febrero: A night in the desert

Although it is impossible for us to truly wrap our mind around the reality of the experience of crossing the desert, I am going to take a stab at it. This is written based on what I have learned from talking with migrants at the border retreat, talking with close friends in Mexico who have family working in the US, and talking to people who went through this reality. This is not one person's story, this is a collage of the stories of hundreds. This is my attempt to give a voice to the silent workers that live and work among us.

Imagine if you will...

Working in Mexico, long hours of back-breaking work, horrible conditions, and all for $5 USD per day. Several kids waiting at home with hungry bellies. $5 is not enough. After meals, they are still hungry. You struggle with how that feels as a parent; you are not able to support your family, your blood, the ones you love. You find different jobs but encounter the same reality. Just not enough money.

Eventually you make the heart-breaking decision to leave. You ask every relative, friend, and neighbor to help you raise the overwhelming funds needed to cross the desert. Thanks to increased border measures, the average coyote these days charges $3000 USD to lead a migrant through the desert. On top of that, one must include the transportation to get from home to the border, the costs of food and housing in the meantime, start up costs when arriving in the US, and the inevitable fees that the coyote will include. You make $5 per day. How are you ever going to get this money?

After miracles occur, people come to your aid, and the money is raised you say goodbye to your spouse and your kids with no idea of when you will come back. You walk away from everything you know of home, knowing that you might not survive the crossing and never see your family again.

You get to the border, nervous and anxious and undoubtedly scared. You have a backpack, sturdy shoes, a baseball hat, a warm coat, a few bottles of suero (Pedialite), two gallons of water, some fruit, and painkillers. You wait for the coyote, sometimes for less than a day and sometimes for several days. Your emotions start to pile on top of each other, magnifying with every glimpse in the eyes of the other hopeful migrants waiting to embark on the same journey. While waiting in the border town, you stay at a migrant guest house. The conditions are difficult, but will be better than the desert. You sleep in bunk-beds made of large pieces of plywood that fits your body and four other migrants on each level. You might get a pillow and a blanket, but maybe not. Each level of plywood-supported migrants makes you question your choice and your future.

Time to cross. You climb into a large van with other migrants and the coyote. You drive nearly 90 kilometers to a closer border city. Your group has an option of route with a trade-off of risk of getting caught vs. length of time. Crossings can last anywhere between three to fifteen days, with nothing more than your backpack of supplies. Your coyote makes sure that everyone is ready and your group leaves that night to start the desert crossing. Your group blindly starts the trek, at a jogging pace, with no flashlights or guidance besides the moonlight and the coyote. Your blood is surging, your adrenaline soaring, and your hopes fighting to stay alive. You do not stop until morning. During the days, your adrenaline slows and the exhaustion rises and the sun rises in the desert sky. After one day, your supplies are not sufficient. You are thirsty. The sun sets, it is time to jog again. Blindly. Someone runs into a cactus and the group grudgingly slows to allow the migrant to pull out pinky-length needles. Fear. What about the rattlesnakes, the scorpions, the deadly spiders, and the packs of coyotes following our group in the near distance. What about the Border Patrol that might catch us and make all that money, all those days waiting, all the nights in the desert worth nothing. Cactus is just one of the many dangers. The sun starts to rise. The sun in unrelenting and your thirst is piercing your throat. Your feet are throbbing and blistered. Your stomach is empty and painfully wanting food that does not exist. Dizzy. Faint. You keep going because you must. What other choice is there? This continues for one or several days more.

If you are unlucky, you get caught or you die a slow death of dehydration in the hot, desert sun. Your family is still hungry and alone. If you survived, you will try again and again and again and again until you can't find the hope to cross again. You will return to your family and find yourself even further in the depths of desperation and poverty.

If you are lucky, you make it into the United States. You might have friends or family that is waiting for you with a job and a place to stay. You don't speak the language and feel lost and drowning in a place that flows around you like riptides. You are openly discriminated, told to go home, and even your work pays you less than your US-American counterparts... but the job is better than anything you could have ever found at home. You send home money and make phone calls to your family. You find a group of friends, perhaps Latino that speak your language and understand your struggles as a migrant in the US. You are always afraid of being caught. If there are changes in the job administration, you fear getting found out and losing your job. If you get hurt, you do everything possible to avoid going to the hospital and getting caught. You are careful of always following the laws of a country that wants to reject you. You miss your family, you miss home, you miss what is familiar and you have no idea when you are going to return. The trip to the US was so difficult that you cannot return after seasonal work is over, you cannot return to visit your family. You stay. You don't know how long. Until the family has enough food and can start saving. Until you can build a roof on your house. Until your kids have enough money to go to the doctor. Until your kids can go to school. Until... You stay because you can't find this work at home. You stay because you risked your life to get here. You stay because you can't imagine crossing again. You stay because the "tightened border security" keeps you in. You live outside of yourself. This is not life, this is work. What gives you life is miles away and separated by a Wall and the Border Patrol and a desert that claims hundreds of lives every year.