First crossing, 8/1-2

Lo veo tan dificil no pensar y escribir in español, pués, en spanglish, everything I write is in images and cuentos cortos (short stories) and back-and-forth lenguajes (languages). I am full and buzzing with histories and smells and welcoming faces and tired feet and injustices and policies and words words words words. I’ll do my best to share bits of the last two days in a semi-fluid/coherent manner.

[Disclaimer: Some of this includes stories of violence, and younger and/or sensitive audiences may want to read tentatively. Also, much of this is for my own processing, bear with me.]

8.1

The signs on Interstate 19 from Tucson to Nogales AZ are in kilometers, as it’s an international speedway, yet the speed-limit signs are in mph. We arrived at the apartamiento mid-morning in Nogales AZ. It’s simple and small and full of dense books, light-hearted sun-soaked volunteers, spanglish, rich warm colors, good whole food, and history on the walls, shelves, refridgerator door. There are four of us new volunteers who are working on the Nogales project. Two are a couple that worked for the past few years in El Paso, TX in Asuncion House, which is a shelter and resource center for migrants from all over. The other volunteer is a young woman from New York, whose mother is from Puerto Rico. She worked with human rights cases in Colombia for a year or so and is involved with migrant issues, especially from Latin America. There are a few other long-term volunteers living in the apartment (or in-and-out). Our neighborhood is hilly, and flows downhill into Mexico. There’s a cat and two kittens visit our laundry-line occasionally.

As soon as we’d dropped our things off we walked down to the border and into Nogales SON*. We cross at “Garrita #1,” the next gate over from “Mariposa,” where the majority of deportees used to be dropped off. The road we walk along traces the border wall for a few blocks – in this stretch, the wall is a made of tall posts, about the thickness of an alder tree, one after another, with about 6 inches between each post. The sidewalks are cracked and cramped, the buildings and storefronts are painted in bright easter-tones and signs are hand-painted over doorways. There’s a man that peels and dices nopales, or palms/leaves of prickly-pear cacti, on one corner by the gate, mangos con chili, tortillas de harina. Up the hill from the road, in neighborhoods, trash trickles down slopes in a slow avalanche that looks almost delicate from a distance. The smells waver from chili or tortillas to rancid waste to cloro, or bleach, of a clinic.

We stopped at the center for Grupos Beta, the Mexican government’s federal migrant aid organization in Nogales. GB informs people who plan on crossing of the risks, provides resources and transportation to medical care for deportees/migrantes, and does search and rescue in the mountains just north of the border.

Next stop along the road – Transporte Reforma, a federally-funded bus station and shelter where we provide medical aid, phone use, and recovery of property from Border Patrol. We walk through the bus pull-in to a shaded-common area that seats about twenty-or-so people. A parrot hangs from a corner, a golden street puppy takes turns sleeping and playing at people’s feet. Mostly, it’s a safe(r) place to wait. There’s not much to do, but when we arrive it’s nice to spend time, listen to stories and the off-tune serenading of the resident barber with the communal guitar.

Grabbed a quick lunch at “Taqueria El Chino,” most delicious tortillas de maiz I’ve ever eaten, quesadilla con queso blanco y rebollo (cabbage) y cebolla y cilantro y salsa…

Today, during our walk and later training, we were constantly reminded that it’s easy for us to get comfortable here. It feels safe – we are protected by our stance as a non-violent humanitarian aid organization, by our American citizenship, by our social class. The people we are working with, however, do not have those protections. Nogales SON is not a safe place for any of its inhabitants. As migrants, without their papers and/or without resources, they are all vulnerable and easily taken advantage of.

We left Nogales SON from the Mariposa gate. We passed by the wall, where major reconstruction is taking place. A volunteer who has been with NMD for a while said the wall used to alternate between cheap chain-link fence and scrap metal of old runway material and tankers leftover from Operation Desert Storm. Where they used to sit for a taqueria for lunch near the gate, they would see people running through gaps in the fence in broad daylight. Border Patrol would wait by the holes to catch them, and another would run behind them while their back was turned. It seems so surreal, other-worldly, absurd. The reconstruction of the wall is a stone wall that’s enclosed by a mesh fence on each side, which is roofed as well. This reconstruction is part of a $220 million stimulus package to increase security along the Mariposa port of entry.



8.2

From our apartment we can see the border wall from the back yard. Tonight, another volunteer and I stood at the laundry-line in the yard and watched the lightning flash against the papaya sunset, over the hills of Sonora. The clouds are purple-gray and leaning towards AZ, the breeze is nearly balmy and satin. The border wall is lit up garish by spotlights that compete with the incoming storm. From here, three blocks from la frontera, the wall seems crude and irrelevant. This, north of the border, feels like the same city, like it ought to be the same city.

This morning I went to the medical clinic across from the comedor (soup kitchen) with Jacobo to learn how the clinic runs. There’s a nurse who is there full-time, and volunteers go in and out. Jacobo’s been working there since January as an EMT and will be there a while longer. Most of the patients they receive are migrants/ recently-deported, and the majority of cases are dehydration and moderate to severe blistering. In one case in the past few months, a man who had been walking in the desert for days had blistered and worn the soles of his feet down to the muscle. Another man had come in with severe burns along his whole back. The clinic isn’t sure of the truth of his story, but he told them that the pollero* he was with tried to rape his sister – when he tried to protest/fight the pollero, the pollero poured alcohol on his back and lit him on fire. This may not be the exact story, but no matter the details, the abuse is real.

For the trauma that passes through the clinic, the soup kitchen, the shelters, the people who volunteer there long-term are jovial, loving, un-calloused, welcoming. After the shift, we sat and had helados de piña de chile y tamarindo, or pineapple-chili and tamarind popsicles, and Coca-Cola (which is absolutely everywhere, like water, like Big Brother).

The comedor can house 120 people, but lately, they’ve had a drop in people coming for food – today, only 40 or so breakfasted (generous plates of tortillas de harina [wheat flour], carne asada, hominy, spiced rice, and a drink of blended oats and orange juice). The comedor is run by the Kino Border Initiative, a Jesuit refugee service, and we help out in the morning. The people who eat have received tickets from Grupos Beta, the Mexican government’s migrant aid service in Nogales SON*. Most of them have been recently deported. There are some longer-term clients with mental health disorders, which largely go untreated along the border.

While waiting at the comdeor before the clinic opened this morning, I met a woman who had been deported from Phoenix. Eva** has a partner and two children (citizens of the US) in Phoenix, a two-year-old and a baby. Hardly three minutes after meeting one another, she told me of her deportation, the separation of her family. She won’t bring her two little ones to Mexico because the medical care and education is inaccessible and unaffordable for her niños in Mexico. She has 4 or 5 other children (I’m still working on catching details in Spanish) from a previous marriage which, I believe, had been an abusive relationship. Those children, ages 4 to 14, are currently in foster care and have suffered physical and sexual abuse in day-care and unstable foster care homes. Her 4-year-old is currently in line for a kidney transplant in Tucson. She told me of the the cigarette burns on her 7-year-old’s hand with a sad but calm face, as someone who can’t afford to dwell on trauma. Her strength, her bravery, is for her children. She had a job in a maquiladora (border factory) working for 150 pesos (less than $15) a day, and found an odd job or two at a restaurant. This piece of her story, a fifteen-minute clip of conversation she shared with me, is a constant story, repeated daily, hourly along the border. Separation, poverty, and abuse are the common experiences here. I’m upset, and impassioned, I’m hurt, I’m infuriated by the abuses I’ve heard of, yet I’m not depressed, I’m not unproductively angry. The people who volunteer and work and live here recognize the trauma and keep working, knowing that the only appropriate response is to support, aid, help, stand in solidarity. People move forward, they are fueled by stories.

In the late morning, we headed over to Transportes Reforme, a migrant aid center that is a bus-stop, common area, and has beds to stay in. At Transportes we help people report items that weren’t returned to them by Border Patrol or ICE, provide two cell phones for them to call family, offer basic medical care, and just chat. It’s mostly men at transportes, but there are a few women, occasionally women with children, and at times near-“adults” (so, 16- or 17-year olds). Most have been deported in the last few days or weeks, but some have been in Nogales SON for months, either waiting to cross the border again or to get back home to Honduras, El Salvador, or some other place. Today we hung out with people from Guanajuato, Mexico City, Chiapas, Honduras, Guatemala, la Yucatan, Kansas, Ohio, Phoenix, Los Angeles… “home” is all over the map, on both sides of the border. Along with the other services NMD provides, we interview and record human rights abuses. One man who was interviewed today was beaten by cartels upon his release from deportation because he refused to carry a backpack of marijuana. This was his 5th time crossing. They broke several of his ribs and he couldn’t walk for three weeks. He has a daughter in Georgia and will likely try to cross again.

Tonight has been an evening of rest and reflection in our homey apartment. I already feel comfortable here, am so thankful for this community and this space. I can hardly wait to go back to the clinic tomorrow, hopefully I’ll be of more use. I’m already looking forward to seeing again the people I’ve met the last few days, continue conversations, learn maya from a friend at transportes, laugh a little. But for now, I’m dog-tired and about to become incoherent.

With esperanza y cariño y amor,
madelyn

p.s. – if you want more information, stories, facts, dates on any issues I’ve written about, I’m happy to go into more detail or connect you with resources.



*pollero - human smuggler, opposed to a coyote, who guides people through the US desert

*Nogales SON – Nogales, Sonora, Mexico (to distinguish from the bordertown Nogales, AZ, USA)

**name changed for protection