Nogales, Mexico

Katie D.

April 2, 2010 - 9:51 AM

(Note to readers: if you haven't been reading my Spring Break 2010 blogs, please do so for context!)

Our group spent all day Wednesday in the Mexican border town of Nogales. It is significant to our No More Deaths experience because many immigrants who are caught by border patrol officials are deported there. Nogales, like many border towns, is actually a city split in half by the border wall, with a Nogales Mexico and a Nogales USA sharing truncated streets and overlooking each other's fast food signs.

We visited several sites during our day trip. We visited a mural on the wall itself, with beautiful artwork including two photomosaics, sculptures made of polished tin, and brightly-painted figures. My friend, Leah, is writing her thesis on the mural-the symbolism, context, and meaning of these iconic works of art. Not far from the art, there is a piece of graffiti which struck me particularly this time: the words "terrorismo visual" inscribed on the rusted metal border wall: "visual terrorism." A few blocks away is another piece of writing, this one more hopeful: "Las paredes vueltas de lado son puentes" "Walls turned on their sides are bridges." Beside this are simple white crosses, with the names of migrants who died in the attempted crossing, including the word "desconocido," or "unknown." Just over the fence, a Burger King sign is visible.

We also visited a soup kitchen, staffed by a group of Jesuits, Catholics, and volunteers, which serves hot meals twice a day for migrants who have been deported. There are no jobs available in Nogales, and the practice of deporting people to the border town has created a permanent population of transient people, trapped between a dangerous journey north and a distant home with no income available. We had a chance to speak with some volunteers preparing the soup for dinner. I translated for my friend Maddy, and we heard two women's story of years of working to feed deported migrants.

My two most poignant stories, however, are from later in the day. First, we went to a Mexican organization called Grupo Beta, which helps migrants contact their families and provides reduced bus fare to return home. We spent more than an hour talking with migrants. No More Deaths has compiled documentation of abuse suffered by individuals held in short-term custody by border patrol agents. While at Grupo Beta, I held the bandages as my roommate Lesley wrapped the shoulder of a man whose collar bone had been broken when an officer struck him with the butt of his rifle. The man had not received care during the two days he had been imprisoned, and his pain was obvious. Lesley also bandaged ankles and did her best to heal blisters during our time there.

I took the testimony of two men at Grupo Beta, and heard the stories of several others. Pablo and Sergio had been held in custody for three days, in extremely crowded quarters with insufficient food, water, and blankets for the cold nights. Sergio's documents (Mexican ID and birth certificate) had been confiscated by the Border Patrol officials and had not been returned. One of their friends had asked to speak with the Mexican consulate (which is the right of all people under International and US Law) and had been mocked, roughed up, and kept in worse conditions because of the request. Another man at Grupo Beta had been sentenced by Project Streamline, a legal deterrent, to the misdemeanor charge of illegal entry, and had spent three months in prison before being deported. In that time he had been ill, been verbally abused, and had witnessed physical abuse as well. He told me again and again how important it was that people hear his story and work to make change. "I did not hurt anyone," he said, "I only came to work. I did not want to stay but only to work. I have not hurt anyone and don't know why this has happened to me." I did not have an answer for him, except that when he told me to "go to Washington and tell them what happens to us," I promised I would do what I could in the place where I am.

My second story I will not tell in full. I don't have the words, or the emotional well-being. But I'll write what I can.

While heading back to our cars, we came upon a group leaving the soup kitchen. The group included four women who we had met earlier. Two were limping badly and the four were clearly helping each other get around. We stopped to offer what help we could. Our volunteer leader pulled cactus spines from one woman's hand. Another needed her knee to be wrapped after a bad fall. The third had horrible blisters. I will not post pictures of the kinds of blisters that develop on the trails, because they are difficult to see even when you have prepared yourself. But these are not blisters like you receive from a half an hour hike. Rather than call them blisters, it would be more accurate to say that people walk the bottoms off their feet. This woman's skin was broken in places, oozing pus and showing the raw and tender meat of the soles of her feet. She had blisters on the bottoms of her toes, and between her toes. I cannot imagine how she was still walking. Lesley tended to her, washing and sanitizing, cutting moleskin to protect the remaining skin as best as she could, and offering tender care despite the language barrier and without the slightest hesitation at the horrible pain before her. I so admire her quiet strength and command of the situation.

While Lesley did her work, I did what I could: I listened to someone's story. Maddy and I spoke with a woman named Lorena for about an hour. Her story emerged gradually, through voluntary statements on her part and in answer to our questions. I was so grateful for the job of translating for Maddy-even though it is intellectually exhausting, it allowed me to share the story with someone else, and to process what I was hearing. Lorena had been with her group for five nights, running the whole time they were moving. She was a heavyset woman, possibly with diabetes. She looked tired, and sweet, and sad. She was from southern Mexico, and had left a thirteen-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son in the care of her mother. Another child of hers had died years ago. Even before the trials of the migrant trails, she was no stranger to tragedy.

Lorena's group had encountered no clean water, which means that by the third day they all would have been severely dehydrated. She couldn't keep up with the group after five nights of running, and had been left behind. She wandered for a night and two days, so that when she was found by Border Patrol she was profoundly grateful to be rescued from her solitary state in the desert. She was then terrified that they would send her to court and force her to spend more time in prison, separating her from her children. She said she could not eat or sleep, but only plead with the guards for two days to allow her to return home. They had relented and taken her to Nogales, where she was unable to find any kind of work. She had joined up with the other three women for their mutual safety, and was staying in a shelter. She did not even have the money to call home to tell her family she was alive. She did not know how she would return home.

She told me she had seen many ugly things on the trails. She told me that she woke up at night in terror, paralyzed by the memories of what she had seen. Her eyes were haunted, and she was at once a friendly woman, curious about our stories and compassionate for her friends, and a woman clearly damaged by her recent past. She told me that she hoped that when she returned home and held her children in her arms that the fear would go away. I can only pray that this is true, and that she has found her way safely home.

How do I continue to live my peaceful, happy life here in Eugene in the full knowledge of what is happening today and every day on the border, in my name as a US citizen? How do I continue with the faces of those men and women embedded in my memory? I carry their stories now, now and forever.

Lesley reassures me that what we do here in Eugene is a necessary step to becoming more effective activists in the future. I so appreciate this sentiment: that my studies here at the UO and my life in Eugene is in support of my future work on projects like this. I also plan to use my time here to educate people about these issues on the border. The trust of someone's story, as Lorena and the men in Nogales trusted me with their stories, is not something that can remain locked in one person's memory. As a student, I have access to many media for education. I will be writing articles in Ethos magazine, and possibly for the Oregon Daily Emerald. I will be speaking to the Eugene League of Women Voters on April 15th, sharing the story of my journey and the political actions which can be taken to preserve the lives and rights of people on our borders.

I truly appreciate that you have taken time to read my stories. That you have cared enough, at least, to make it to the bottom of the page. Nothing in my college experience has impacted me more profoundly than my time with No More Deaths. It holds a place in my heart alongside my work in prisons, as an equally misunderstood and maligned piece of US practice. Walls, to me, are the ultimate symbol of brokenness and fear. Humans share a profound need for community, for interaction. When we build walls, we create scars on our landscapes and on our own collective souls. I am not advocating here for an immigration policy without restrictions or precautions, but merely for a shift in thought regarding who we are, and what we fear. I have to believe that this great country of ours is capable of more compassion and reason than our current border policy suggests.

It is so important that we, as citizens, understand that to be silent is to be complicit. I cannot help but speak because I have seen the faces, treated the wounds, and held the hands of those who have crossed. I have stood in the site where a child died alone. Apathy is no longer an option. I only hope that my words and stories might inspire others to feel this way as well.

My sincerest thanks, compañeros.