Clearly there is no way I can compile one list of all the relevant stories I might have to tell from two different spring break trips and a summer spent in Arizona. This is a list of a few stories that I’ve found that illustrate certain useful points, from my time actually on the U.S./Mexico border in Nogales, Agua Prieta, and Arivaca. Names have been changed, for privacy.
-Alejandra and her daughters, ages 12 and 14, were dumped by a Wackenhut bus, deported to the streets of Nogales alone at night, and covered in scrapes and scratches. Biatriz, the 12 year old, needed a rehydration IV, but getting to the hospital was unrealistic. We fed her suero (a rehydration solution) and watched her as she slept to her recovery. He mother, while cleaning her own cuts, burst into tears watching her daughter sleep. As a medic, I was concerned that Biatriz would drop into a state of unconsciousness, and monitored her closely while working with the other two.
-Julianna sat at the back of a room of men, trying to eat. Shaking, crying, and holding her stomach, trying to get herself to eat a few bites. I sat down next to her and asked her if I could ask her some questions. I quickly learned that she hadn’t eaten or been to the bathroom in three days, and the last thing she did eat (three days ago) was a Mexican fruit similar to a sweet cucumber. Deciding that she needed more rehydration than the suero I could provide, she and I decided to go to the hospital. Her group of eight friends, who she had met earlier that day and who had taken her under their wing, decided to come with us and we all rode there in the bed of a pickup truck.
-A 14 year old boy whose name I don’t remember had with him only a grocery bag of snacks he’d been given at El Comedor (the soup kitchen). He taught me that it takes four days to train-hop from Hondorus. He said he’d been sleeping down by the tracks because it was safer than sleeping in the cemetery where many slept and were beat up and robbed in the night.
-Jose Gonzales had a teardrop tattoo on his cheek that corresponded with the tattoo of his father’s date of birth and date of death on his arm. He made all the No More Deaths volunteers bracelets in the style that he learned in prison. I treated his blisters and told him that I would put light tape on them the days he was in town, and a more heavy duty tape (duct tape, actually) the day he was leaving. The day before he left, and I patched his feet extra thoroughly and sent him on his way with some bandages for the road and a hearty cuidate mucho (take good care of yourself).
-Juan from El Salvador, or Salvadorian Juan as we knew him, put his heart into the soup kitchen and was a vital part of making it run smoothly. Loved by all the nuns and eaters alike, he began to look worse and worse as he came in every morning. Telling us that he was being harassed sleeping in the cemetery, he said he was leaving soon. He waved goodbye one day and walked behind the mariposa tent, and I never saw him again. El Salvador forever. I hope that Juan is somewhere alive and happy.
-One of my friends from LA said that, one time, she was telling someone about her work with No More Deaths, and he pulled a piece of plastic out of his wallet. It said suerte on it (good luck), and he said it was from a No More Deaths bottle that he found in the desert while crossing.
-There are shrines in the desert to the Virgin of Guadalupe. There is also a four-foot, heavy wooden grim reaper placed in the desert by a migrant, a shrine to all the death that they know they are walking through.