mile of farm-furrowed green.

Even in thoroughly modern Morristown, tied to the rest of the world through manufacturing, the arrival of "these people" is quickly changing a region that has clung to a shared cultural and ethnic identity since the 1700s.

This kind of change can feel threatening, all mixed up in knotty questions about legal and illegal, assimilation, job loss and fear. At the very least, people are conflicted.

There's also been a lot of sign-waving and harsh words aimed in the past year at illegal immigrants here. Morristown's police chief is uneasy about the potential for violence, thanks to gut-stirring visits from the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen and the Ku Klux Klan.

'Little Mexico'
Hamblen County's resident Latino population jumped from a few hundred to as many as 10,000 in the past decade, and the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that more than half the immigrants arriving in southeastern communities are illegal. Cumberland Avenue on the town's south side has been transformed into a commercial strip dominated by Latino restaurants, specialty stores and used-car lots.

"I mean, right here, where our church is, is Little Mexico," said the Rev. William Burton of Iglesia Bautista La Gran Comision, or The Great Commission Baptist Church.

The pastor is an exuberant, round-faced white man who speaks the Spanish he learned as a missionary in Venezuela with a decidedly Tennessee accent. His congregation began as a Bible study group at another Southern Baptist church. The study group grew, and Burton eventually began offering an early service on Sunday mornings in Spanish.

But, the young minister said, his devotion to the newcomers created resentment among some of the church's established members. It was never put into words, but Burton felt the challenge to choose "between us and them."

"Of course, my heart was with 'them,' " he said.

Burton quit and took his new flock with him. Six years down the road, La Gran Comision is flourishing in a salmon-colored stucco building that used to be a grocery store.

And Solomon, whose roots in Appalachia run deep, is soaking up Spanish.

A retired practical nurse, Solomon works part time at a pregnancy-support center with a growing list of Spanish-speaking Latina clients. She lowers her voice and adds quickly, "We're anti-abortion."

Solomon is among the half-dozen whites who attend Burton's church services.

Yes, Solomon agrees, Morristown is insular. But she also sees similarities between the Latinos and the region's historically Scots-Irish and German population that some might not see in themselves.

"I guess in a way they are like Appalachians," Solomon said. "I never considered myself Appalachian until I read a book called 40 Acres and No Mule, and I discovered I am Appalachian. You have a feeling for the land and an attachment to the, you know, between families.

"We're clannish — and I see the same thing in these people."

Perception vs. reality
There are plenty of people here who feel as if they're being run over at the intersection of demographic and economic change.

"I don't want my grandson to have to learn Spanish — he's an American," fumed Judy Mitchell, whose family has lived here for more than 200 years.

Morristown does not fit the Appalachian stereotype of quaint villages and hillbilly shacks.

It's a factory town with the usual Ameri-bland assortment of burger joints, drugstores, a Wal-Mart. For generations, the spectacular mountain greenery visible from the highest points in town was a wall between Morristown and change.

But change has come. Now, when residents say they don't like to travel the area along South Cumberland Avenue after dark, they mean they fear the newest arrivals who frequent the Latino businesses there.

That fear may be overblown. Roger Overholt, the chief of police, said the crime rate among Latinos is not much different from that of their neighbors. Cases of public intoxication and cars being abandoned after accidents increased with the arrival of Latinos, he said. But an education campaign about American law reduced the problem.

Morristown averages one homicide a year. There were five in 2002, which Overholt called "probably our worst year." None involved Latinos killing whites.

Still, the perception of danger is strong.

"I came out of South Florida ... because I couldn't speak the (Spanish) language and I had to carry a gun," property manager Ronald Barwick said. "This was not Florida. People worked on a handshake and spoke English. (Now) the illegals have really taken over this county."

Settling in, sort of
The immigrants rub shoulders with the whites in jobs and stores and schools. But life is what happens at home and in church.

You can't marry in Hamblen County without a Social Security number — an obvious hurdle for the many immigrants who don't have one. So on a Saturday afternoon in June, as he frequently does, the Rev. Burton journeyed to nearby Granger County, where there is no such restriction, to marry two young members of his congregation.

It was an outdoor ceremony held under a spreading magnolia tree — what Burton called "a real Southern wedding" except for the Mexican tradition of wrapping a lasso around the couple as a symbol of their union.

Some Latino residents said Morristown is becoming more comfortable. Even with the occasional protests mounted against illegal immigrants, they can shop, dine and worship in places where Spanish is spoken.

And there is work.

Juan Madrigal, his wife, Erica, and baby daughter Zuri are regulars at Burton's Thursday night services, basking in the sense of family they find in the congregation. Public protests against illegal immigrants do not concern them.

"We're not afraid because if they deport us, they'll deport us to our country," Madrigal said.

It's hard to think about whether they prefer life here to their old home. Madrigal was only 17 when he left Mexico.

"We're happy here," Madrigal said. "You get used to a community and a house and a way of life, and if we go back to Mexico we're going to miss this place."

But in the white community, it's hard for some people to separate uneasiness about the new population from resentment over the slow demise of the old way of life.

Global give-and-take
In recent years, Hamblen County learned what globalism meant by watching its biggest factories shut down and many good-paying jobs move to cheap-labor countries — such as Mexico.

But free trade in Morristown cuts both ways.

Many Mexican farming communities suffered financially when forced to compete with American agricultural products. The stream of immigrants to the United States from farm states such as Michoacan and Oaxaca grew in the mid-1990s as word spread about low-skill factory and agriculture jobs in east Tennessee.

So here's what it looks like from some corners of Morristown: The jobs went to Mexico, then Mexico came to Morristown.

Residents of Southwest border states have long been immersed in the debate over illegal crossings. Texas has had a large Latino population for more than a century, most of it legal and destined to become the majority by 2040.

Morristown, by contrast, is mired in culture shock.

"You know, I thought our community was doing well," Burton said. "And then our county commissioner, Tom Lowe, started all that nonsense about wanting to charge the federal government for so many illegals."

About 85 percent of the Hamblen County budget is spent on the local school district. Lowe started asking pointed questions about how much it costs to educate students who cannot speak English.

Lowe, a flush-faced pharmacist with curly, strawberry-blonde hair, has plenty of critics. But the town's "fence-sitters" began openly supporting his calls for enforcement of immigration law, Lowe said, after they saw Latinos waving Mexican flags at pro-immigrant rallies.

"I think America is in great distress over this," he said.

Effects of extremism
Turmoil in Morristown started when a group calling itself the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen began organizing against the illegal population. At least, that is the view of Lisa Barba, a regional organizer for the Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition.

Lowe is tired of hearing allegations from city leaders that the Klan is involved in the anti-illegal-immigrant movement here. It's a smear, he thinks, to paint everyone concerned about illegal immigration as racist.

Burton thinks the white community is learning to bend with the changes, but he expects real acceptance of the newcomers may be slow in coming.

"We are a closed culture," the clergyman said. "I mean, our mountains have separated us culturally from the rest of the U.S. It's not necessarily just Latinos — it's anybody from, you know, the north or any place else that is not from here."

kim.cobb@chron.com

This article really disturbs me more than most for some reason. Maybe because there are certain similarities between the region in which I live and the one in Tennessee. I am not sure. But one thing that I am sure of, that seemed to come through throughout the whole article, is that it is the natives who have to "bend", who are required to adapt their lives, their language, to the illegals.

The pastor chooses to leave his long-time congregation to minister to the illegals because "his heart is with them"?? How does he justify throwing decent, hardworking and law-abiding citizens under the bus to minister to illegals who have no respect for this country, its language, culture or laws?

And about the crime stats--they have one homocide in one year which goes up to 5 the next year. An increase of 5x! This isn't a red flag? Increases in public intoxication and DUIs are up, but the local population aren't supposed to mind it and if they do they are not "welcoming" and are xenophobic and racist?

And of course we are back with the specter of "racism" because the people would like not to have to pay for the education of illegals' children and other costs they should not have to. And what about all of these anchor babies being born? Who is paying for those hospital costs? I am just disgusted.

There's also been a lot of sign-waving and harsh words aimed in the past year at illegal immigrants here. Morristown's police chief is uneasy about the potential for violence, thanks to gut-stirring visits from the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen and the Ku Klux Klan.

There they go again putting the minutmen in with the Klan. The two organizations are polar oppsities.

'Little Mexico'
Hamblen County's resident Latino population jumped from a few hundred to as many as 10,000 in the past decade, and the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that more than half the immigrants arriving in southeastern communities are illegal. Cumberland Avenue on the town's south side has been transformed into a commercial strip dominated by Latino restaurants, specialty stores and used-car lots.

"I mean, right here, where our church is, is Little Mexico," said the Rev. William Burton of Iglesia Bautista La Gran Comision, or The Great Commission Baptist Church.

So Rev. Burton, you think part of American is Little Mexico and in the same line estimates show that nearly half of the "immigrants” there are illegal and that is ok with you? Christians are supposed to help the poor and the needy and we are supposed to be law abiding citizens. How come you are not reporting the illegals to ICE?