Blog Topic: Woolman Semester Trips

Where should borders exist and how should they be enforced?  Half a journal assignment, half a question surfacing after arriving in Agua Prieta, Mexico, I’m wondering what the answers are for the American southwest.  There are many parties benefiting from the geographical relationship between Mexico and the U.S.  To know and understand who they are and what their relationships are built on could help us deliver an answer for the questions I have posed.

In Agua Prieta, there live people from all places and backgrounds.  Visiting the Border Patrol station and listening to Agent Mike describe how there were migrants going north who immigrated from Eastern Europe helped reinforce this idea.  There are no common migrants or average Mexicans crossing the border.  On the first day in Mexico, we met The Wall as introduced by Anne, our guide from Frontera de Cristo.  That strip of land ranging between the Gulf of Mexico to San Diego, measured in width by feet, stood tall as it was made up of 30 foot iron posts.  Anne took us there to present 500 years of border history.  While we were participating in one of her activities, a family walked by carrying a ladder. 

If we were to measure the gain that someone would make from crossing the border into America, how would we do that with a family?  In America, you can work for a career.  In America, you can work for insurance, a big home, and a new car.  You can educate your children.  Those are satisfactory gains coming from a place, not necessarily Mexico the country, but poverty in Mexico.  And there is a lot of risk taken to cross, not for getting caught, but for surviving the trek.  This includes hiring a coyote, paying the cartel to cross, battling freezing winds at night and broiling days in the sun.  Suffering sabotage from ranchers, betrayal by your guide through robbery, abandonment or both, so does the gain outweigh what you can lose? 

The family is part of a larger group of migrants who I choose to refer to as economic refugees.  The Border Patrol will try and apprehend any suspected crosser, no matter their apparel or accessories.  I do not doubt that, but when they are looking through their telescopes and spot a group of people, two carrying arms and packs, they will be targeted differently. 

Those entering the United States through undesignated port of entries will always be viewed by law enforcement with equal discrimination.  For those two people who are carrying weapons and drugs, there are ten who are not.  And we must question for whose benefit are those smuggling breaking the law?  Easy answers do not exist for often confusing questions.

(This is one of my journal entries from the Mexico trip.  We were asked to write a poem reflecting on the borders in our own lives.)

Border of My Own

I live on the border

Between lib and con

Right and wrong

Black and white

Here and there

I live on the border

Of my county

That sits on the border

Of my state

Looking south on “them”

I live on the border

Of seeping death

Slow poison filling

At one small, hot mistake

And screeching alarm

I live on the Border

Feeling alone

Neutral

Stuck in grey

Nowhere

I live in the border

Watching the river

Make us grow and shrink

Watching the south

Ignore and depend on us

I live on the border

Filled with fear

Sitting on

The wrong side

No help arriving

I am the border

Of my views

Comfortable with

My in between

Un-swayed

The land is the border

Not Too Much Information

But too little

Flows through secretive

Closed gates

The power is fluid

Belonging to no-one

As the borders

Cross over another

And join

Dear Mexico
I live in fear each day
I fear for my head
Literally
I fear for my family
The Cartels and their dope
Why oh why must it be I
The one who must bring this shit
To THEM
The ones on the other side
Of the fence,
I HATE YOU!
You make  it hard to have
 Hope as you sit back and watch
From your towers of corruption
I am targeted
Hated, feard, resented
Because I am seen as you!
We are all seen as you instead
Of the truth
We are part of you.
All because of where we were born.
My sweet mother weeps because of
You!
If only you could be the shining knight
We need.
I have faith you could be that
Light in darkness
But first
Step up
Realize who you can be
Deserve my trust
My alligence
Myself
Dear Mexico
I hate you now
But love you enough to see you change
 

A wall

Thirty feet tall

Made me feel so small

As it stretched from horizon to horizon

From sea to shining sea

Stretched out in front of me

Through thick bars I could see

The land of the free and the home of the brave

And I knew immediately that it's the home that I crave

But if I climb this wall

Thirty feet tall

I break the law

Halfway to a felony

And I just want to be free

But in my way is a wall from sea to shining sea

So I cannot be free

So a pay a Coyote

HIs body ransacked by addiction

But at least when I pay him it's a guarentee

That he'll take me across, no government forms stamp'd "DENIED"

So many times I've cried

So this time I'll climb up this wall

Thirty feet tall

Though it makes me feel so small

I feel as if I have no other choice and as if I have no voice

As I drudge through the desert I feel that I'm forgotten

And I feel that I'm lost

And I feel that I'm alone

And I feel so far from home

And so far from that wall

Thirty feet tall

But since I'm this far, there's no turning back

Though there's water that I lack

And I'm dying for a drink

And I'm staring to think

That I might not make it and my last memory may be of

A wall

Thirty feet tall

Made me feel so small.