Notes from the Desert (8.10 - 8.14)

8.10

Being back in the desert feels like settling into the arms of a second family, re-meeting one of my Places. The Sonoran Desert in monsoon season is loud. During the day, rain, cicadas, flies, and layers of bird calls – chirps and caws and trills and warbles and cries. At night, the wash behind our camp is a riot of bullfrogs, leopard frogs (which sound like a croaking goat), crickets, coyote, and the jets that fly low overhead. It was raining fat drops as we drove in to camp from Tucson. Sections of the road had flooded. The acacias, mimosas, snakeweed are erupting into green, the soil is fine and dark and damp.

The desert camp is outside of Arivaca, the oldest continuously-inhabited town in Arizona and home to the oldest bar (La Gitana) in the state. The No More Deaths camp is eight years old and sits on private property of a friend a few miles out of town. There’s a med-unit tent-and-trailer and a kitchen tent-and-trailer, a shade tent over the tables, a few campers/trailers for storage and sleeping, two poop buckets, and plenty of space to bed down outside.

The work: we drive and hike out to trails and leave gallon-jugs of water, cans of beans, and clean socks at sites people may pass through frequently. At camp, we are open to people who pass through – we provide them with food, water, and give them medical attention. Medical care often means cleaning and bandaging people’s blistered feet (from hiking in weather too hot for too many miles in too-small shoes), and treating for dehydration (water, electrolytes, rest).

8.11

Today the monsoons poured down in full. Most of the routes to our hikes were flooded, so we went on some short water/food drops. Along the trails are empty gallons of water, open cans of beans, worn-out socks, jackets and backpacks and pants left behind. There is a constant presence of people passing through, but rarely do we meet people in the desert (– those crossing the desert are trying to avoid Border Patrol and, as such, would rather not be seen if they are not in need of immediate medical care. And even then, many won’t call out for help for fear of being deported).

At one of the stops, we found “detention bracelets” on the side of the road – temporary handcuffs of black rope and a ziptie-like plastic piece. It’s upsetting to see evidence of conflict, traces of confrontation left behind.

Near camp we helped a neighbor gather mesquite pods, which he grinds into flour and sells in Tucson. The flour is sweet, almost like tamarind. The neighbor is rough, a sun-soaked conspiracist with a couple of trailers (6, actually), two dogs, and a compassionate and cantankerous way of being.

8.12

This region is a conflict zone. There is a tangible, constant tension. There is a persistent undertone of fear. During the day we go on “patrol” to provide basic, basic humanitarian aid (food, water, medical). Those not hiking during the day “hold it down” at camp. The flies buzz mad in the mid-day heat. Today a neighbor to our east was shooting (non-malicious target-practice, I believe) and the sound was ricocheting off the hills to our west. Border Patrol vehicles are everywhere, and a BP vehicle will frequently pull up to the road that our camp is near and watch our camp for hours. Yesterday, when one was parked across from camp, a volunteer pointed toward the car and the vehicle rolled behind a cluster of trees. The camp has been raided by Border Patrol several times, even though camp is on private property.

Several individuals from another humanitarian aid group out here have advised NMD to do as they do and bake cookies for Border Patrol, “ally ourselves with them.” Literally – they bake cookies. I don’t intend to villainize a group of people, nor do I want to speak in a language of enemies and allies. However, baking cookies for Border Patrol officials to create a superficial political “alliance” with the organization that is causing and escalating violence and the deaths of thousands of people along the border does not sit right with me.

The burst backpacks, broken detention bracelets, gallons of water that have been slashed, the surveillance towers of the “virtual wall” that sprout out of ranch lands, the increased deployment of more Border Patrol and National Guard throughout the desert… me inquieta…

After a long day, we went into town tonight for a folk jam on the porch of the Gadsen Coffeshop. About 6 or so guitars, my one uke, a handful of harmonicas, and a washtub bass. The man to my left hasn’t worn shoes in the past 10 years. Another has walked the perimeter of Texas. Much, much needed music, and good company.

8.13 *[heads up: this entry contains stories of sexual violence]

We had several guests in camp today. They’d been walking in the desert from 11 days from Nogales, and are turning around to go back to Mexico. They were if fairly good spirits, not too dehydrated, and amazingly un-blistered. They were sweet, grateful, and helpful and I was glad we could feed them and provide them with a few gallons of water. We cooked up a monster pot of beans tonight for all our guests. The youngest of the group had never crossed before, but it was another’s 6^th time traveling through the desert.

We also had several guests tonight from Angeles del Desierto [Angels of the Desert]. The Angeles is a group of volunteers from Mexico and the SW U.S. who search for missing persons and bodies of loved ones in the desert.

In the past few years, the number of people crossing the desert has decreased, yet the number of deaths has increased. The occurrence and severity of violence has increased. More and more, young kids in Mexican border towns are being forced to smuggle drugs to a pick-up point in the U.S. – traffickers threaten their families if they don’t comply.

The number of disappearances has increased, especially of “mujercitas” (young women, as told by the Angeles). Mujercitas who are crossing the desert and living in border-towns or the Tohono O’odham Reservation, are being kidnapped and raped and/or forced into prostitution.

The Angeles described to us the “rape trees” they frequently encounter on their searches. A rapist hangs the torn under-clothes of the woman/en he has violated in the branches of a tree like a trophy and scatters the contents of her toiletry bag over the sand.

After describing the escalation of violence towards people crossing the desert, one of the Angeles brought over three backpacks they’d recovered on a search today and emptied the packs on the table.

One Guatemalan coin. A white bra stained and scraped by gravel and sand. A tangle of torn underwear.

These are not abstract, theoretical victims. We sat at the dining table with the blatant evidence of rape, the under-clothes torn from these women, glowing in headlamps and moonlight on the dining table. The battered, violated, raped, and perhaps murdered or prostituted women were nearly with us. This violence is another slouching beast of the border wall. I have no words to express this injustice and rage and trauma and hurt.