RCWP Janice Sevre-Duszynska during June 9 liturgy in Cincinnati, Ohio. The empty gallon jugs are symbolic of the eight gallons of water required for a migrant to barely survive the Sonoran Desert and cross over into the U.S. in Tucson, Arizona. The eighth gallon jug was next to the lectern.
Before I was ordained a deacon on the boat in Pittsburgh in 2006, I went into the wilderness to honor my former students who were migrants from Mexico and Central America. I used the following updated essay as part of the homily for our monthly community liturgy in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 9th.
by Janice Sevre-Duszynska
Sonoran Desert folk say that before one dies in the desert – from extreme heat and dehydration – he becomes delusional. He strips off his clothes and covers himself in the sand, heating himself up even further. As his body gives way, scorpions, spiders, insects, snakes and animals invade as the huge turkey vultures swoop down and begin their meal.
Since 1994, with the implementation of the North American Free-Trade Agreement and U.S. border policies which channel migrants to the deadliest part of the Sonoran Desert, it is estimated that more than 5,000 migrants from Mexico and Central America have died here on the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona/Sonora. Many succumb to unbearable temperatures above 110 degrees. Others are never found as they dissolve into that which is part of the desert.
"Today, as we celebrate the 520th weekly community vigil, ten years of bearing witness to the human casualties of the deadly border policies of militarization and enforcement imposed on border communities, we cannot help but continue to ask when this madness will stop," says Kat Rodriguez, Coordinator of the Tucson-based Coalicion de Derechos Humanos (The Coalition of Human Rights), a non-governmental organization.
The continued increase in the recovery of skeletal remains indicates that more individuals are being funneled into more isolated and desolate terrain of the Arizona-Sonora border, the organization reports. Said Rodriguez: "This ‘Funnel Effect,’ which has been documented by the Binational Migration Institute, has shown that the practice of sealing traditional crossing points ultimately pushes migration into the deadliest areas. The extent of this crisis is not known as the numbers of human remains recovered in neighboring states are not available."
On Sunday, May 30, in an act of solidarity with migrants and to raise awareness of their plight, people from across the country and world participated in the sixth annual Migrant Trail Walk, a 75-mile, seven-day trek from Sasabe-Sonora to Tucson. In 2006, I participated in the week-long walk as a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team and BorderLinks, an interfaith educational community in Tucson.
Our walk was nothing like the gauntlet of death migrants face. The 130 of us who participated were accompanied by support vehicles, unlimited amounts of food and water provided by interfaith communities and medical attention. Still, it was challenging to walk many miles each day in the unrelenting sun.
"Where are you from?" asked the U.S. Border agent. After showing him our drivers’ license, we symbolically gave up our identifications – as migrants do – by placing them in a metal box.
In Sasabe, we crossed the border into Mexico and gathered in a church to pray and be blessed on our pilgrimage by the local priest. Like the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, the body on the cross in the Catholic church here was of Christ as an indigenous migrant refugee...
Twelve people picked up three coffins, remembering the women, men and children who have died in the desert. Tohono O’odham Indians Maria and Jim, a married couple, blew a sage incense blessing through an eagle feather to each one of us. In their consecration, they evoked The Grandmother and Grandfather and displayed a string with 282 ribbons – one for everyone who died in the borderland in 2005. Then we each took a wooden white-painted cross with the name and date-of-death of a migrant. I chose one of a desconocida, an unknown woman who died in the desert heat that year. On the other side was the word "Presente." What we held up in our hands represented the life and death of another human being.
As we wandered further into the desert, we felt haunted. All around us were signs of our migrant sisters and brothers, Christ the refugee: bandanas, discarded clothing, shoes and boots, baseball-style caps, cowboy hats, ski caps to keep warm on cold nights, blankets, paper refuse from fast food places, and more, including an uncountable amount of empty gallon jugs, many with ropes tied to them. To keep hydrated, we were to drink two to three gallons of water each day. A migrant would need around eight gallons of water to barely survive the desert and cross over...
It’s typical for migrants to cross the border at dusk when the night vision surveillance doesn’t catch them and the buster lights haven’t been turned on. They often travel at night under The Milky Way while the whirligig sound of searching helicopters pierces the quiet desert sky. They journey until the early morning when they’ll lie low in the unforgiving heat of the desert bush where rattlesnakes are common. The Border Patrol watches them on radar in their office through cameras called "cherry pickers," which resemble the "Imperial Wookies" from the movie Return of the Jedi. Their heat sensors can detect movement thousands of times smaller than what we see. Migrants must face the desert’s many trails where it’s easy to lose one’s way. There are quick floods called "washes" 2-10 feet deep in the canyons and fierce "dust devil" storms that swirl for 20 minutes at a time. If they are caught by the Border Patrol, migrants face the possibility of mistreatment. Beatings have been reported, and withholding of water and food at detention centers is not uncommon.
During the week of our walk, six bodies of migrants were found in the desert. Desert folk say that for each body found in the desert, others never will. On the Sunday morning after we trekked our last 6.7 miles into Tucson, some of us participated in a "die-in" in front of the Border Patrol office there. We mourned the "dead" as if they were our migrant mothers, fathers, children.
Millions of Mexican farmers lost their small farms and ability to sustain themselves when NAFTA was passed in 1994. They could not compete with the cheap subsidized corn that was coming in from the U.S. and Canada. In order to survive they went north to the U.S. for service jobs.
In March, former President Bill Clinton apologized for forcing Haiti to drop tariffs on imported subsidized rice, which came about during his presidency with the passage of NAFTA and CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement). The latter destroyed Haitian rice farming and severely damaged its self-sufficiency. It appears he was regretting both CAFTA and NAFTA.
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