By Dave Feldman
I am not usually one to frequent McDonald’s, but I nonetheless head towards the double golden arches, which seem to cry out: “Welcome to the United States of America.” I am returning to Douglas, Arizona after an afternoon spent at the Migrant Resource Center in the Mexican border town of Agua Prieta, Sonora.
The MRC is a partnership of many different people
and organizations, such as the primarily Tucson-based activist aid group No
More Deaths—who I am officially volunteering with for the second summer in a
row—and the bi-national faith-based Frontera de Cristo, all working together
towards the common goal of helping migrants caught in the deadly web of U.S.
economic and border policy. We provide food, water, clothing, simple toiletries
and basic first aid, and connect folks with other organizations and shelters
serving migrants in town. Some have been caught by Border Patrol and deported
after walking for as long as eight days in the desert, while others are coming
from the south and using the town as a departure point before trying their luck.
Raia, a fellow volunteer, had heard that a vigil for those souls whose luck had
run out among the cacti and rattlesnakes was going to take place in the
McDonald’s parking lot, and so we decide to stop by before heading back to our
double-wide trailer in the Hidden Valley Mobile Ranch.
We are met by Mark from Frontera De Cristo, along
with a couple of local volunteers and a group of students from Duke—who have
arrived with the Tucson-based Border Links—and Stanford. We also spot Kara, a No
More Deaths volunteer we met a couple days before at our training session in
Tucson. She is based in ambos
Nogales—both border towns share the same name—but has just gotten back from a
day in the desert near Arivaca, AZ, where No More Deaths maintains a camp and
leaves water for the many migrants attempting to cross over to el Norte.
The 100+ degree heat, mountainous terrain and
frequent summer monsoons do not make it a logical crossing point along the
nearly 2,000 mile-long U.S./Mexico border, but the increased patrolling of
urban areas through the construction of a military-style wall and the
deployment of heavily armed Border Patrol and National Guard agents has left
little choice. The so-called Southwest Border Initiative, first launched by the
Clinton Administration in El Paso/Ciudad Juárez in late 1993, is essentially a
militarized arm of the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement.
Mark has hundreds of white crosses with him, each bearing
the name, date of birth and date of death of one of the thousands of people who
have perished in the desert since the operation’s launching. Many simply bear the word desconocido, as it is often impossible
to determine the identities of the human remains recovered in the desert. With
an armful of crosses each, we march in single file towards la línea, taking turns reciting names and responding “¡presente!”
in unison. Afterwards we lay each cross against the curb, so they
form a long line from the McDonald’s parking lot to la garita. Some of the passing vehicles give a muffled honk to show
their solidarity before continuing on to Mexico. We then form a circle, pass
along the three remaining crosses, and reflect upon the larger economic forces that
are responsible for this migration and its multitude of victims. I share with
the group that I want nothing more than to make sure that the names of those who
I have met at the MRC over the two preceding days never appear on such a cross.
I am thinking of Juan[1]
from Veracruz, who is trying to cross to the U.S. to find work and send money
back home so that his two sons can attend college. He wants to enter with
proper authorization, and he shows me the crisp Mexican passport that he has
recently received to achieve that goal. Now he is trying to find an American
employer to sponsor him so he doesn’t have to cross in the desert.
I am thinking of young Roberto from Toluca, who
wants to find work in Atlanta or Los Angeles so he can send money home to his
wife and baby boy since he cannot find a job in Mexico City, where they have
been living. Both have already worked in the U.S.—before the onset of the Great
Recession—and are willing to go through great lengths to support their families
back in Mexico.
I admire the courage of both Juan and Roberto, but
am angered that we are meeting under such circumstances. The neoliberal Structural
Adjustment Programs that have been imposed on Mexico by the IMF, the U.S.
Treasury and Wall Street banks since the debt crisis of 1982, required that the
government slash public services, food subsidies and aid to the poor. Promotion
of a policy of privatization of public enterprises allowed Carlos Salinas de
Gortari to sell national companies to soon-to-be billionaire friends like
Carlos Slim at artificial rock-bottom prices. I think of the millions of small
farmers from Oaxaca and Chiapas who were forced to migrate north after NAFTA
triggered an avalanche of cheap, heavily subsidized and genetically modified
corn from the U.S., making it impossible for them to earn a living on their
ancestral land.
I think of the maquiladora
workers toiling for low wages under harsh conditions just south of the border, and
as an American I think of the role that the Border Industrialization Program
and NAFTA have played in this burgeoning exploitative industry. I think of
those in the maquiladoras who are
lured by the possibility of a better salary in the U.S. and make the decision
to cross that border on foot, once nothing more than a line on a map but now an
imposing, heavily-guarded 20-foot tall steel wall already responsible for more
deaths than its more famous predecessor in Berlin. I think of the daily
difficulties the nearly 12 million currently undocumented immigrants living in
the U.S. face every day.
There is more than a tinge of sadness to my anger.
Juan, on the other hand, says that he has no time for sadness. He is constantly
cracking jokes and regaling us with stories from his years spent working in the
U.S. As a former truck driver, his knowledge of the country’s geography is impressive.
He also tells us of his time working as a KFC cook from 4pm to midnight in Salt
Lake City, and mentions that this was after his 7 to 3 shift as a welder. He
had worked hard to land the welding job, and was fortunate enough to be rewarded
with a $27 an hour wage. Juan tells us how young migrants from Central America traveling
through the country on the roofs of freight trains would get off when the
trains stopped near his work to unload, and announce that they were hungry and
thirsty but had no money for food or water. Conscious of his good fortune, Juan
would take all of them—sometimes up to twenty—to a nearby Mexican food stand
and say “piden lo que quieran,” treating the youngsters to five or six tacos
each before they would inevitably hop back on the train and continue on their
long journey to some unknown destination.
Roberto tells me that neither his wife nor his
parents wanted him to go north, and that his greatest fear is that he will come
across a dead body in the desert. When I ask him about the dangers that the
desert poses to his own body, he claims he isn’t scared. Juan dismisses my
concerns with a wave of his hand and a “no
va a pasar nada”. How many of those who have had their names forever etched
into a white cross had uttered the same words? I am slightly relieved when
Roberto tells me the following day that Beto, the MRC coordinator, has been
convincing him not to make the journey, and when I overhear Juan, who had
wanted to cross in the late afternoon, talking about the dinner that a nearby
shelter will be serving at 7.
Nonetheless, I can’t help but think of Juan as I
catch a glimpse of the KFC on the other side of the strip mall. I wonder who
their cooks are and what they are paid, and for that matter, who is flipping
the Big Macs across the street. As Raia and I leave the parking lot I happen to
notice that there are two cars in the drive-thru lanes at the McDonald’s. It is
an utterly mundane scene, but for some reason they look like border crossing
booths today. They are sites of countless face-to-face yet impersonal
interactions, and although they have taken on the semblance of normalcy, I
can’t help but think that behind that façade lies a system of institutionalized
exploitation.
The sun has started to set as we turn north and
head towards our trailer, with the wide open expanse of the desert and the
mountains to the west providing the backdrop for a gorgeous sunset. But it is
also monsoon season, and the scattered lightning and storm clouds in the
distance look ominous. Monsoons move fast in the area this time of year,
bringing with them howling winds and local but torrential rains. Raia and I are
spared during our short ride home, but as we bring the bikes inside, I think of
the hundreds of human beings in the desert who travel by night to avoid
detection and the blistering heat, and how the barren landscape offers very
little in the way of shelter.
Dave Feldman
is an immigrant rights activist originally from New Jersey and currently based
in Paris. He is also a frequent visitor to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and is
writing his Master’s thesis on the militarization of the region in the
post-NAFTA era. He is a CIP Americas volunteer and a contributor to “Dissident
Voice”.
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