Complicity

As many of you know, I’m currently immersed in my thesis research in the Arizona desert, and I’ve spent the last week with No More Deaths, the humanitarian aid group I worked with last summer. I’m in Tucson for the evening, and there are some things I’d like to share with all you lovely people. The following may take a few minutes to read and may be a little heavy, but I hope you’ll read it through.What I really want to do is explain the severity and complexity of the migrant experience (“the” as if there were only one…) As I attempt this in my head, however, I realize it’s a silly task—I can’t even comprehend the experiences of migrants, so how can I relay that concept to you? Thus, I am going to attempt to explain things through my eyes, with all the biases that includes, and hope that it does something for your understanding (and my mental well-being).
All the volunteers here go out twice a day to hike the migrant trails along the border with food, water, medical supplies, and a friendly face. As I write to you now my legs are painted in shades of black, blue, purple and green from various rocky climbs, and all my limbs are marked with red lines from thorns and other things that draw blood in the desert. My shoulders are happy for the brief reprieve from carrying the pack of supplies, and my arms are glad not to be clutching gallons of water for an afternoon hike. My whole body is grateful that tomorrow morning I will not have to climb into the bed of a truck after a 3-hour hike and, in an attempt to evade the potent sun, throw a wet bandana over my face and a hat on top of that all while begging the truck to make the hour-long drive back shorter than physically possible. Yet even if I were set to do all of this in the morning, even if all of this and more were taking place just like every other morning and afternoon—this would be nothing. My physical and emotional strains are nothing compared to those of other individuals out here.
So how do I find a way to share this experience, with all its facets? I’m falling back on photos a lot. I can show you all the images of trails, water bottles, food wrappers, clothing, shoes, backpacks, etc., that tell the stories of the migrants passing through and the land that is absorbing them. I will share with you the endearing images of the shrines to saints that migrants create along the way as a small place of comfort in an entirely uncertain situation. Even more powerful is seeing the shrines along the trails that have accumulated in memory of those who took in their last breaths as they moved north through the desert. I very much want to share with you these visual records and to pair with them my own experiences, but in this something is missing. This form of recollection and education is incomplete because I cannot share with you the most important images and associated feelings.
I cannot show you the man whose foot was entirely purple and swollen from a severe sprain, a man who only wanted the ankle wrapped so he could continue walking. There is no way for me to make you understand the sacrifice a second man—a total stranger to the first man—made when he traded shoes so that the man with the purple, swollen ankle could have better footwear. I wish I could allow you to see the perfect faces of this second man’s children. His five year-old who spent a morning vomiting because they had to drink brown water from a cattle tank, and then spent an afternoon drawing pictures with a grin across his face and life back in his eyes. Or, his even younger daughter who was such a tiny wisp of a thing, slipping about in her bright pink dress. I can’t tell you what it’s like to hear their cries as they sleep, nor can I even imagine how their mother kept herself together while comforting them.
There’s no way to explain the faces of a group of men and women as you hand them the hummus, tomato, and Gouda sandwiches (such extravagancies, even when they’re donated food, seem ridiculous in context) that had been packed as a dinner picnic, nor the sense of guilt that comes in that moment. For them to be so grateful for a sandwich and water, when as fellow human beings we should be giving them so much more…
In contexts outside of this work, I often hear that these migrants are lazy, that they are taking the easy way (instead of jumping through the massive financial and legal hoops required for the unlikely-to-be-realized chance at coming in the legal way). As someone who has been beaten down by snippets of exposure to this realm (and all while adequately clothed, fed, rested, and hydrated, which is not the case for the migrants), I can assure you that this is no easy way.
I have to believe that the people who suggest migrants are merely falling into laziness have not spent much time in the desert. If nothing else, I have to believe they have not encountered the most gruesome evidence out here: the rape trees. If you shuddered just now, as I certainly did, it is with good reason. The thing itself is as hideous as the name. The incidence of rape for migrants crossing this desert is so high as to be incomprehensible, and yet the disgusting behavior does not end there. Those who rape women in this desert are not merely content to commit the grossest, most vile act that humanity has conceived of—they go so far as to brag about their absolute lack of respect for other human beings. Along the trails we encounter mesquite trees with bras or women’s underwear displayed prominently in the branches—often, we are told, this is a trophy for the one who committed the rape. They take a tree—normally a chance for rest and shade, and for many cultures a symbol of life—and reduce it to a display for that which humanity should feel the deepest shame. To come across one of these trees, to stand there and know what likely took place in that spot, is beyond chilling. Assault in any context is horrifying, and to imagine the circumstances these women lived through—truly, we can’t begin to comprehend. And so when someone suggests that migrants are taking the easy way into the U.S., it takes a load of self-restraint not to explode with the details of a million stories that I don’t know, that I can never know, in order to show the immense falsity in this illusion of “the easy way.”
This is where I am at currently. I would love to talk with any of you who are interested in issues I’ve mentioned here, or any others directly or abstractly linked. I will be back in town or elsewhere with cell reception from June 29 until July 28. I hope you’re all well, as always.
Shalom,
Rachel