Laredo, TX: caught

Laredo, TX: caught
Originally uploaded by ryan riedel.

I will make one confession: my time spent at the lake isn't always so idyllic. The other day, I had set up my tent, left it, and walked around the park. As I was ambling to another shore, a park ranger pulled up to me, flashing his lights. "Are you the owner of the green four-runner?" he asked.

"Uh, no," I answered.

"Well then, what are you driving?"

I paused and tried to work up enough moxy to lie about my camping status. "Uh, another car."

"Yeah, then where is it?"

"Well, you know, it's around. On the other side of the hill."

"What hill?"

"You know, the big one. Over there." I pointed from west to south.

"What's the color of your car?" he asked, sniffing my bullshit.

"Uh, well not the color of the four-runner. I'm not who you're looking for."

He looked me up and down, visibly pissed. "Okay," he said, and he pulled away.

I walked on for another ten minutes, and the ranger came up to me again.

"What car are you driving?" he asked, a little more forceful this time.

I knew that I was in for it. It was time for quick wits. "A car."

"And where are you camped? Are you staying the night?"

"Uh, no, um, I'm not staying the night. I'm just walking around the lake. And I already told you where my car was parked."

"By the hill?"

"By the hill."

"So that's not your little blue tent on the waterfront?" he said. "That's not your bike?"

I looked at him and then down at my cycling jacket. "Well, it could be. Do you mean my tent and bike down by the lake."

"What?"

"Yeah, those are mine."

"So are you camping here?"

"Camping? No. No way. I'm just walking. Yeah, I'm walking."

The man shook his head. "So did you pay to enter?" And then everything just went downhill from there. To make this long story short, I did everything I could to placate this man and avoide a fine. I confessed my sins, explained my project, played kissy-poo and generally offered to comply with the officer in any way that he'd ask. By the end of it, I left him with a handshake and a business card, smiling and happy. He let me keep my spot by the lake, eleven dollars poorer.

Laredo, TX: no catch, no luck

Laredo, TX: no catch, no luck
Originally uploaded by ryan riedel.

My friend, the fisherman, didn't catch anything that day. No matter how many times he cast out his net, he haul was empty when he reeled it back in.

That night, well after he left, I sat on the banks of the lake and watched the fish jump and flop on the water's surface. I laughed when I thought of my friend.

Laredo, TX: wading deeper

Laredo, TX: wading deeper
Originally uploaded by ryan riedel.

At six-twenty in the morning, every morning, waves of birds fly from the north shore of the lake to the south shore. Depending on the weather, they will fly high or low--cloudy, low; sunny; high--and they chirp in these great whoops: chirooop, chirooop, chirooop...

After having spent five, six weeks on the road, I needed to wake up to those birds once more. I needed to see their whirling, dipping waves cascade across the sky. I needed to know that they would still be there when I returned.

Laredo, TX: cast away

Laredo, TX: cast away
Originally uploaded by ryan riedel.

The lake has become my home.

I arrive late and night and leave early in the morning, avoiding park rangers and camp hosts. I don't pay for entry. I don't pay to camp. I just ride my bike through the back entrance, down my hill, and to the waterfront. There, I set up my tent behind a thicket of reeds--almost entirely hidden from the road but completely exposed to the lake.

As I fall asleep, I watch the lights of the north shore, constant and unblinking. I wait and listen for the two park cats, one black and one white, to rustle about. I wake up to my birds.

Laredo, TX: the fisherman

Laredo, TX: the fisherman
Originally uploaded by ryan riedel.

After Mission, I returned to my lake. You can read the corresponding post about two really big margaritas. To be brief about it, I arrived in Laredo emotionally exhausted. The Missionaries' contamination, their colonias, the dead man on the river, the shootings in Nuevo Laredo, the migrants who've died in Arizona's deserts... I hadn't processed it all. It was just too much to take in.

I came back to Laredo and reflected over a couple of margaritas at happy hour. I thought, I tried to write, and I cried. I cried and cried and cried. The waitress came up to me several times. "Is everything alright?" she asked, in maybe limited English. "Is everything all right?"

For me, it was. I'm healthy and comparatively wealthy. For so many that I knew, it wasn't.

With some demons purged--or at least tamed--I returned to my lake. That night I slept deeply, slept soundly. I dreamed of silence. Nothing else.

The next morning I awoke to the usual weekend campers. My campsite, you see, isn't exactly legal. I spent the day with them, living vicariously through them with every chomp of a carne asada and cast of a fishing line. It was enough to be in the periphery of their company. I needed to be alone but connected.

from the L.A. Times: having kicked the sleeping giant

An ecosocialist by the name of Micheal Lowy cites that we all suffer a
case of Gramsci's paradox--that "we live in a time in which the old
world order is dying (and taking civilization with it) and the new one
does not seem to be able to be born."

To this I give a rousing "bullshit".

Although I think that you could make a good case that the global capitalist vehicle piloted by the United States is not sustainable, here we see a case in which that system is giving way to something new, something inspired and driven. That "something" might very well be a genuine human rights movement that transcends barriers and calls into question the United States as a partner, rather than profiteer, in social and economic development. What might very well develop is a redefinition of what it means to be "American"--what defines the character of the diminishing middle class and what tenets we can still cling to in an equally diminishing "American Dream".

With this in mind, the following isn't too much of a surprise: it's a wake-up call. If 500,000 people were going to come out at in support of migrant rights, it was going to be in L.A. The religious, social and political left came out in full stomp. Galvanized by the Sensenbrenner-King bill, we might be seeing the beginnings of not only a "massive immigrant civil rights struggle" but also a collective in almost dialectical opposition to the "vast right-wing conspiracy".

To this point, one of the questions to ask again concerns sustainability. Rumor has it that the organizers behind the L.A., Denver, Phoenix et. al protest are planning a general strike next month. If organizers are able to take the energy from these marches into a strike and beyond, they might be able to avoid, say, the
ineffectiveness that similar actions had before the invasion in Iraq. Half-a-million person marches assure that protesters' voices will be heard on the street. Only a sustained effort will translate those voices into actual legislation.

To this extent, the actual content of the Sensenbrenner-King bill is helpful to undocumented immigrants and their supporters. With props. 187 in California and 200 in Arizona, there was opposition, yeah, but nothing like this. The previous bills' hazy language on restricted benefits couldn't incite the same reaction. Border walls and felony prosecution for undocumented presense, humanitarian aid, etc. should provide ample fuel to keep the fire both raging and indentifiable.

Who knows how high those flames will reach--or how far, for that matter. To the halls of Congress? To U.S. neighborhoods? Villages throughout Latin America and beyond? Our next presidential seat? Soon we'll find out.

-----

More Than 500,000 Rally in L.A. for Immigrants' Rights

By Teresa Watanabe and Anna Gorman, Times Staff Writer2:51 PM PST,
March 25, 2006

Joining what some are calling the nation's largest mobilization of immigrants ever, hundreds of thousands of people boisterously marched in downtown Los Angeles Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall on the U.S. southern border. Spirited crowds representing labor, religious groups, civil-rights advocates and ordinary immigrants stretched over 26 blocks of downtown Los Angeles from Adams Blvd. along Spring Street and Broadway to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting "Si se
puede!" (Yes we can!). The crowd, estimated by police at more than 500.000, represented one of the largest protest marches in Los Angeles history, surpassing Vietnam War demonstrations and the 70,000 who rallied downtown against Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that denied public benefits to undocumented migrants.

The marchers included both longtime residents and the newly arrived, bound by a desire for a better life and a love for this county.

Arbelica Lazo, 40, illegally immigrated from El Salvador two decades ago but said she now owns two business and pays $7,000 in taxes
annually.

Jose Alberto Salvador, 33, came here illegally just four months ago to find work to support the wife and five children he left behind; in his native Guatemala, he said, what little work he could find paid only
$10 a day. "As much as we need this country, we love this country," Salvador said, waving a stick with both the American and Guatemalan flag. "This country gives us opportunities we don't get at home."

Saturday's rally, spurred by anger over legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last December, was part of what many say is an unprecedented effort to organize immigrants and their supporters across the nation. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is to take up efforts Monday to complete work on a comprehensive immigration reform proposal. Unlike the House bill, which beefed up border security and toughened immigration laws, the Senate committee's version is expected to include a guest worker program and a path to legalization for the nation's 10 to 12 million undocumented immigrants.

In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have staged demonstrations in more than a dozen cities. The Roman Catholic Church and other religious communities have launched immigrant rights
campaigns, with Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony taking a leading role in speaking out against the House bill and calling on his priests to defy its provisions that would make felons of anyone who aided undocumented immigrants. In addition, several cities, including Los Angeles, have passed resolutions against the House legislation and some, such as Maywood, have declared itself a "sanctuary" for undocumented immigrants.

"There has never been this kind of mobilization in the immigrant community ever," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "They have kicked the
sleeping giant. It's the beginning of a massive immigrant civil rights struggle."

One of the marchers Saturday, Jose Alberto Salvador, 33, left his wife and children behind in Guatemala four months ago to cross the border into the United States so he could earn enough money to return home
and buy a house.

Jorge Valdovinos, 43, is a legal immigrant from Mexico who has three US-born children and works as a financial advisor.

Amid a sea of American and Mexican flags, protesters chanted "Si Se Puede!" and waved banners in Spanish that read, "We aren't criminals" and "The USA is made by immigrants."

"I love this country as if it were my own, for the opportunities it has given me," said Laurentino Ramirez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who works at a garment factory. "The law is unjust for those who don't have papers. We come to work. We don't come to do harm to anyone."

Many of the marchers were immigrants themselves — both legal and illegal -- from Mexico and Central America. Some had just crossed the border, while others had been here for decades. There were construction workers and business owners; families with young children
and people in wheelchairs. Throughout the afternoon, protesters heard speakers demand a path toward legalization and denounce HR 4437, which would tighten border enforcement and crack down on employers who hire undocumented workers.

The rally was organized by numerous unions, religious organizations and immigrant rights groups and publicized through Spanish-language
media, which encouraged participants to wear white to symbolize peace and bring American flags. The mostly peaceful march stretched over 26 blocks, shutting down streets and tying up traffic around downtown for hours. Police estimated the crowd at 500,000, more than five times the size of the 1994 rally against California's Proposition 187, which would have denied services to undocumented immigrants. Participants said the massive mobilization shows that immigrants' voices must be
heard and that they are contributing to the country's economy.

from the New American: migrant violence and response

This is interesting, and I'm not entirely sure how to think about it.
One one hand, I see a mother with really valid concerns. Bang, bang.
One the other, from sources that I've read, 1 percent of all
undocumented immigrants are involved in violent acts. Is this enough
to expell the whole, our would such an action be an unfair
categorization of the undocumented as violence-prone, potential
criminals?

At age 16, Lupe dropped out of school and married Marcial Moreno, a
Mexican national and illegal immigrant who had been living in the
Morfin household. After giving birth to her fifth child at age 22, she
finally earned her high school diploma. Afterwards, she secured a
position in the county immunization department. It was there, while
serving large numbers of illegal immigrants, that Moreno began to
realize the true economic and social cost of the illegal alien
invasion. The story might have ended there, but in 1990, an event
occurred that profoundly altered the lives of Lupe Moreno and her
sister, Angie Morfin Vargas, and compelled them to take action.
An Activist Awakening
Ruben Morfin, Angie Morfin Vargas' son, was just 13 years old in 1990
when he was shot in the head by Ezequiel Mariscal while walking home
from a party. The killer, Mariscal, a gang member and Mexican
national, fled to Mexico, where he was eventually apprehended by
Mexican authorities with assistance from San Diego's Foreign
Prosecution Unit. Mexico's fugitive-friendly laws prevented Mariscal's
extradition, but he is now serving a 20-year sentence without parole
in the state of Jalisco, Mexico.
For Angie Morfin Vargas, her son's death was a brutal call to action.
The former Chicana activist felt particularly wounded because
Mariscal, an illegal alien, was the sort of person she might have
befriended in previous times. "It was a slap in the face," Morfin
Vargas told The New American. "For the first time in my life, I wasn't
sure who I was." Once a proponent of unfettered immigration, Morfin
Vargas now began to take a critical look at America's immigration
policy. Sensing a link between illegal immigration and increased gang
activity, she formed Mothers Taking Action Against Gang Violence and
began to lobby for an end to the nation's de facto open border policy.

--
www.border101.org

from the Tucson Daily Star: their view on a daughter's death

Opinion

Entrant held in daughter's death a cruel twist
Our view: Yes, illegal immigrants are breaking the law, but they should be viewed as human beings, not statistics

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.20.2006

The quest to stem the tide of illegal immigration into Arizona is taking its toll on humanity and compassion.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday than an illegal entrant and his 12-year-old daughter were crossing the border on foot recently when they were run over by a Border Patrol pickup.

The daughter was killed and the father was thrown in jail for putting the girl at "risk of imminent death" by taking her into the desert.

It seems a cruel twist. But every week in Arizona, it seems, illegal immigrants are marginalized a little more than the week before.

The Legislature is considering a bill to cut state funding for communities where local police don't enforce federal immigration laws and may put on the November ballot a measure to deny illegal entrants the right to subsidized child care, adult education and state financial assistance to attend college.

We acknowledge that entrants have broken the law by entering the United States without documentation, and we are not advocating that they are entitled to services funded by taxpayers, even though some undocumented workers do pay taxes.

We are concerned that the drumbeat of actions and statements conveys the idea that entrants should be subjugated into a single, subclass of humanity.

We believe that immigration reform requires a comprehensive, multitiered approach that includes border security, a guest-worker program and employer requirements. Throughout the debate and the discussion, illegal immigrants must be viewed as living, breathing human beings — not a set of statistics.

Illegal entrants should not be exalted, nor should they be dismissed and demonized.

Take the Yuma case.

Juan Cruz Torralva should have been consoled over the death of his daughter, Lourdes Cruz Morales, on March 5. Instead he was hospitalized for three days and locked up for five. He was released March 12 when the Yuma County Attorney's Office said it wouldn't prosecute.

He's back in Mexico, where his wife and 2-month-old son, who were living in California, will join him.

He'll live the rest of his life with bitter memories of the United States.

"I just want to leave this place and never come back. Never," he told The Associated Press.

Cruz's story is just one of many that puts a human face on border issues.
Some groups and legislators do not see the faces; they focus only on numbers and the problems.

Hugo Rene Oliva Romero, the consul general in Yuma, and Juan Manuel Calderon, the chief consul in Tucson, said that, in general, would-be entrants are oblivious to the anti-immigrant attitudes in Arizona and the United States.

"They come here with one goal … to find work," Calderon said.

But Oliva said they can sense where they aren't welcome.

"More often now they are going to states where they feel they aren't going to face discrimination, where they feel people will respect their human rights," Oliva said.
Oliva said Mexico in recent years has had to open consulates in Raleigh, N.C.; Omaha, Neb.; and St. Paul, Minn., to meet the needs of its citizens settling in places where they wouldn't have years before.

Some segments of our community will surely welcome the news that entrants may look to settle elsewhere.

Groups that rail against entrants, and lawmakers who hope to win votes by targeting border crossers, are sowing seeds of prejudice and discrimination by repeatedly minimizing one group of people.

Entrants are not deserving of these attacks. They have broken U.S. immigration laws, but they are human beings who deserve compassion and understanding. We should be working toward solving the economic and societal issues that attract them across the border.

from the Rio Grande Guardian: Mission and the Bhopal, India disaster

Credit the following to the authors, Steve Taylor and Claudia Perez-Rivas of Steve Taylor the Rio Grande Guardian. They will be publishing more articles on Mission at the Rio Grande Guardian, www.riograndeguardian.com.

Indian students compare notes on Mission chemical plant and Bhopal disaster

By Steve Taylor and Claudia Perez-Rivas
Gauri Karve (photo by Guillermo Sosa)


MISSION - A group of graduate students from India visited Mission over the weekend to compare similarities between the city’s highly contaminated old Hayes-Sammons chemical plant and the Bhopal gas leak disaster.


The students, who study at the University of Texas at Austin, were given a tour of the former mixing plant and warehouses Saturday and introduced to Mission residents with chronic medical conditions.


Ester Salinas, a local community activist, and Iris Salinas, a journalist who runs a Web site about the Mission chemical plant and who is also a congresswoman for La Raza Unida's environmental committee, organized the tour. UT-Austin students in the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) organization and young activists from the United Farm Workers also participated.


“We are here to learn more about the Mission struggle, to share our experiences, and to offer our solidarity,” said Gauri Karve, an engineer and member of the Association for India’s Development.


“I think there are a number of similarities between Mission and Bhopal. In both cases, poor communities were exploited. In both cases, the chemical plants were not cleaned up.”


Karve told the story of Bhopal. On a December night in 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal began leaking 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanine over a city with a population of a half a million people.


“Union Carbide had turned off all the safety systems and all the safety alarms to save money. So, people were gassed to death in their sleep,” Karve said. “3,000 people died in the first three days. After all this happened, Union Carbide left the country and left all the toxins. The factory still exists in the center of the city. And they got away with it.”


Some reports suggest as many as 20,000 people died as a result of the gas leak, with more than 120,000 still suffering from ailments caused by the subsequent pollution. The ailments include blindness, breathing difficulties, and gynecological disorders.


In 1999, local groundwater and well-water testing near the site of the Bhopal accident revealed mercury at levels between 20,000 and six million times those expected. Cancer, brain damage, and birth-defect-causing chemicals were found in the water.


“What we are trying to do is correct what has gone wrong and get the communities the medical help they need, the economic rehabilitation and the clean water that they need,” Karve said.


“A tanker comes once a week; they get two buckets of water. How are you supposed to survive? How is a family supposed to survive, it’s impossible. It’s very sad.”


Ester Salinas said there was a direct link between Bhopal and the Hayes-Sammons site. “When they closed one of our plants down in 1976, Monsanto and Dow took the poisons to India,” Salinas said. After the disaster, Union Carbide was bought out by Dow Chemicals. Ester Salinas said Dow was one the companies named in a lawsuit Mission residents have filed.


A report released in January by the Environmental Protection Agency showed that the levels of four chemicals found in the soil at the Mission plant were more than 100 times greater than the state of Texas allows for industrial sites. The report also found that pesticides that destroy hormone systems in the body are present at alarmingly high levels.


Iris Salinas gave the visiting students a potted history of the Mission chemical plant. She said that the Nazis were the first to experiment with deadly chemicals during World War II. When the war was over, she said, scientists in the United States began diluting the same chemicals so that the mixtures only killed pests. She said Valley farmers welcomed the arrival of the Mission chemical plant in the late 1940s because they thought fertilizers were being produced.


The students heard how the Mission plant used to produce 54 chemicals. Of these, eight have since been declared among the most hazardous contaminants known to man: Aldrin, Chlordane, DDT, Dieldrin, Endrin, Endrine Keytone, Heptachlor, and Toxaphene.


Iris Salinas said ample documentation had been collated over the years to show the negative impact the chemicals had on the neighborhood, with official reports of dermatitis outbreaks and the discovery of dead fish and birds. “We’ve got cancer clusters, sarcoma clusters, carcinoma clusters. TCEQ and EPA have a responsibility but they are not addressing them,” she said.


The students got to meet 76-year-old Mission resident Jose Garza, who, as a young man, used to gather grapefruit and oranges from around the chemical plant for his family. He also used to buy Chlordane, DDT and Toxaphene from the plant to kill the cockroaches in his house.


“We did not know anything about the chemicals in those days,” Garza told the Guardian. “They used to dig a hole and bury the powder and the fruit. When the hole was filled, they would cover it and start another one. I went in and grabbed the fruit. We never knew.”


Garza was a keen photographer and some of his photos of flooding in Mission in the 1950s and 1960s were on display. “We had no drainage or sewers and the floodwater was contaminated. The fire department used to get us out with boats, on Conway Street,” he said. Garza told how some of his family members have since developed tumors.


The students also visited Joe Salinas, a disabled man who lives across the road from the mixing plant. Salinas' home is considered the most contaminated in Mission. Instead of utilizing a smoke stack, exhaust from the plant was blown out by a fan in the roof directly into the neighborhood. Joe Salinas told how, before the plant was opened, his mother would win prizes for her gardening. After the plant opened, white dust engulfed everything, he said, and now nothing grows.


Iris Salinas declared the tour a great success. She said many thought the story of the Mission chemical plant and its “devastating impact” on residents and the environment would die out as its former workers passed away. She said that was not the case.


“They never counted on students finding out about this, having access to the Internet and feeling passionate about this,” said, Salinas who is also chair of MEChA's environmental committee. “We are getting a lot of ‘hits’ from everywhere and a lot of it is because students are raising awareness. They are talking to each other. We are making history with this. It is bigger than Mission.”

Mission, TX: welcome back

I'm back in Mission, Texas, home of cancer victims, the physically deformed and the all-around chemically contaminated. If you kept up
with Voluntour 1951, you'll remember that I spent a couple of weeks
here in the superfund, i.e. a site so polluted by chemical shipping
and manufacturing companies that the government has put major moneys
into remediation. Unfortunately for Missionaries, remediation means
soils transfers, asphalt caps and partial reconstructions.
Missionaries would prefer to have enough money to move and get the
hell out of there.

I saw two of my buddies, both with huge plum-sized bumps in their arms. The bumps house pumps, and the pumps circulate blood through their bodies that their failed kidneys--they're on dialysis, of course--cannot.

Friend number one used to be a top-notch balet folklorico dancer. He can't dance anymore, much less work. The man sells dishes--plates of food--for a living because he can't really leave his house. His body
has already rejected three kidneys. He's thirty-one.

Friend number two is twenty-four. My age. Her dad left years ago,
her mom's sick, she hasn't finished college, she can't get a job,
she's on welfare, she's just scraping by, and she's playing mom to her
two younger brothers. One of them gave the other a black eye the
other day. You can imagine how well things are going for them.

Here's where things get really good: a group from Bhopal, India just recently
came to Mission. it seems that Dow chemical, after being forced out
of Mission, traveled to India to reestablish their operations.
Apparently toxifying one community wasn't enough. They almost
completely eradicated another overnight.

One night while the villagers were sleeping, gas started to leak out through a faulty safety system. No one attended to the spill until the
next day--call this an extremely untimely case of sleeping on the
job. To make a long story short, 3,000 people died that night and 20,000 died in days to come. 20,000. Think Casa Grande, Arizona. 20,000 people. If they were
really lucky, they died in their sleep. If they weren't so lucky, they
gagged to death, unable to breathe through throats and lungs
undergoing rapid and exponential decay.

Think of what a happy meeting that might have been! Numbers one and two, meet numbers 20,001 through 20,006.

Greetings from Mission!

newswire: "sanctuary" penalties

Too bad that this blurb doesn't say anything about actual immigrants.
An appeal of the "sanctuary" laws would mean that police would have to
start arresting undocumented immigrants. For those of you who are for
this, consider the following: if police had to arrest the undocumented
on contact, then chances are they would choose to come into contact
police on only the rarest of occasions. Many--if not most--wouldn't
report crimes committed against them for fear of being deported. One
logical conclusion to this policy is a veritable "open season" on
migrants.

E.g.: Don't like the migrant down the street? Beat the shit out of
him. He won't say anything, and if he did, he'd be deported anyway.

Yikes.

AZ House backs off 'sanctuary' penalties

PHOENIX --

Reversing course, the House of Representatives refused Wednesday to
financially penalize cities and counties whose police departments
don't enforce federal immigration laws. The 32-28 vote to kill the
legislation came amid complaints from some lawmakers the bill would
amount to the state's taking control of the operations of local police
agencies. The bill, which had been tentatively approved, would have
denied cities that have "sanctuary" policies for illegal immigrants
their share of state sales and income taxes.

Rep. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, said it's one thing to encourage local
police to enforce federal laws that make it a crime to be in this
country illegally. But she said this measure went a step too far.

"This bill . . . would penalize local law enforcement for not doing
what they cannot do anyway, which is handle a federal problem without
enough federal dollars to accomplish the task," she said...

--
www.border101.org

Laredo, TX: for the man face down in the mud

Yesterday I saw the body of a dead man on the Rio Grande.

 

I was with a college group that was collecting water samples.  Upstream, some six or seven children started shouting at us, "hay un mojado", "hay un mojado"--"there's a crosser", "there's a wet".  Our group didn't know what to make of this at first.  Were the kids really saying what we thought they were saying?  Did they mean what we thought they meant?

 

I started walking towards the kids, alone, as they began coming our way.  When we met, all suspicions were confirmed.  While fishing, they had found an "hombre muerto"--a "dead man".

 

I walked up the river with them.  We strode down the shore, chattering, crawled under a barb wire fence and criss-crossed from island to island.  The walk seemed so deliberate. 

 

We arrived at body, and we stopped.  Just stopped.  The kind of stop that you see in the movies, when the protagonists walk into the room with the corpse and they don't know what to do until, of course, they whisper about and try to understand what had happened.  They take slow looks around and even slower steps forward.  They return to normal time.

 

The body was red and black, burnt by the sun and charred with decay.  The man's hands--surely he was a man at one point--were taut and sinewy.  You could see his bones through thin layers of muscle.  His torso was bloated, raw and yellowish by the waistline.  A whole in his back, along his spine and directly between his shoulder blades, was bubbling like some festering geizer.  The man's body was giving one last and long exhale.

 

I called 9-1-1.  I took pictures.  The children walked away, perched on a island far away.

 

I looked at the body, face down and unmoving.  Get up, I couldn't help thinking.  Why wouldn't he get up?  Get up.

 

He didn't.

 

The college students arrived and milled about, some close and some far, but all within eyeshot.  Would he get up for them?

 

He didn't.

 

******

 

There are two stories to this man's death.  The first is the one you might expect.  He drowned.

 

According to official counts by the Border Patrol, four-hundred and seventy-two people died trying to cross the Rio Grande/ Rio Bravo into the United States last year, forty-nine in Laredo.  Unofficial counts put the first number much higher--around eight-hundred.  Oft-referred to "mojados" cross for many reasons: some haul drugs, more reunite with family and most seek jobs.  The river can be unforgiving in these ventures.  It swells with irrigation water, whorls in unseen whirlpools and charges with undercurrents.  Most know its dangers, but few expect to confront them.

 

Face-down in the mud, this man had no other choice.

 

The second story: he was murdered.

 

Next to the man was a shopping cart, upturned and sinking into the earth along with its ill-fated partner.  Had one wanted to kill the man and discard of the body in the river, a shopping cart might have been a sufficient, however unlikely, vehicle to navigate the maze of undergrowth in the hills above.  The final heave of the cart might have left the man prone, sprawled and perpendicular to the shoreline.

 

This year, an average of two homicides are committed in Nuevo Laredo every three days.  Chalk up the murders to drug-related violence.  Some violence has spilled over into its American sister, Laredo, but at a number that pales in comparison: twenty-one.

 

The death wasn't reported in the news today.  Bodies in the river don't usually make the five o'clock. 

 

Chances are, the man died while trying to cross the river.  Homicides are a relatively rare occurrence in Laredo, the body lacked visible signs of trauma, the cart would have been difficult if not impossible to squeeze through thick scrub, and the river was strong enough to carry both cart and body miles from upstream.  Ahkam's razor cuts to drowning.

 

Chances are, I'll never know for sure.

 

*****

 

As I walked back downstream, past the bras and panties, shorts, candy wrappers and plastic bags of the successful, I spoke with a director of the college program.  A regular of the water sampling trips, this was his third run-in with would-have-been crossers.  The second was a skeleton, bleached by the sun and adorned with a burial shroud of swimming trunks.  The first was a body, much like the one we just saw. 

 

"You know what the weird thing is, Ryan?", he asked.  "We talk about the wages in Mexico, as far as NAFTA and all that.. I'll tell you my personal opinion.  Even if they raise wages some, some of the companies are moving because they still can compete.  They still have to move to other parts of the world, where labor's even cheaper.  And they're not paying much here, y'know?"

 

He stopped and turned around, facing me.  "It all comes back to the consumer," he said.

 

"How much are you willing to pay?"

 

*****

 

While the college group finished collecting samples, I sat and wrote, trying to collect my thoughts. 

 

Hundreds of migrants must have passed through that spot--an enclave of desert thicket, discarded clothing and trash bags, trash bags and more trash bags.  Trash bags were everywhere: at my feet, among the empty bags of Ramen and potatoe chips; at my side, wrapped around the trunk of a tree; and overhead among dense, interlocking branches, dangling like cheap party decorations and dancing like phantoms.

 

I looked at one bag, white and calling for peace.  I looked at another, black and signaling death.

 

There was no peace with this death, I thought.  This death was no peace.

 

I scribbled haltingly, imagining forty-nine bodies stacked one by one by one, placed next to each other in one long string of compounded, irreconcilable failure.  I thought of migrants back home--two hundred and eighty two of them--emptied, withered and wasted, leaning against saguaros and swimming through sandy deserts.  I thought of the man upstream, and after a while I didn't think any more.

 

I looked to my right and saw the river.  It seemed so peaceful.  Peaceful, comforting and inviting.

 

Fwd: FNS News: Media Black Out Immigrant Protests

A note on national media coverage of pro-immigrant actions and
protests. I read about some of these marches almost in passing, in
blurbs. I had no idea that the turnouts--especially in Chicago--ere
so huge.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: fnsnews@nmsu.edu
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:55:09 -0700
Subject: FNS News: Media Black Out Immigrant Protests
To: fns_nmsu-l@nmsu.edu

March 15, 2006

Immigration News

US Media Black Out Immigrant Protests

If you relied on the US media, you might not have noticed
the massive pro-immigrant protests held in US cities in
recent days. A survey of several leading US border and
national media outlets revealed scant or non-existent
coverage of protests against the Sensenbrenner immigration
bill, HR 4437, convened in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and
Tampa by Latinos Unidos, the Illinois Coalition for
Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Sin Fronteras, and scores of
other organizations.

The dearth of coverage is striking considering the ample
doses of recent media attention on the Minutemen,
immigration legislation and the growth of the undocumented
workforce in the United States. Not surprisingly, the US
exception was the Spanish-language television giant
Univision which featured prominent stories about the
protests on its nightly newscast. A program on a Univision-
affiliated radio station in Chicago is credited for helping
promote that city's action.

To sum up: An estimated 20,000 people rallied in Washington
D.C. on Tuesday, March 7, against the provisions of the
Sensenbrenner immigration bill passed by the US House of
Representatives last December. On Friday, March 10, from
75,000 to 150,000 demonstrators-or more- held a massive
protest in the heart of Chicago against Sensenbrenner.
Local media called it the largest demonstration in the
Midwestern City since an anti-Iraq war protest in 2003.

Taking on the characteristics of a strike, businesses were
shut down and traffic was snarled for hours. Bus loads of
demonstrators arrived from surrounding communities in
Wisconsin and Indiana to participate in a march addressed
by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, Chicago Mayor Richard
Daly and US Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), among
many others. "You are not criminals!" said Gov. Blagojevich
in his speech. "You are workers who love your families!"

Protestor Abigail Marquez, an immigrant from Guadalajara,
Mexico, said she was satisfied at the community response to
the convocation. "I feel happy, because this shows we are
united," Marquez said. Although US and Mexican flags were
prominent in the crowd, people from other nations joined in
the protest. Contingents from the Caribbean, Central
America, Ecuador, Colombia, Poland, Ireland, and China were
especially noted. Other forces supporting the demonstration
included labor unions, evangelical churches, the Puerto
Rican Cultural Center, and the Nation of Islam.

Besides the Washington and Chicago protests, a smaller
demonstration against the Sensenbrenner bill, but still
drawing hundreds of people, was conducted in Tampa,
Florida, on Saturday, March 11. Despite the large turn-
outs, many US English-language media outlets in the border
region initially ignored the protests. The Internet news
sites of the Laredo Morning Times, El Paso Times, Las
Cruces Sun-News and Albuquerque Tribune did not carry any
stories about the burgeoning pro-immigrant movement in the
two days following the Washington rally. Nor did the print
edition of the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico's largest
circulation daily. The publications are located in cities
with huge Mexican immigrant populations.

Tucson's Arizona Daily Star and the San Diego Union-Tribune
ran small stories from the Reuters and Associated Press
news services, respectively. Written by Karen Hawkins, the
Associated Press piece included quotes from the director of
the Illinois Minuteman Project , Rosanna Pulido, who
participated in a press conference and tiny counter-
demonstration in Chicago. Pulido said she didn't want to
Chicago become a "sanctuary city," adding that 14 million
underemployed US citizens could assume the jobs currently
done by immigrants. Another Minuteman Project member,
Carmen Mercer, was quoted by the EFE news service as saying
that 9-11 made it imperative to oppose undocumented
immigration.

Although the movement kicking off last week's protests has
obvious national implications, as well as local ones in
communities across the US, the importance was missed by the
US border media outlets surveyed. The significance of the
movement wasn't lost on the Chicago Sun-Times, however,
which ran a follow-up story to last Friday's massive
march. "We've been taught a lesson by Chicago," said Martha
Ugarte, an activist in Los Angeles, California, with the
pro-immigrant movement. Ugarte said the Chicago rally was
the talk of the town in Los Angeles, where organizers are
gearing up for a similar action later this month.

According to Univision, anti-undocumented worker laws in
Arizona are also inspiring the movement. Back in the Windy
City, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee
Rights plans an event next weekend to help newly-
naturalized citizens register to vote. On the other hand,
members of the Illinois Minuteman Project and 9/11 Families
for a Secure America blasted the pro-immigrant
mobilization. Rosanna Pulido said US citizens are fed up
with the illegal immigrant population. The Minuteman
Project leader hoped that the "the outrage of the people of
Illinois is heard through voting."

For their part, Mexican border and national press outlets
gave high profile treatment to the immigrant
demonstrations. Accompanied by an article drawn from
different news wires, Mexico City's La Jornada daily
displayed a big photo of the Chicago protest on the home
page of its website, as did El Sur of Acapulco, Guerrero.
The newspaper is widely distributed in state that
contributes large numbers of migrants to the Latino
population of Chicago. El Universal, El Diario de Juarez
and enlineadirecta, an Internet news site based in
Tamaulipas state, all featured stories written by the EFE,
Notimex and the Spanish-language AP news services.

Additional sources: Univision, March 7, 10, 11, 14, 2006.
Univision.com, March 10, 2006. Article by Fabian Santillan.
El Universal, March 11, 2006. La Jornada, March 11, 2006.
El Sur, March 11, 2006. enlineadirecta.info, March 11,
2006. El Diario de Juarez, March 11, 2006. Arizona Daily
Star March 11, 2006. San Diego Union-Tribune, March 11,
2006. Chicago Sun-Times, March 11 and 12, 2006. Articles by
Dave Newbart, Monifa Thomas, Oscar Avila, Antonio Olivo,
and Rick Pearson. HoyInternet.com, March 10, 2006. Article
by Leticia Espinosa.

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email fnsnews@nmsu.edu

--
www.border101.org

Fwd: laredo--violence and renewal article

A look into Laredo, Nuevo Laredo and the oft-asked question of violence.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: ryan riedel <ryan.riedel@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:32:09 -0600
Subject: laredo--violence and renewal article
To: ryan.riedel@gmail.com

Posted on Tue, Mar. 14, 2006
As violence grips neighbor, Laredo revels in renewal BY DAVID MCLEMORE The
Dallas Morning News

*LAREDO, Texas - *This border city and its neighbor just across the Rio
Grande in Mexico have long been dependent on each other - bound by language,
culture and geography for 250 years.

But the almost daily outburst of drug-fueled violence in Nuevo Laredo has
begun to change that relationship.

Laredo's economy is booming. Unemployment is at historic lows. Businesses
are opening in record numbers and the housing market is rapidly expanding.
At the same time, pedestrian traffic is down in both directions, and many of
those new businesses and new residents pouring into Laredo are coming from
Nuevo Laredo, seeking the safety and sanity of the U.S. side.

Reluctantly, Laredo accepts that the good news comes at the expense of its
neighbor, confident that the violence stops at the river. This U.S. city
works to keep itself from being identified with the violence across the
river. Last month, the city launched a $100,000 public relations campaign to
boast its good news to potential visitors from all over the state.

"It's very frustrating what's happening in Nuevo Laredo. We are connected -
without the one, the other doesn't survive," said Laredo Mayor Betty Flores.
"But ... we have to keep reminding the rest of the nation that we are in the
United States and that the violence is in Mexico. This is a very safe city."

So it seems.

With a population of about 250,000, Laredo reported 21 homicides in 2005,
compared with more than 170 in the same period in Nuevo Laredo, a city more
than twice its size. Eleven police officers were shot down in Nuevo Laredo
last year, including the daylight assassination of the new chief of police.
A Laredo officer hasn't died in the line of duty since 1984.

But some Laredo leaders see evidence that Mexico's drug battles have already
spilled across the border. You just have to look at the signs, said Webb
County Sheriff Rick Flores.

"We've had our deputies fired on, and we've had instances of home invasions
where the suspects used AK-47s and hand grenades, a technique used in Nuevo
Laredo," said Flores, who recently equipped his deputies with body armor and
automatic rifles.

"In January, Laredo police raided two homes where they found more than 30
homemade bombs. It's the same people, the same weapons and the same methods
as in Nuevo Laredo. And it's happening on our side."

The sheriff points to other troubling signs. There's the double-homicide in
Laredo last summer that has been linked to members of the Zetas, a gang of
former Mexican army soldiers who now work for the drug cartels. There are
the more than 40 people from Laredo who have been kidnapped in Nuevo Laredo.

Recently, the sheriff said, his department learned that the two Mexican drug
trafficking organizations engaged in Nuevo Laredo's turf war have hired
members of Texas prison gangs, the Texas Mexican Mafia and Los Hermanos
Pistoleros Latinos, as hit men and enforcers for work on the U.S. side.

"They are known as Zetillas - little Zetas," he said. The Zetillas are 18-
to 20-year-olds out to make a name for themselves by performing hits and
related chores under Zeta direction, according to a report that the Webb
County sheriff provided Congress during a recent hearing in Washington.

On Jan. 3 in El Cenizo, about 25 miles south, deputies encountered a group
of men loading duffel bags in a van on the U.S. side. As the van drove back
across the river, the men on the Mexican side pulled AK-47s on the deputies
and taunted them in English to fight.

"They are testing us, pushing at us all the time to see what we'll do," the
sheriff said. "No one wants to talk about the situation we're in, and I know
it's bad for business. But we can't hide our heads."

Sheriff Flores' comments are not always well-received by other Laredo
leaders.

Mayor Flores, no relation to the sheriff, said she doesn't "turn a blind eye
to the crime."

"But I'm not going to react hysterically," she added. "I detest the fact
that people come here to see the border violence. It's been sensationalized
by the media. Events that on their own are horrible are blown out of
proportion, and it has paralyzed Nuevo Laredo's tourism."

The mayor stressed that she still frequently goes to Nuevo Laredo.

"I'm not afraid to go there because I don't go to the places where trouble
breaks out," she said. "Most areas of the city are where people feel safe
and their kids can play in their yards. There are two Nuevo Laredos, and
only one is being reported."

The mayor repeats a line she delivered during an interview on the Lou Dobbs
television show on CNN: Good people aren't being kidnapped.

"I've taken heat for that," she said, "but I said it because it's true and
because I didn't want people to be afraid to come down to the border."

Nuevo Laredo's problems have not slowed the volume of international trade
that has made Laredo the biggest inland port in the United States - and one
of the nation's busiest trade centers.

More than 10,000 commercial trucks and 2,000 rail cars pass through this
city each day. Nearly $94 billion in goods was shipped via Laredo last year.
In the last five years, 78 new companies moved to Laredo, adding 13,653
jobs, ranking the city No. 1 in growth in Texas by the Milken Institute.

A number of Nuevo Laredo businesses, including the venerable El Rancho
Restaurant, have opted to move to Laredo and its perception of safety.
Meanwhile, tourism in Nuevo Laredo has essentially melted away. Shops in the
popular tourist section along Guerrero Street have reported that business
has fallen by 80 to 90 percent.

"We've trended well for the past decade, and we show no signs of slowing
down because of the violence in Nuevo Laredo," said Guillermo "Memo"
Trevino, chairman of the Laredo Chamber of Commerce. "But we can't sugarcoat
what's going on across the river. In Nuevo Laredo, the violence has had a
terrible impact on their lives. Sadly, that has benefited us."

There has been another effect, Trevino said. In Laredo, going across the
river was like going across the street in other U.S. cities. You went over
to visit friends and relax.

"Now, we're aware of the violence. It hasn't stopped us from going across.
But now ... you watch over your shoulder a little more than before," he
said. "Before, day or night, you wouldn't be worried. Now, you're just more
careful."

The violence in Nuevo Laredo has raised the fear factor. Southbound
pedestrian traffic across Laredo's international bridges fell by nearly
162,000 in 2005 and northbound traffic dropped by nearly a million.

"The publicity over the explosion of violence in Nuevo Laredo has had an
effect," said Patricia Taylor, executive director of the Laredo Convention
and Visitors Bureau. "The group tour market - those who come to Laredo for
shopping and tourism in Mexico - has essentially dried up. It's not the
largest sector of our visitor market, but it has had an impact on some
Laredo hotels."

State tourism data show that hotel occupancy in Laredo remains a healthy 70
percent.

"We have consciously decided to develop new tourism markets - for example,
focusing on the Hispanic market, something we haven't done before," Taylor
said. "Nuevo Laredo is devastated. Much of its business is hurting, while
we're experiencing a healthy renewal."

One of the first questions visitors ask, Taylor said, is how safe it is
across the river. She answers with commonsense advice on where to go and
when, she says. But concern for violence is always in the back of the
conversation.

"There's no way we can separate the two sides - if Nuevo Laredo hurts, we
hurt," she said. "We know what unites us and what divides us but we now have
a chance to show what Laredo really is. On the border, life is always about
making adjustments."

But Taylor, like Mayor Flores and virtually anyone you talk to in Laredo,
stresses that Laredo will not abandon Nuevo Laredo to its fate.

"We really are two cities with one heart," she said. "The violence will one
day go away. But we will still be standing with Nuevo Laredo."

The linkage between the cities is perhaps best symbolized by the $24 million
El Portal project. Roughly half finished, it will create a revitalized
crossing point adjacent to Bridge No. 1, the oldest crossing point in
Laredo.

The complex is conceived as a new pedestrian crossing point consisting of
retail shops, fountains and sun-drenched plazas that feed into the bridge
and a covered walkway into Mexico. El Portal will also use smart-card
technology, much like that used in the New York subway system, to speed the
cross-border traffic for both nations.

"This is not only a catalyst to revitalize downtown, but it brings the river
into focus as a connection to Nuevo Laredo, not a barrier," said Laredo
Assistant City Manager Rafael Garcia. "For generations, we've taken it for
granted. Now, we've brought the river crossing back into our lives and it
will be beautiful."

Discussions of Laredo's future are often clouded by the drug battles just
across the river. But opposing camps agree on one thing: The U.S. government
must step up efforts to improve border security.

"Is Laredo safe? Yes. But we can't ignore that the violence is here and it's
here now," Sheriff Flores said. "We work hard to keep it down, but we can't
do it alone."

Flores recently joined other members of the Border Sheriffs Coalition to
testify before a congressional hearing in Washington in an appeal for
increased federal spending for border security.

The coalition has already received about $9 million from Texas Gov. Rick
Perry as part of a border initiative. About a third was spent to improve
radio communications among the 16 Texas border counties. The remainder was
divided evenly among the member sheriffs. Flores used his $370,000 to outfit
his deputies with body armor and automatic rifles.

Trevino of the Chamber of Commerce stresses that a balanced approach between
economic development and public safety will benefit both cities.

"If there is a positive spin, it will bring more awareness about Mexico's
importance to the United States. It will, I hope, let us find ways to help
Mexico deal with its problems," he said. "If a neighbor's house is burning,
it's in your best interest to help them put out the fire."

--
www.border101.org

Somewhere in Texas, TX: To Laredo!

After three months back home, I finally made my way back to Laredo. 'Course the mode of transportation wasn't by bicycle. I had left ol' bikey in a heap of spokes and gears, rotting in a friend's office. What a good friend to put up with such a stench.

At any rate, I took only the finest transportation back to Texas: Greyhound. Twenty-two hours of fun. To sum up my thoughts on the matter, I wrote the following in my notes: "Greyhound buses aren't made for adults. If anything, they're made of packrats with short attention spans." Now, I would add "and no legs".

As a basis for comparison, you should view this clip A with the subsequent (next) clip B.

If there's a step below economy class, is it just called "bike"?

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Tucson, AZ: raindrops on the sidewalk

How many days without measurable rainfall in Tucson and Phoenix? The state's going to be a tinder box this summer.

Either which way, I enjoyed it when I had it.

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Tucson, AZ: a partial response to Chuck

This post has roots somewhere else, but I think that it's applicable to our conversations, Mr. Chuck Josephson, my good friend from Tucson. If you've read about my previous posts on Shanti Sellz, you know that NMD is involved in a big defense suit of what they say is the right to provide humanitarian aid. Federal prosecutors claim that such aid--taking debiltated migrants in need of medical attention to hospitals--contributes and furthers the presence of undocumented persons in the states. The argument is that, when migrants are healthy enough to venture out of hospitals, they do. They finish off the journey.

Here we get into a mixed bag of arguments:

What about healthcare? Migrants don't pay for healthcare.

It's true that many undocumented individuals don't pay for emergency health services such as these. According to one source, Pima County (Tucson down) absorbed seventy-six million dollars in treatement costs in year 2000 (that's the only figure that I have off-hand). One third of that cost, however, was attributed to undocumented immigrants.

Argument: Then these people should go to jail. They're costing taxpayers money, and they're helping migrants into the U.S. 

If this is the solution, you might as well arrest the Border Patrol as well. B.P. agents often dump migrants off in hospitals and care facilities, leaving them to absorb the expenses.

Argument: But these folks are the government, not private citizens who might have personal, even ideological reasons for their actions. NMD just wants to bring everybody across the line.

One would hope that NMD volunteers are hanging out in the middle of the desert in the summer for personal reasons. Again, like their name indicates, they want to save lives. One of the things to keep in perspective is this: last summer, NMD volunteers came across approximately 3,800 crossers. They brought sixty-eight to hospitals of churches with waiting medical professionals. Were they to want to bring everyone across the line, they're being pretty damn selective.

Argument: The very fact that NMD is out in the desert contributes to migrant crossing. Migrants know that they have people to help them, so they're that much more willing to make the journey. These groups are contributing to the very deaths that they're trying to prevent.

To be honest, I don't know what these migrants think. I'm going to do some work this summer to see how they feel about the volunteers, if they feel about them at all. My tentative responses is to say that migrants are going to cross anyway, with or without these volunteers.  If, say, volunteers with No More Deaths, Humane Borders or otherwise don't offer water, my guess is that migrants would die with greater frequency than in years previous.  

Tucson, AZ: the fast

I spent a lot of time around No More Deaths in Tucson. The group is a coalition of groups, a movement. As their name suggests, their goal is to save the lives of migrants crossing through Arizona's southern deserts. They offer humanitarian aid--water and medical attention--to crossers and drum up publicity to raise public consciousness of the thousands who have died since mid-1990s border militarization operations. Border policies pushed migrants from urban areas to more rural and dangerous corridors. Migrants are still coming across the line, but hundreds more are dying in the process.

No More Deaths is currently sponsor a forty-day fast for those who have died in the desert. The fast is concurrent with the Lenten season before Easter.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with N.M.D.'s ideolgical position, know that people have died in the desert and more will die. There should be a respect shown to these people because their is a dignity in their effort, most often a search for better jobs and better lives across the border. For those of you who know no sympathy for that, some deep and open reflection might help.

The site of N.M.D.'s fast is El Tiradito--literally "the castoff" or "the thrown away"--monument in an old neighborhood in Tucson. The monument is a humble reckoning of times long past, no more than adobe wall enriched only with local legends. Some passers-by stuff cracks in the walls with wishes writen on tiny slips of paper. Others light a candle or leave pictures of the Virgin Mary. Most come away, however, with a hope that a thought or prayer will be answered.

Along the wall now you will see the names of hundreds of migrants on notecards, if only for the hope that there will be no more.

At the clip of a service that you see here, this group voiced the presence of those dead, bones bagged or bleached by the sun, among the living.

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Outside Tucson, AZ: overlook

There are some things that 2-D and camera phone can't quiet catch. This clip is evidence.

On the way back from the trash pickup, our H.B. group stopped at an overlook. Greeting us in our unbounded awe was an equally unbounded, pristine Sonoran wilderness.

My friend Kevin and I managed to steal an afternoon at this same spot weeks before.

Hooray for the outskirts of Tucson.

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Ironwood Forest, AZ: chuckers

Twenty-one bags later, the Michiganders did their job.

They could have been out there for weeks, there was so much discard.

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Ironwood Forest, AZ: Sue

If Rev. Robin Hoover of Humane Borders is the "irreverent reverend", as I've suggested in other places, Sue Ann Goodman, his wife, is the "undercover mother"--relaxed, approachable and smiling.

My first impression of Sue was violet. Sue was violet. She was wearing a solid purple shirt when I, as per my usual m.o., barged my way into her office. She graciously offered me a seat, spoke with me for a few minutes about my project, and allowed me to invite myself into a visiting group's water run and trash pickup in the following days.

In a H.B. meeting later that week, Robin referred to his wife as "lavendar" for her like-colored shirt.

I'm inclined to think of Sue as an extremely patient woman, if not only for sparing moments for nomadic cyclists and allowing for self-references by hue.

In this way, I suppose that you can think of Sue as the beautiful desert flower, lavendar, to her husband's at-times prickly cactus.

Sue does a lot of the behind-the-scenes work to keep the organization running.
Sue is a nine-to-fiver, seven days a week. When Robin is away, she becomes the voice of H.B, and she leads a lot of groups even when he's in town.

This clip is of her explaining to the Michigan group why they're out in the middle of nowhere, what they're supposed to do in the middle of nowhere and how far they can go in the middle of nowhere.

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Organ Pipe, AZ: a "barrowing" journey

A clip of a student group from Michigan rolling wheelbarrows full of water jugs to a nearby water station. The group came down for their spring break to both work with and learn from folks at Humane Borders.

Here, H.B. staff put young bodies to good work, hauling wheelbarrows to fill up four fifty-eight gallon drums.

The water is for migrants crossing through the deserts of southern Arizona.

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Ajo, AZ: 'round the bend

I managed to finagle my way into a Humane Borders water run, along with a visiting group from Michigan and Jody, my driver and partner for the day. A regular fly on the wall, I am.

We took three trucks: one staff, three volunteers, nine Michigan students, and me. Our task: fill up two water stations in the deserts of the Organ Pipe National Monument.

Under the direction of Rev. Robin Hoover, Humane Borders fills up 72 stations throughout southern Arizona and New Mexico and northern Mexico. Despite what I might have said in prior posts, H.B. has pumped over 70,000 gallons of water into their stations over a five-year period. With an operating budget of a little more than $130,000 in 2005 (up from $50,000 from its first year, 2005), the organization is looking to expand. Expect greater cooperation with governments on both sides of the border and, of course, more water stations.

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Laredo, TX: evening reflections on the first day back

After a little more than three months, I hopped on my bike and began to ride again. I suppose that I expected some awkwardness or weird feeling that I shouldn't be doing what I was doing. Instead, this was my first thought: "It's like riding a bike again."

I didn't feel--nor do I still--any nostalgia for this trip. There was no excitement when I started pedaling. No awe.  Just movement.   I’ve been reminded that this project is bigger than me.  It’s about the stories of the people of the borderlands, whose voices are often not heard.  This is a project about farmers and post office workers, migrants and priests, sons and schoolteachers--their lives, their stories, their loves, their losses.

This is a project for you.  If you can’t come to the border, I’ll bring it to you.  You deserve to hear from the people along the border.

Tucson, AZ: the bike story

A story told to me by Roy, a man from southeast Arizona whom I met at a film screening.

There was this guy. Every weekend for years and years, he would ride his bicycle across the border into Mexico. Suspecting that the man was up to no good, customs agents checked him from head to toe every time he crossed. They were convinced that he was trafficking some type of contraband, but they could never find a thing. The dude swore up and down that he wasn't a smuggler, just a cycling enthusiast on the way to visit family.

The man decided to move to the east coast. By this time, he and
customs officers struck up a kind of awkward, joking friendship. On his last trip across the line, the agents poked, prodded and cajolled, promising him that if he told them, just this once, his decades-long secret, they would let him cross unchecked.

"So what was it?" they asked, exasperated. "What were you bringing across all these years?"

The man drew up a wry smile. "Bicycles."

--
www.border101.org