Christmas Story Finds a Place on the Border : Immigration: Activists in both countries point up migrants’ plight with a Mexican <i> posada.</i>

The Christmas procession approaches the border, lines of candles advancing through taco stand smoke, cantina neon and a fading rain.

Gliding motorcycle cops in yellow slickers lead the migrant families and priests with guitars past smugglers in baseball caps and tourists in serapes, past crouched Indian vendors and swarming taxi drivers. The northbound pilgrims carry statuettes of the Holy Family, which bob above the waves of traffic near the international border crossing.

In the muddy hills of Colonia Libertad, people emerge from a bedraggled blue tenement to watch. Jose Hernandez joins a group of neighborhood toughs atop a dirt mound next to the international line. “Who has the paper with the verses?” rasps Hernandez, a 19-year-old smuggler of illegal immigrants. “I want to sing.”

The procession from Tijuana meets up with a San Diego procession that has come south to the other side of the steel border fence.

On this damp December night, a crowd of about 150 has turned out for a border posada --a non-traditional version of the traditional musical re-enactment of Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter in Bethlehem. The fence has brought them together and the fence keeps them apart.

*

The border serves as more than the stage for the drama of illegal immigration; this magical and menacing turf has been an irresistible backdrop for protests, political speeches and performance art. Combining aspects of all three, a coalition of religious, political and human rights groups has decided to reinvent the holiday ritual on a dark landscape of crucifix-like telephone poles, broken glass and railroad tracks. The dirt arena is bisected by a rusted gate that opens to international freight trains--but not to people.

As tends to be the case here, the message is not subtle: In response to anti-immigrant politics, the organizers from Tijuana and San Diego want to transform the physical symbol of confrontation between nations into a symbol of brotherhood.

“We pray that the day will come when we can have a posada without borders,” said Auxiliary Bishop Gilbert Chavez of San Diego, addressing the crowd from the bed of a white pickup truck north of the fence. “If Jesus was to be born today, perhaps he would have chosen to be born in a very poor country. Perhaps he would choose Africa or Guatemala. . . . If we reject the poor, we are rejecting Christ himself.”

A critic might point out that these clergymen and human rights advocates have ventured onto dubious ground by politicizing the holiday spirit.

On the other hand, wrapping politics into religion is a time-honored tradition that knows no frontiers of nationality or ideology. Jose Luis Perez Canchola, a former Baja California human rights prosecutor, argues that there is no better time and place to commemorate the wandering plight of migrants who are wanted neither at home nor abroad.

“Christmas has to do with human charity,” said Perez Canchola, who in a dogged rumble denounces both U.S. immigration policy and the indifference of his own government. “That the community comes together like this to call the attention of the authorities, demanding justice and human rights for migrants, does not clash with the spirit of humanity and solidarity of Christmas. What’s more, in the Bible Joseph and Mary emigrated: They emigrated in search of shelter.”

In the border version of the posada , the Mexican participants sing the roles of the carpenter from Nazareth and his wife asking for shelter at a house: “Don’t be inhuman/Show charity/That God in heaven/Will reward you .”

The owner of the house, sung by those on the U.S. side, responds: “ Better get going/And don’t bother us/Because if I get angry/I’m going to beat you up. “

Three small boys sing lustily, pressed against the fence, enraptured by the music and the hubbub of lights and cameras on the other side. All the camera crews have chosen to work on the north side and shoot the Mexican participants as if they were in a cage. The three boys chortle when a U.S. photographer squats to take their picture through the fence and, in laborious Spanish, gets them to spell their names.

“We’re famous, we’re famous,” says Francisco Chavez, 13, adding in English, “Thank you.”

David Villaruel, 9, says he has been to California and he likes it. Eleven-year-old Raul Martinez says with a trace of melancholy that he has never crossed the border: “I don’t have a passport.” They are all enjoying themselves, even though it is not clear to them why they have been brought to this stark spot for a posada.

Atop the mound of dirt nearby, smuggler Jose Hernandez and his cronies add a raucous note to the festivities. They are baleful, staggering choirboys in straw hats, baggy pants and dark hooded jackets. They punctuate the songs with howls of “Viva Mexico!” and “Down with Wilson!”

“If (Gov. Pete) Wilson keeps trying to kick out the Mexicans, there’s going to be trouble,” declares Hernandez, a free-lance smuggler who specializes in running illegal immigrants down the hill to the trolley stop in the southernmost U.S. neighborhood of San Ysidro.

Hernandez’s business is likely to improve next year. The devaluation of the peso has suddenly made Christmas in Mexico bleak, and Perez Canchola predicts that the gathering economic crisis will worsen the multiple pressures that drive illegal border-crossing.

“Today on the radio programs the people were talking,” Perez Canchola said. “They were saying: ‘There is no alternative but to go work in the United States and earn dollars.’ People here at the border spend in dollars. And they can no longer survive on Mexican salaries.”

The posada song has a happy ending. The owner relents and opens his home to the Holy Family. Joseph sings: “ Fortunate this house/That gives us shelter/May God always grant it/Sacred happiness .”

But at the border, the outcome is appropriately ambiguous. To culminate the ritual, the people on both sides simultaneously release doves symbolizing peace on earth.

The dove on the Mexican side flies straight up and straight down, failing to cross over the fence. A man catches the bird and tries once more.

This time the dove soars higher. But then it veers back and down into Mexico again, becoming pinned against the barred window of a freight depot, wings fluttering.