No More Deaths Spring Break 2011

Katie D.

March 28, 2011 - 7:28 AM

We're back from another fabulous trip to the border for a week working with No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes http://nomoredeaths.org/ . I recommend looking back at my other blogs about these trips so you get a sense of what this work usually entails and the variety of experiences I've had. This trip was a fabulous one, particularly because of the wonderful people I was traveling and working with. It was also very different than my past volunteer experiences.

Usually No More Deaths utilizes volunteer workers to patrol the highest use migrant trails, putting out gallons of water and searching for people that might be lost or in need of help. These trails are well-established and have been mapped over the years by No More Deaths volunteers. You can tell the high-use trails because the migrants as they cross abandon items along their path. When people are desperate, they don't pack out their trash. This means that trails are lined with empty water bottles, tin cans, and food wrappers. But there are also more personal items: broken shoes, backpacks, pants, shirts, toothbrushes, underwear, perfume bottles, pictures, notes from home. My past trips working with No More Deaths have been an experience defined by the tracks and discarded items of migrants crossing in desperation and fear, who face the desert unprepared and sometimes hopelessly lost.

This spring break trip was about those who do not complete the journey.

Last year, the bodies of 253 migrants were found in the Arizona desert. That's the number of bodies found in a vast wasteland of arroyos and washes, mountains and flash floods. I've heard estimation that only one in five bodies is actually found. Another estimation is only one in ten.

When a body is found, it's not on one of those high-use trails. Those are defined and so trafficked that generally a person in a desperate situation would be encountered on the trail and would get some kind of help. Our spring break was spent in the areas where bodies had been found: in the empty spaces with unused trails and cow paths, where a miss turn can lead to disorientation and eventually to death.

Our work this week was in starting the process of mapping these empty spaces. We were searching for new areas to leave water, and new indications of travel along these smaller trails. We didn't place water, but we lived and walked in an area where bodies had been found in the previous two years. I, for one, lived in the constant knowledge that the area was filled with the suffering of unknown people, perhaps thousands in the very night when I was sleeping. Since October first of last year, forty bodies have been found.

I've presented here a very bleak portrait of spring break. It's hard to explain exactly what my experience was. The Sonora Desert is a sad place to me: one full of suffering and death. But it is also a place of extreme and rugged beauty, a place where I feel the lightness of being in the center of a cause, working as hard as I can. Our group was full of wonderful and hilarious people, and we spent as much time laughing and singing around camp as we did sitting with the pain and difficulties of the work.

I have more stories to share of this spring break. I have pictures as well (one of the members of our trip is studying photography at the UO). I'll be sharing them both over the next week or so. For now, I've got to get my head back into life in Eugene. Classes start today, as does my GTF and the work of student life. My heart is still in the desert. It will be for days.