The Migrant Trail 2008

Sásabe, Sonora, México to Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A.
26 May-1 June 2008
75 miles over 7 days

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On Wednesday, May 28th, 2008, I was walking in silence through the desert of Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, one of the most heavily-traveled migrant trails just miles from the Mexico-U.S. border. It was our third day on the Trail, but the first time that we walked quietly to reflect on the killing fields that surrounded us.

The refuge is just that: a swath of seemingly pastoral desert highlands where hundreds have died since the implementation of Operation Gatekeeper in 1994. In the Tucson sector of the border (most of Arizona excluding the Yuma region), there were 237 deaths between October 2006 and September 2007. To date, La Coalición de Derechos Humanos has listed 76 deaths in Arizona, a number that will dramatically increase as the summer’s heat intensifies.

I knew these facts well already. After my first experience on the Migrant Trail last year, I read everything I could to learn more. Yet I still found myself thinking in our silence, “How do I tell this story? How do I do their stories justice when I return home?” Really, how do I talk about this politically-charged issue in which both sides largely ignore the human tragedy taking place in our deserts? How might I speak for those voices now silenced?

My frustrations in articulating what I had seen and learned last year were further compounded this year. While I had felt last year’s trail in a much more physical way, this one brought with it much emotional and spiritual pain. Certainly, these were aspects I had thought a lot about, but several incidents led me to experience them on a much deeper level.

Last year, we walked aware of those 2,000-3,000 migrants in the Altar Valley corridor all around us, but saw only what they had left behind. This year, we came face to face with them. On the second day of the walk, two young male migrants from Mexico walked into our camp asking for help. They had seen us the night before in our camp overlooking the border station at Sásabe. They had been with a larger group, crossing with the help of a coyote/pollero. The Border Patrol’s helicopter came upon their group, and they all scattered in various directions to avoid apprehension. The two men joined up with two women in the group, and had been moving aimlessly together since the night before.

They came to our camp because the two women they were with could move no more. They needed food and water. The men saw our blue shade tents, and decided to come to us for help. After giving them all they needed, several of the group’s leaders went with them to bring aide (medical, food, water) to the women. They were gone for over two hours, walking a short distance, but up and down hills, through cactus, sharp mesquite branches…. By the time the small group arrived at the spot where the women had been, there was no one there. We will never know what happened to these women. Were they picked up by the Border Patrol? Did they move on on their own in spite of fatigue and injury? Will they become part of this summer’s death toll?

Two days later, I had jumped ahead of our group (now walking along the Sásabe-Tucson highway) to help serve snacks at one of our full stops. One of the women in our group came to me to ask for 10 portions of food for a group of migrants ahead of us. I scrambled in the food trailer to find what might help to sustain them while the mercury pushed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Again, I have no idea what has become of them, or if they managed to survive that inhospitable desert.

With these two encounters, I heard and saw just a fraction of the stories of the migrants surrounding me during the week I was in the desert. I will never know what became of the migrants, and I pray that their journeys ended well, and not in death.

This year’s walk also underlined the precarious nature of human life in the desert. Several in the group returned home after heat exhaustion during the first days of our walk. Others had to leave camp because of other ailments, exponentially worsened in the heat of the afternoon. The phrase “No tenemos agua” in this context was not a simple observation—it was cause for panic. Simply put, problems that can easily be resolved normally become grave dangers out there. The spiny Sonoran Desert indiscriminately denies even the most basic of human needs.

As I continued my walk, signs of death followed me into Tucson. I almost vomited one morning walking by the rotting carcass of a coyote on the side of the road. We all stepped over the body of a beautiful cardinal. Along the highway there were signs placed in memory of loved ones and crosses that marked roadside fatalities. And all around us was that desert, a desert I love dearly, but a desert that has taken and will take the lives of many. Along this stretch, I could not stop my tears from falling. And with them, I wondered again how to find the words to express what I was feeling and seeing.

I found little solace on the walk, save for the hope I took in knowing that so many are working to end the tragedy in our borderlands: Humane Borders, Border Angels, No More Deaths, Coloradans for Immigrant Rights, and others. I have met and walked alongside many of those who have committed their lives to effecting change. I also found relief in the smiles, conversations, and prayers shared with my fellow travelers. I am most grateful to Brother David Buer, a Franciscan friar from San Xavier del Bac Mission, who invited me and my two closest friends on the trip (Dan Abbott and Nathaniel Gephart) to share in his evening prayers. The comforting words of the Psalms, and our intercessory prayers for migrants, our families, friends, and fellow walkers countered the pains we confronted during the day.

The last day of both walks has been the most difficult for me. My body had been pushed to its limits for a week, and our last six miles seemed the most painful. This year, the emotional toll was larger to me, too. Perhaps it was because I knew and saw more than I had previously. Where was I supposed to put all of this pain once the Trail had come to an end?

I was honored to have my family join me during the last miles, but this joy was muted by the single cry of a passing car: “Kill all those Mexicans!” In our borderlands, we already are.

As I walked the last yards into Kennedy Park in Tucson, I had already begun to cry. My last steps of the walk were towards the large cross the group carries throughout the walk. The word PRESENTE is inscribed. I was towards the end of the group, and was holding the two crosses I had been carrying with me since leaving the mass in Mexico. I yelled “Desconocido,” and the group responded with “Presente!” I put down Desconocido, and then stood up to yell “Hector Alfonso Estrada Figueroa,” a man who died at age 43 in his journey northward. When the group responded again with “Presente!,” I began to sob. I said goodbye to my traveling companions there, knowing so little about them, even less about the conditions of their deaths in Arizona.

After the press conference, 11 of the walkers and I participated in a foot washing ceremony. I sat between Rubén and Pedro, two men who selflessly helped the group throughout the week and to whom I felt very close. As Father Bob Carney washed our feet, I continued to cry, overwhelmed by all that I had seen in previous week. I held the hands of the men next to me, common witnesses to our experiences. After a delicious lunch, and welcoming hugs from loved ones, it was time to go home.

And here I am. Safe and sound at home, albeit with a few muscle aches in my calves and some remnants of a nasty heat rash. My hands don’t look like mine as I type this—they are darker than I have ever seen them from the week in the sun. But I am fine, fine except for the burden of the stories I feel compelled to tell, no matter the eloquence I might lack in its telling.

This walk is a pilgrimage for me, a way in which I bear witness to human tragedy in the land I still call home. I walk as a Christian, and remember the words of my faith tradition that call for hospitality, compassion, and justice for the stranger in our midst. I remember my own migrations, and how much they differ from the ones taken by thousands across our southern border. I am shamed that my home actively refuses these simple gentle acts to our own neighbors.

The spiritual calling to side with migrants (by no means limited to Christianity) also requires me to tell the parts of this story that are purposefully ignored or left out. Those who have died in the American deserts crossing did not simply do so on a whim. There are some who suggest that if they had stayed home or legally immigrated, none of these deaths would occur. That logic is deceptively easy and clear, but it does not take into account that conditions in the migrants’ home countries may in fact leave them no choice. Many make the arduous, and sometimes fatal journey to the U.S. because they want to live, they want their families to live. Staying home in Nicaragua, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador may mean certain misery. Why not then respond to the promises of the North? Some ask further why they do not take legal paths to legitimate work in the U.S.? To this I respond again that their own financial circumstances at home or our policies may not leave them that choice. However, if they can just get over that fence and through that desert....

If indeed.

I reach the end of this knowing that I have not done justice in my storytelling here. There is so much more to say, so much more to do. I pray with every bit of me that my own journeys through the desert help move others towards a different understanding of this issue, one that moves away from rhetorical snorts and shouting matches in immigration debates today. There are human beings at the heart of this all. Let us not forget them.

Let us remember them. Remember Desconocido. Remember Hector Alfonso Estrada Figueroa. Remember their stories.

--Christi Brookes, 3 June 2008

To see my other pictures from the walk, please visit this site.