In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America.
In the sala, I talked with Patricio (a pseudonym) from El Salvador. He had received troubling news: the government had informed his family that it would take their land unless they built a house on it by a certain date. There is an issue with documents and a signature that I don't understand.
How does one take care of such family business when one is a refugee? Patricio and his wife have a four-year old son. With luck, they will join Patricio in February.
Patricio shared with me a photo of his son, along with phone recordings from conversations between him and his little one.
Nightmares awaken Patricio.
~~~~~~~~
My Spanish isn't good enough to understand the specifics of Patricio's situation, but below are relevant issues, any one of which could touch on his family's predicament:
In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America.
Some women and men deported from the US also passed through the guesthouse. I've given them pseudonyms.
Some new folks arrived today.
A married couple came up with the first caravan from Guatemala. They'd been deported from Austin, Texas. They believed it best for their two young children, ages three and five, to leave them in safe hands in Austin.
Another man, Juan, originally from Chiapas, arrived. He'd been living in Chicago for a number of years, working for a landscaping company. Deported just last week. Instead of returning to Chiapas, he plans to stay in Mexico City for now, as there are more opportunities here.
A third man, Guillermo, who'd lived in Nevada for more than 20 years, was visiting New York when tapped. He's lived in Mexico City for almost a year now, and plans to move to his own place here in January. Originally from Jalapa in Vera Cruz, he says, smiling: "Yo soy jalapeño." Chuckles.
In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America.
One of the asylum-seekers became ill, and I wrote this:
So when you are vomiting blood and have no money, what do you do?
In the case of one of my housemates, you go to a pharmacy for a consult - in some pharmacies free and in others, for a nominal fee (but even this is inaccessible if you have no money, so one of your housemates pays the consulting fee for you - about 35 pesos).
The pharmacist takes your vitals (blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and throat check), but no blood, stool, or urine tests.
The pharmacist takes a history from you, considers the possibilities, rules some out, and recommends an endoscopy. Which, of course, is outside your financial reach.
The pharmacist suggests there is an irritation in your esophagus or at another milepost along the gastrointestinal boulevard, and to eat fruits and vegetables, and avoid spicy foods. If still producing blood in two days, do what you can to get that endoscopy.
What could be the cause?
The violent blows to your torso, delivered 10 days ago by fellow caravanners from a different country than yours, who maybe took umbrage at your membership in the caravan's LGBTQI group? Or the cocaine you ingested yesterday evening, even though you've never had such a reaction before? Or stress? Or malnutrition? Or an ulcer? Or a pulmonary issue? Deadly? Or a passing health incident, self-repairing?
Does an affliction care if you are kind and amiable, that you sometimes engage in risky behaviors, are poor, have left all that is familiar to you, and your access to food, shelter, and employment is insecure? No, it does not; it is impersonal.
Maybe there's a biological tipping-point algorithm at play: stress+malnutrition+uncertainty+a beating+cocaine+compromised immune system from the cold virus that's been visiting the house = a crocodile crack on a corporeal byway = vomiting blood.
I was cleaning out a room at Casa Alitas. A family had passed a night or two there, and had since departed to a city somewhere in the United States, into the arms and home of a sponsor, a temporary-permanent place. Safe, presumably. A place to take some deep breaths, maybe get the kids into school.
Among the used bedding, the towels, an errant toothbrush, I saw atop the mattress a notepad.
On the cover, in a blend of letter styles: "Mi nombre es Elenita."
My name is Elenita.
I thought immediately of Hushpuppy, the valiant wee girl who lived in the drowning Louisiana community called The Bathtub, in the movie, Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Hushpuppy said:
I see that I'm a little piece of a big, big universe. .... In a million years, when kids go to school, they gonna know, once there was a Hushpuppy, and she lived with her Daddy in The Bathtub.
I thought, this little girl doesn't know it - though maybe she will one day - but she is a little piece of a big, big human wave of other little girls, and of boys, women, and men who are taking part in a natural process, eons old, to lay claim to their places on the planet, to survive and thrive as we all wish to survive and thrive.
Once there was Elenita, who passed through Tucson, Arizona, on her way to her future.
Alvaro Enciso plants a Cross to honor a man who died seeking a decent life. Arizona. August 2019.
On a Humane Borders water run, I learned about Alvaro Enciso, an artist who has made it a mission to recognize the humanity of individual women, men, and children who have died in the desert in an attempt to claim a decent life.
Mr. Enciso honors the dead with painted wood Crosses that he plants into the Arizona soil.
Alvaro Enciso plants a Cross to honor a man who died seeking a decent life. Arizona. August 2019.
Each Cross has a round red disk.
Alvaro Enciso plants a Cross to honor a man who died seeking a decent life. Arizona. August 2019.
Each round red disk on the death map represents a woman, man, or child who died on their quest for a decent life. Each round red disk on the death map corresponds to a precise geographic point on the planet where the human remains of a dream were found.
Alvaro Enciso plants a Cross to honor a man who died seeking a decent life. Arizona. August 2019.
There are so many collapsed dreams in the desert, individual collections of bone, sinew, skin, empty clothing, shoes, bags, papers. Maybe plastic baggies with garlic, dissolved in putrescence, to protect one from rattlesnake bites.
Garlic bulbs in a baggie, abandoned by a group of migrants, along with backpacks and other items, perhaps after pick-up by Border Patrol. Arizona. August 2019.
Most Tuesdays, Mr. Enciso leads a one- or two-car pilgrimage into the
Sonoran Desert or adjoining highlands. He has selected the women, men, or children whose deaths he will
commemorate on a trip, and he brings the day's Crosses with
him. Sometimes he knows a fallen person's name, gender, and age;
sometimes not.
The
color of the painted Crosses vary according to the tint of the paint
that someone donated to him or that he picked up somewhere on sale.
On the Cross pilgrimage I joined, there were small crews for ABC's Nightline and a freelance documentary company, and, I believe, a print journalist.
Alvaro Enciso plants a Cross to honor a man who died seeking a decent life. Arizona. August 2019.
In all, there were at least 10 of us. Upon arrival near the first site, several of us carried something that was a part of the planting - a bucket, a shovel, quickset concrete. And the Cross. I carried the Cross, grateful to do so. It didn't weigh much, and it felt well-balanced. It rested lightly in the crook of my right arm. I occasionally smoothed the wood with my left hand.
We walked, and I held the Cross, and I thought about this man who had died, and when we arrived at the spot where his remains had been found, it was .... gosh, it was so pretty.
Alvaro Enciso plants a Cross to honor a man who died seeking a decent life. Arizona. August 2019.
Which doesn't surprise me like it might have long ago. When I think of the Rwandan Genocide, and my friend who survived that cycle of human madness, a question invariably comes to me: "Did birds continue to sing in the forest canopy above the screams of slaughter below"?
Of course they did.
The desert enchants and kills indiscriminately, thus a place for a pretty walk on a pleasant day for one is a place of death from heat stroke or thirst for another.
After Mr. Enciso planted the Cross in that grassy meadow, we embarked on a rather wild ride in the Samaritans' two SUVs up into the highlands, very close to the border. Mr. Enciso sought the last living place of another man, for whom he had brought a Cross.
A man died in the saddle between those two peaks, in the search for a decent life. August 2019.
But this was not the day it would happen. See that saddle between the two mountains? There's a wide valley between there and the rise where we parked. Volunteer Samaritans would come another day and hike to the man's death ground.
Samaritans left water for women, men, or children who might pass through. A man died in the saddle between those two peaks, in the search for a decent life. August 2019.
The group left jugs of water in and under the shade of a tree, which looked across that valley. Maybe they will save a life. These jugs and barrels of water. They are an act of faith, or maybe more accurately, an act of hope in a lucky roll of metaphysical dice, that someone who needs water will see it and have still the strength to reach it.
Below is a slide show with more photos from this trip with Mr. Enciso, plus the accumulation of photos from the water runs to the Sonoran Desert via Humane Borders and Samaritans.
Casa Alitas in the old monastery. Tucson, Arizona. July 2019.
Casa Alitas is a shelter for refugees in Tucson. It's a beehive of hope administered by Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona, overseen by a handful of paid staff, but kept buzzing by a swarm of volunteer worker bees.
When I hit Tucson in the spring, Casa Alitas was in an old monastery on Campbell Street.
Casa Alitas in the old monastery. Tucson, Arizona. August 2019.
Orientation
At the volunteer orientation I attended in early June, I heard these statements from the presenters (some paraphrased by me) about the women, men, and children who arrive at Casa Alitas. Assume that any factual errors are mine, due to misunderstanding on my part, and not the presenters' errors.
The City of Tucson opened two shelters for a few days, and stopped the sending of refugees to Casa Alitas, but after about three days, realized it was out of its depth.
Border Patrol (BP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) used to give Casa Alitas advance notice of numbers and a list of names of incoming refugees, but sometimes now we might only get 15 minutes advance notice of incoming guests and no idea of how many people to expect.
BP/ICE make a LOT of mistakes on the paperwork they give to the refugees they process. Sometimes the year is wrong, for example.
We didn't used to need security guards at the shelter, but anti-immigration activists have entered the monastery campus for intimidation purposes.
[At the time of this early-June orientation] the shelter transfers out 50-60 refugees per day toward their destinations within the US.
"[Upon arrival], we remove the Border Patrol (BP)/Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bracelets because they are not numbers anymore; they are a person."
"We
reassure them they are in the United States. Often they have been moved
from one place to another by BP/ICE, without being told where they are
going, so they don't know if they were taken back to Mexico or where
they are."
"[Upon arrival] we give them chicken soup, because
often they have had little to eat for a long time. They will get sick if
we give them flour (which they are unaccustomed to) or if we give them
too much to eat too soon."
"Some adults enter the US for asylum
not only with their children, but nieces or nephews whose parents were
killed. Often they don't have the 'right' documentation to prove their
relationships. So the nieces or nephews are separated from their
guardians and taken to other locations."
The overarching message I received from orientation was this: The refugees are our guests and we shall treat them as such.
Casa Alitas in the old monastery. Tucson, Arizona. July 2019.
Volunteers come from around the US
One day when I reported for a volunteer shift, I met a group of women and men who'd come down to Tucson from Colorado Springs for the sole purpose of volunteering at Casa Alitas for a week. All day, every day, they volunteered.
I also met a registered nurse from New York. She and her husband were semi-full-time RVers who, while they lingered in Tucson, volunteered at the shelter a few months earlier. They eventually returned to their New York home base, but she couldn't stop thinking about Casa Alitas. So she came back alone, this time making her temporary home in a room at the monastery.
A herculean operation
Some days, more than a hundred refugees arrived at the shelter.
I so admire the coordinators who somehow make it all work. And the volunteers who donate goods and time, who cook and who serve meals, and who sort clothes, and who help guests find the clothes and shoes in the right sizes, and who provide medical care, and who drive people to the bus station, and who offer a safe place for guests to fall asleep with one's family. And who honor their dignity.
The monastery closes and a new shelter home opens
At the end of August, Casa Alitas moved to a county-owned facility. More on this in another post.
By the end of its tenure in the old monastery, the shelter's security had to be tightened almost to a lock-down mode because of the threatening presence of anti-immigration activists.
Near Antelope Wells, New Mexico. US-MX border. March 2013.
Some notes I took
Note: Any errors that may exist below are mine and not the mistakes of the presenters
Clamping down
In the late 1990s is when the border clamped down.
The government started to prosecute people who gave rides across the border, when in the past, that had been a common practice, especially on and near the Tohono O'odham Nation: A Mexican national along the border might need a ride into Arizona, and when they finished conducting their business, they'd get a ride back home in Mexico.
It was during this time that people began to die because they had to walk through the desert.
Near Antelope Wells, New Mexico. US-MX border. March 2013.
In response to the rising death toll, humanitarian groups came to life along the border
One of the speakers said (and I'm paraphrasing): "You might wonder why a group of people, when they outnumber the Border Patrol agents who've detained them, don't resist or run away. This is because the Border Patrol employs techniques to ensure group compliance."
Verbal abuse was particularly common with 1,699 incidents being reported. It demeans and intimidates detainees and may compound feelings of confusion, helplessness and terror for those in custody. Verbal abuse includes racial and sexist epithets, in addition to threats of sexual violence, used to subjugate and degrade detainees. Furthermore, verbal abuse may include violent threats made credible by public examples of physical abuse and assault. Verbal abuse appears to aid in creating an environment of intimidation, fear and compliance among detainees. Typical forms of verbal abuse included: • Derogatory racial, ethnic, and sexual epithets • Profanity • Yelling and screaming for no apparent reason, both in the field and in processing centers
[I added the highlighted emphasis.]
An example of a public assault by a BP agent in front of a group: Throwing someone into cactus.
When encountering people on the move
No, we cannot "aid and abet" with transport "in furtherance of illegal presence."
No, we don't let someone use our phone, but we can get the number of the person's family so we can call the family when we return home, assuring them that we saw their family member alive
Yes, we can share water and food with people on the move.
But what if we encounter someone who is very sick or injured?
Let the person know where they are
Give them the best information we have re: likelihood of making it to their destination in their condition so they can make an informed decision about our calling for medical rescue
Border Patrol has a permanent presence in every ER in Arizona.
Some historical context that affect the borderlands
"American exceptionalism has replaced 'manifest destiny'"
American history is substantively different from other countries' histories;
America's mission is to transform the world; and
America's history and mission makes it superior over other nations.
Based on my limited research into this, it appears that our so-called exceptionalism presumes a starter yeast of White Protestant Christian and White Western European culture.
Ms. Castillo proposed that the strictures against migration are not just about color, but about class. "The borders are open if you are the 1% or the middle class."
History.com offers a succinct definition of manifest destiny: "... the United States was destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent."
Despite the bleakness of some of Ms. Castillo's history narrative, she ended with a powerful thought:
"These people who are in movement are the ones who are going to change the world."
Notice the absence of the word "the" before "movement." In other words, she refers to the people who are part of today's migration, not to an organized activist movement.
Counting deaths
The Border Patrol only counts the remains of those it finds, which is only about half the number that Pima County has had in its morgue.
The Border Patrol's accounting method reminds me of the controversy over the Vietnam War body counts.
Humane Borders water station. Near Tucson, Arizona. July 2019.
Being part of a water run for Humane Borders offers four-fold benefits:
Take an action that might save lives;
Give eyewitness testimony to friends and family about the effects of government decisions on the lives of individual women, men, and children;
Hear fresh perspectives on borderland issues from fellow water-truck passengers; and
Revel in the sensory gifts of the Sonoran Desert, which indiscriminately transfixes and kills.
On this day's run, we stopped at several water stations. In two cases, we swapped out two barrels for fresh ones, as the water pH was just at or a little above the threshold that Humane Borders accepts for safety.
This necessitates draining the barrels into the desert floor, and at one station, this really pissed off an ant town, as the water evidently flooded the community byways, resulting in irked ants storming up and out of a hole several yards away from the barrel.
Angry ants near Humane Borders water station. Near Tucson, Arizona. July 2019.
We saw a magnificent Harris hawk nest cradled in the arms of a stalwart saguaro. The HB driver of the day noted that this nest had been in use for at least two years. He even had photos of youngn's in the nest from a year ago.
Harris hawk nest. Near Tucson, Arizona. July 2019.
Whilst on a wilderpee behind some brush, I saw a really big bug. Eek. A palo verde beetle. Also called the "demon bug."
Palo verde beetle near Tucson, Arizona. July 2019.
It was dead. Are they edible? Quick research gave me nothing on this.
I also saw seedy poop.
Poop with many seeds, near Tucson, Arizona. July 2019.
As we bounced along a gravel-dirt road between stations, suddenly the driver stopped. He thought he might have run over a long snake, to his dismay, and he wanted to check. We all bounded out of the truck to look.
Long snake near Tucson, Arizona. July 2019.
The driver believed it was a rattlesnake. It was long. No apparent injuries, though it looked rather stunned to me. I say that because it didn't move other than to venture its tongue out of its mouth. I would have liked to have my key fob next to the snake so you could get an idea of the snake's length, but none of us volunteered to walk it over there. Look how elegantly camouflaged it is.
We saw two skeletal remains of animals. On one, a dragonfly perched alongside a spur.
Skeleton and dragonfly near Tucson, Arizona. July 2019.
Generally, four people go on the water runs. One of our companions on this trip was a university student from LA who'd come to Tucson for a week for the express purpose of volunteering. I have met a goodly number of people in Tucson who have done this. They are of diverse ages, genders, professions, and home bases.
A slide show of this and other Humane Border runs below:
