El Paso - Daniela Medrano

I woke up extra early one morning while we were in El Paso. I headed south from Casa Puente, thinking I’d eventually hit the border wall. Instead I found myself in front of Cesar Chavez highway staring at cargo trains pass along the border of El Paso and Juarez.

It was an odd sight since I was getting used to seeing high walls and fences. As my curiosity took me further, I came across El Centro de Trabajadores Agricolas (day labor center). There were men sleeping on the ground and others drinking and talking amongst themselves. I met Ruben, a man who had no shame in letting me know he was an alcoholic. “Soy alcoholico pero muy trabajador”, he said. Him and four other men were sitting and talking together, waiting to enter the center in order to shower and eat a warm meal before getting picked up to work. Ruben pointed to my Chicago Bulls sweater and asked if I was from the same place as Michael Jordan. I confirmed that I was from Chicago and that it was my first time in El Paso. He asked the question I always dread answering, “y que estas haciendo aqui?” I told him I was part of “el programa de estudios fronterizos” and before I could explain what the Border Studies Program was, the four men he was sitting with began to run away.

I was really confused and unsure if I should run after them to try to explain that I wasn’t the migra. Fortunately, Ruben hadn’t run away from me and explained that he had a work permit but the other men did not. He also made sure to tell me that if he hadn’t had a permit, he might have also run away from me. It was 6 in the morning, a time most people are still sleeping and somehow a 5 foot tall girl managed to scare away 4 grown men with the mere mention of the border.

Being undocumented in America, not just in El Paso is a fear people have to constantly live with. I can’t imagine adding the fear of deportation to all the other fears society imposes on us. People shouldn’t have to be afraid to go to work, walk down the street, or drive their car. The criminalization of undocumented immigrants is a psychological form of structural violence and it’s almost humorous to think that a train track divides the most dangerous city in the world and one of the “safest” cities in the United States.

Who is “safe” in El Paso? Clearly undocumented people in El Paso do not feel safe. So how can any city in The United States call itself safe when large populations within it live in fear every day?

Poema - Daniela Medrano

Yo soy el que manda, yo puedo destruirte

Yo te quito todo, para mi tu no existes

Inmigrante de manos suicias! Que rabia me das

Yo inicio guerra, pero yo solo quiero paz

Yo te tengo confundido, yo quiero darte trabajo

Construyeme una mansion, despues vete al carrajo

Yo no quiero tus costumbres, quiero tu diversidad

No quiero que tus hijos atiendan universidad

Yo no quiero ver tu cara, solo quiero adoptar tu estilo de arte

Quiero tomar tus ideas pero ni un centavo darte

Porque no te rindes? Inmigrante muerto de hambre!

The End - Michelle Jahnke

Our classes are over, our papers are (mostly) finished, we're leaving for the final retreat at the beach on Monday. I can't help but marvel at how fast we got here. My Border Studies journey has been especially long; I'm one of the two loquitas who decided to stay for both the fall and spring semester. This has been a life-changing experience. I've experienced the harsh beauty of the borderlands. I've felt anger at the violence and oppression we all live and I've channeled that rage into loud protests and marches. My view of the world has been shattered and I'm in the process of putting back the pieces in a way that feels more right to me now. I've become brown and proud. I've been adopted into two new families and grown closer with my own mamá as I've come to better understand our own migration story. I have been blown away by the strength and wisdom of Guatemalan campesina ex-guerrillera mothers. I want to be a revolutionary organizer midwife farmer. I've fallen in love with the desert. I have walked inside a dream at a zapatista caracol and I will always have that feeling to guide me abajo y a la izquierda, tierradentro toward the roots and the heart.

I just want to express my gratitude to the many teachers who have started me on this lifelong process of growth. Thank you for everything you've done for me.

Border Studies is (finally) ending. Now the real work begins.

Welcome to the United Snakes - Maddie Campbell

This is a movie I made as part of my final project for Riley Merline's "Roots and Routes of Migration" class.

The Guerreros - Kalila Zunes-Wolfe

Last Friday my parents came to visit and took me camping. On our way to northern Arizona, we stopped in Mesa, near Phoenix, to spend some time with some old social justice activist friends of theirs. We met them almost 20 years ago at Holden Village, a secluded Lutheran retreat center that has hosts workshops, speakers, arts and crafts fairs, etc. during summers. (The chaplain there that summer actually happened to live in Tucson for awhile hosting Salvadoran refugees!)

The friends, artists Carmen and Zarco Guerrero, took us to a local Mexican restaurant owned by some friends of theirs and filled us in on their incredible lives (as well as sang some well-known Spanish songs along with the restaurant owners). Carmen was born in Brazil but moved to the United States to escape imprisonment and violence when she was about my age (she’d already been imprisoned a couple of times). Zarco, a Mexican-American, was born in Arizona…and so were his ancestors, “back when this was Mexico.” In Carmen’s words, “we didn’t cross the border; the border crossed us!” This makes it especially ironic that Russell Pearce, who actually grew up in the same neighborhood as Zarco, called him a “dirty Mexican” when they were both young boys. How many generations have the Pearces lived in Arizona?

Carmen and Zarco met in an indigenous village in Mexico when they were in their mid-20s. Zarco was a mask-maker, visual artist, and community arts advocate and Carmen was a photographer and classically trained pianist (and Oberlin graduate!). They shared with and taught each other their passions (Carmen taught Zarco how to play guitar, etc.) and started performing music together. The couple, along with their three now-grown and also musically skilled children, have traveled/lived and performed in Mexico, Brazil, Bali, Japan, and Indonesia, among other countries around the world.

These days, their eldest Quetzal is living in Los Angeles teaching capoeira and making music (he’s produced at least one album). He was in the top 100 finalists for American Idol several years ago and has appeared onstage with Tito Puente. Carmen describes him as their “Native American” son – she says each child has claimed an identity. Tizoc, their middle child, is the “Brazilian,” and always prefers speaking Portuguese over Spanish. Zarina, their youngest, is their “Mexican princess,” who begged for a quinciñera. She is currently studying Justice Studies at Arizona State.

To get an even better idea of their life, I read an article they showed me in the December 2004 edition of Latino Perspectives. The article is titled “Los Guerreros: Art & Activism. Family advocates change through music and art.” It says the family “routinely uses its talents when addressing political and social issues through art and activism,” and quotes Carmen stating “Art is a vehicle for social activism.” She hopes for her family to be a role model for Latino families and encourages others to express their culture. “Culture isn’t something we hoard. It’s something we share.”

The Guerrero family has created Día de los Muertos altars to commemorate the immigrant lives lost while crossing the border as well as border agents killed in the line of duty. (This was actually the first piece of art we encountered upon entering their home.) They are involved in calling attention to violence and staging protests, and have a myriad of Jan Brewer masks and masks of other politicians and often bring them to protests (“protest art”).

Carmen has been involved with the Mesa Community Action Network, which provides technical assistance to community groups, and the Comite de Familia en Acción, which is made up of low-income families focused on improving their neighborhood. She ran for the School Board one year and received accusations that she was a foreigner running for public office. She was the only candidate with a Latino name and rumors were spread that she was not a US citizen (despite having been one since 1992).

Carmen also used to lead excursions to various Latin American countries. One of her own stories (not in the article) is when she brought some people from the Navajo nation to meet indigenous tribes in the Amazon. She told me how shocked the Amazon people were at how different the Navajo people looked from them and how obese they were, and she had to try to explain to them that the Navajo weren’t eating foods meant for their bodies. The obesity epidemic among the indigenous people of the United States is just one example of how oppressed and trapped they still are.

One story Zarco shared is that he and Carmen have had two other children living with them on and off the past ten years. Two friends of Tizoc’s came home with him one day after school, in junior high, and essentially started living there. In their late teens, one ended up being arrested for getting into a fight. After Zarco bailed him out of jail, the black teen told him “Dad, the only people in prison are blacks and Mexicans!” …The harsh reality of our justice system.

Last random fact I learned? Dom Helder Camara, author of the famous quote “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist” was a Brazilian archbishop and actually wed Carmen’s parents!

"Oaxacan Chapulín" - Grace Shoenlank

This is one of the many chapulines that Beth, Julia, Maddie and I snacked on while on the beach in Mazunte, Oaxaca. I remember not being able to decide if the little toasted insects were disgusting or if they were delicious.

Connecting Cornel West - Kalila Zunes-Wolfe

On Friday, April 1 I attended the Cornel West lecture at the University of Arizona. The U of A student body president was the first to speak and thanked various ethnic, sexuality/gender, etc. groups on campus who promote diversity, with a lot of engagement and support from the audience. The indigenous man introducing Cornel West talked a bit about the current political climate in Arizona and how a small group of powerful individuals use fear to intimidate those who are different (such as with bills like SB 1070).

Cornel West himself was fun, enthusiastic, engaging and engaged, and funny. He started out discussing male/white supremacy and privilege, issues we have delved into deeply throughout the semester, particularly in Jeff McWhorter’s Identity, Privilege, and Social Change class. One of the first quotes from West that evening was “the unexamined life is not worth living.” He went on to talk about humanity and humility and how we are tied to the earth, on the same human level, and that the one thing we all share is humanity.

He then delved into the negatives: weapons of mass distraction, overstimulation, superficial connectivity, the age of Reaganism, greed and indifference to poor, polarization, I instead of we – all of which are taking away from this humanity. He said indifference to evil is more evil than evil itself, which is something I discussed myself in our first paper for Jeff’s class about Martin Luther King Jr. and social change. Apathy and inaction, which is perpetuating evil, are often so much more frustrating and harmful than simply the evil actively being executed.
West talked about education. He argued that real education teaches you how to live critically and compassionately and causes the fear and intimidation inside you to die. He said people want convenience and comfort, but it is more important to be unsettled. Courage is essential for democracy, as are misfits. However, he also acknowledged that these misfits are told from birth that they are “less than” and “less moral.” He called it “internalized self-devaluation” – a topic we have definitely touched on when discussing privilege and oppression.

West talked about oppression. He said World War I really began in 1492. He gave statistics about the high proportions of nonwhite babies in poverty, especially the indigenous. He criticized the prison industrial complex and the fact that the United States holds 2.4 million people in prison – more than South Africa under Apartheid. He told us how many hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on the Marshall Plan since the 1970s and the injustice of the budgetary deficit. He brought up domestic violence and homophobia. More specifically referring to the issues in Arizona, he said the business class wants labor and is favored over the laborers themselves, who are dehumanized – something we have explored a great deal this semester. He explained the predominant culture of the colorblind, encouraging us to open our eyes. He referenced the three most important things Martin Luther King Jr. wanted the world to be rid of: poverty, militarism, and materialism. After that, he started talking about Obama. Rather than delving into all his criticisms of the president, he admitted that one “can’t be free in politics.” Unlike West, Obama has a lot of limitations. What West was and is hoping for is that Obama can at least re-prioritize.

West talked about religion. While he referenced the Bible once or twice, he also acknowledged that we have so much to learn from the indigenous people. He said that love for wisdom and justice is something we do share. Encouraging us to share religion reminded me of some of the people we learned about in Guatemala and Mexico who managed to combine their indigenous spirituality with Catholicism.
West talked about hypocrisy and moral inconsistency, including in regards to immigration. Our forefathers claimed to be anti-imperialist but clearly weren’t. The statue of liberty said “Give me your poor” while simultaneously the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed.

West talked about the powerful market forces on this new generation, saying “Facebook is gangster activity far beyond anything I’ve seen in the Hood!” And finally, he reminded us that no culture has a monopoly on truth, telling us “find your voice; I see too many echoes.”

"In order to learn how to live, you must learn how to die." - Kaitlin Morris

Cornel West says that in order to learn how to live you must learn how to die. I have been learning how to die, or at least parts of me have. My assumptions, my beliefs have been unlearned. The foundations that held my world together have been lost, my world has been shattered over and over. I have lost my belief that law and justice are the same, that the authority is always is right. I no longer belief that our government is a democractic one, even though I long for it to be one.

And today? Today I lost my faith in education.

We do not learn in schools how to think for ourselves and critically examine the world. In schools, we have learned how to follow orders and jump through hoops, to regurgitate whatever the authority says because the authority is always right. The education system is a just tool for the government to separate the labor force into the workers and the bosses, so that we can join the assembly line.

I remember in high school, taking classes, working hard in them, getting As and then not remembering what I had learned afterwards. I remember teachers who would punish you with low grades if you dared to challenge their ideas. I remember complaining to my parents about this one teacher who was absolutely terrible and my dad telling me to jump through the hoop, just to do it and get the grade. That way, I could go to a good college and be successful. I believed it, I believed it with all my being. When the teacher said jump I would ask ‘How high?’. And so I got the high G.P.A, and when I applied to colleges I got the academic scholoarships and acceptance letters. But for what?

For the longest time, I have kept hope in the idea that colleges are places of higher learning and education, where I can learn anything that I could imagine. The purpose of Colleges and Universities though is not to educate. They are finishing schools, to teach you how to act, walk and talk- they prepare you for your place in society. I still do not remember most of the classes I have taken, the professors still punish you if you disagree with them, and I have jumped through so many hoops that I struggle with thinking that there is more than the hoop.

What more will I have to lose before this program is over? How many more pieces of my world will collapse? And how long will it take me to rebuild my world?

Walking Free - Carmelle Kniss

Last Friday began with a pretty comical school bus-like trip up to Florence. Several of the FIRRP staff were in a minor car accident the night before, so we all had to carpool up to the office today. We listened to John Legend, read fancy food magazines, and chatted before we arrived at Florence, ready to combat detention yet again. I spent the morning continuing my research on homophobia and persecution in El Salvador, finding only a bit more information about specific cases in which gays have been targeted. A few of the cases were incredibly disturbing, however, which helped me humanize the situation again.

In the afternoon, Sam and I went to the infamous Pinal County Jail to conduct interviews for Sam’s research project. Christina, my FIRRP supervisor, has been in contact with PCJ officials for over a week now, asking permission for our presence and reminding the staff of our arrival. Person-to-person visits at PCJ are extremely uncommon; they are almost exclusively reserved for large Know Your Rights presentations by the Florence Project. The fact that Sam and I were even allowed to bypass the video chat booths and actually meet in one of PCJ’s “recreation” rooms was pretty incredible.

Walking down the long, daunting hallways to the pod was admittedly a bit frightening. If the Florence Project is the only outside human contact these men are allowed, what will it be like meeting with them? When we arrived at the first pod, the officer asked me IF I WAS UNDER EIGHTEEN, and then proceeded to shout out the names of the detainees marked on our list. The way he called their names made them seem like animals. One by one, the men emerged from their dorm rooms carrying huge stacks of all their legal documents, anxiously waiting to talk with us about their struggles. Sam and I looked at each other, disheartened by this cruel reality. We were not there to listen to their individual cases. We were not there to offer them legal advice or help them fight for various forms of relief. We were not there, in fact, to help them at all.

We pulled ourselves together and walked into the cement enclosure that serves as the prisoners’ only access to “the outdoors.” (Its window, it is worth mentioning, is roughly twenty feet long by five feet high, and is the only natural light in the entire pod.) The rec room has one table that is large enough for five or so people, so we all sat in a circle on the concrete floor. We introduced ourselves as students engaged in research, regretting to inform them that we were not lawyers or even true legal assistants. Sam started by asking each person where they were from, how long they had been detained, and the amount of time they had spent in the United States. The men were from all over the world—Latin America, the South Pacific, Africa, Asia, and even Europe. The amount of time spent in PCJ varied from two months to two years. The majority of the men had been in the United States for nearly their entire lives. The shortest amount of time was nine years, though most of them had spent thirty or more years in this country and had immigrated as an infant. One man showed us a piece of paperwork from the Bureau of Indian Affairs that indicated he was born in Yuma County on a Native American reservation in 1958. He is allegedly a U.S. citizen.

Continuing with the interview process, we began to ask about problems the men have encountered while being detained in PCJ. The most abundant issue was the cost and use of the phones. We learned that if you do not have money from outside the facility, you will not be able to make a phone call. Picking up the phone costs a minimum of $2.50, and local calls with a 520 area code and “27” beginning can cost around $10 for a few minutes of talk time. One man told us that he deposited $60 into his phone account, called his family in New York, and ran out of money after talking for five minutes. These men are brought to this horrible facility, disallowed contact with their friends and family, and supposed to fight their cases with the limited—yet expensive—available resources.

The next major problem we encountered was regarding PCJ’s “Law Library.” The Law Library, in H-unit, contains three computers, one printer, for which the detainees can almost never receive paper for, a phone book, and two outdated “Legal Resource” books. In E-unit, there are five computers, two printers, and two phonebooks. Other than Lexus Nexus, there is no legal material available. Nearly everyone had trouble understanding any of the material available in the library. There is no one available to explain how to use the Lexus Nexus or the law books.

The complications grew as the interviews continued. Some of the information was shocking. Knowing that we were only there to document their complaints and learn about PCJ was difficult. I wanted to help and stay there all day, listening to their individual cases and trying to help them in any way that I can. I wanted to sit with them on the concrete floor and hear about how hard they have tried to fight their case without a lawyer, and how rough it is to spend months in this facility. But once again, after just three hours of talking with these men, Sam and I passed through the huge steel doors and left the jail. We will most likely never see any of those detainees again, and nearly all of them will probably be deported to countries that are just as foreign to them as they are to the Deportation Officers.

Walking out of PCJ that day was particularly difficult for me. After hearing about all of the problems these men face on a daily basis and only being able to sympathize with them, I felt awful leaving. These men can barely survive the day; how could they possibly fight their difficult legal battles on their own? These men are locked up away from the outside world. Cramped, overwhelmed, and exhausted, they try to live each day in the hopes that they might be released from this abysmal County Jail.

Yessenia Aguirre

Trying to figure out who I am under everything that I have been conditioned to be


I know nothing of anything, the more I learn the more I have to question what is being kept away from me. Yet, I feel so free..realizing that I have never been free.. I feel so strong knowing that all of this was organized to make me weak. I can feel the truth so close, even though I have nothing to compare it to but lies. Historical amnesia may blind us from he truth, but like how it has been said, everything under the sun will be revealed at its due time. Our people have suffered enough. We need to let everyone know that the "voiceless" have been screaming for centuries...we just have chosen not to hear. Lets lose our comfort and fall in love with curiosity, land,freedom, truth, and the genuine human spirit.


Prayer for our Mother Earth

Oh Sunshine! You are the smile on my lips. Your land is my freedom, my food, and my life. The land, water and wind are all yours to keep but in the meantime please let me explore you; let me be curious about you. You are naturally beautiful. My strength comes from you. I live because of you. My heart will forever sing all the songs that you carry through a chilling breeze. You are the perfect mother, the perfect home. Please lead us back to you. Mother Earth we need to come back to you. It’s time to take care of you and protect you..."because you can live without us, but we could never live without you."

Prayer for Hope and Faith to Wherever Life may Lead Me

Lord, thank you… Thank you because here on earth I can learn to live. Maybe it will be a hard and unjust life; but I am ALIVE and that is so beautiful. Thank you for giving me a path that constantly teaches me about other truths. Truths that make me feel free. You will always be the wind and I will always be a seed and I trust you and have faith that you will carry me to soils of all types...helping me discover what and who I should be living for.

Truth

Different realities;

All immersed in what they feel should be the only way to define morality.

What is morality?

Each world within the world living in contradiction to one another other;

All trying to find out the reasons why the stars shine, why do struggles come, why do the seasons change, why do some things remain the same, why does a flower bloom, why do things end, why do we breathe, why do we die , why doesn’t anything make sense… why does it matter?

Why? Why? Why?

We have made it all too complex

Each seeking a universal answer, which will be a lie to another.

If we could just accept that the mind is too large to oppose any truth,

That in a way I COULD be right, you COULD be right, we all COULD be right,

Or all wrong.

Seeking our own truth, letting ourselves explore the depths of our mind,

Letting our curiosity take over to teach us about other truths;

These truths broadening one reality, one true morality: Love.

Protest in Oaxaca - Yessenia Aguirre

Daniela and I ran into this during the Mexico portion of our travel seminar in Oaxaca's Zocalo. The protest was for a teacher that has been disappeared. The man reading his own poem is a friend of the disappeared teacher. The teacher's family is there too. For me this was a powerful experience and proof of the drastic measures the government takes when people start demanding there needs and rights.

Nogales - Beth Lowry

In Joseph Nevins' 2006 book, Dying to Live, he states "In a world of profound inequality, there are few if any nations that share a land boundary with the level of disparity as wide as that between Mexico and the United States. Which side of a boundary one is born on - something that is permanent and one cannot change - profoundly shapes the resources to which one has access, the amount of political power on the international stage one has, where once can go, and thus how one lives and dies." (186)

As a volunteer with No More Deaths this spring, I have had the opportunity to cross this land boundary on numerous occasions. On the mornings that I make the hour-long drive south from Tucson to Nogales, Arizona, the process of passing through that boundary is a question of a single moment, a few paces through the maze of metal and machine that is the Immigration and Custom Enforcement facility. These mornings I feel my privilege sitting heavily in my pocket alongside my passport as I emerge into Nogales, Sonora.

I travel to Sonora with the purpose of documenting the experiences of recently deported and repatriated migrants. Folks from No More Deaths have been doing this work for years now: filing reports that testify to the systematic abuses committed against migrants by Border Patrol and ICE agents during their apprehension and detention, be it as they attempt to cross the desert into the States or in towns and cities that are hundreds of miles from the border. Once the stories are collected, they are broken down into data that we enter and process and sculpt into an official document – page upon page of claims of the denial of food and water, of verbal and physical abuses, of wives being separated from husbands when they are sent to differing detention facilities.

I have spent enough hours translating narratives into raw data that the shock of reading the abuse reports has ebbed somewhat. But the act of collecting those stories, to sit down with migrants in Nogales and talk with them is an entirely different experience. “Nos trataron como animales” I have been told more than once by migrants with whom I have spoken – they treated us like animals. While each component of this semester has served to open my eyes the injustices that are reproduced within our global world system, the profound inequality of which Nevins writes is most clear to me when I must meet the gaze of these men and women.

In Memory Of... - Grace Schoenlank

I attended a Tucson protest and press conference last Friday in memory of Carlos La Madrid, a man shot by a border patrol agent while climbing the fence near Douglas last month. The facts of Carlos’ murder are hazy and confusing, as can be expected when if comes to crimes in the desert involving authorities and civilians of color, documented or not. At this point in time, eyewitness reports, a construction crew’s video, interviews with Carlos’ family and statements from border patrol spokespeople best recount what happened.

It appears it went down like this… a border patrol agent shot 19-year-old Carlos, a U.S. citizen, three times in the back and once in the shoulder – at arms length – as Carlos fled from the agent. Carlos fell and was handcuffed and dragged on the ground by the agent (who has yet to be named). The ambulance arrived too late to the scene and Carlos died.

Carlos’ family, his friends, and representatives of organizations in Tucson working for social change in this warped region called the borderlands attended the press conference held in front of the federal building on Friday afternoon. One by one, people approached the microphone to not only express their anger and sadness for Carlos’ death but also for the broken system and the unofficial, racist war underway that his death blatantly represents.

Carlos’ uncle was one of the people to speak to the small crowd amid the hundreds of cars speeding by (some “honking for justice," some yelling raging expletives and giving the finger).

He explained that Carlos is not the first young man of color to be murdered by border patrol in the name of secure borders, the war on drugs and the war on terrorism in the past several years. A 17 year-old boy was killed in the desert in January and a 15 year-old boy was killed in El Paso last June. In fact, Border Patrol agents shoot and kill people on the border every year while the gun owners and perpetrators continue to live their lives in the name of protecting virtuous U.S. citizens. Carlos’ uncle said he knew of incidents like these prior to Carlos’ death. He said, however, how he could never have imagined the paralyzing pain he and his family now experience at the loss of their brother, son, nephew, and grandson.

As I write this and struggle with what I actually hope to relate in this short blog, I can picture the faces of Carlos’ sisters, mother, aunts, uncles and grandparents. I’m reminded again of how many thousands of families have been devastated by what our government is falsely calling "securing our borders." I am saddened knowing that many more lives and families will be ruined in the years to come. That is, if nothing is changed.

Tucson, Arizona - Irhad Strika

Since the start of the program I have been thinking a lot about the reasons behind me actually spending a whole semester in the city of Tucson. However, soon enough I realized that, even though I am going to have to leave pretty soon, it is very important for me just to live my experience and learn as much as I can. In the end, being human and realizing that our lives are made up of all the small, intertwined butterflies is what makes this life, and this particular place so beautiful. Honoring our lives and living them with dignity is what really matters, and nobody can take that away from us.

Just as it is important to be able to find a niche in a certain place, it is also necessary to find space for this city inside ourselves. Our lives are what we make out of them. I have been very lucky to have a chance to live in this city and do all the small things that make me a Tucsonan, even it is only for few months. Here is my story.

I live in South Tucson. My family, like many of the families in this area of Tucson, immigrated to the United States from Latin America. It is a very quiet neighborhood filled with one-story houses. I really enjoy the fact that I live outside the city, where I get my peace and comfort.

My host mom is an awesome cook, and a wonderful human being, regardless of how fast she talks and how much time she spends on the phone with her family. I speak Spanish to her all the time, as she speaks only some English. We go shopping, wash her car, chat while she cooks about her family, about my family and my country, and she buys me chocolate.

My host dad works landscaping, roof specialist. He is just soooo chill. We watch a lot of TV together, and talk a lot about politics, history, sports, food, language, law, you name it. Sometimes we make fun of Americans. I speak English to him all the time.

My host bro is a thirteen year-old teenager. He is a very smart, unique kid. He wears skinny pants and Vans. He has long hair, and loves to play with his Nintendo and iPod touch. He is wiser than most of the kids of his age, and has pretty high self-confidence. I enjoy watching movies and getting McDonald's with him. It also happens that very often we’ll be in his room and I will be reading while he will be playing on internet.

The next big part of my life in Tucson is taking a bus every day. I bike around 10 minutes from my home to the transit center, and then I get on the bus that takes me North on 6th Ave. I have done this so many times that I already know most of the route by heart. The fun part of it is the fact that I have had a chance to see so many different people. I have always believed that the best way to get to know the place and the people who live there is by simply using public transportation. The buses are pretty good, cheap, and I have not encountered a single problem since arriving in Tucson. I think some of the oddest people I have seen on buses were the bus drivers themselves.

Every bus ride takes me either to my class or to my field study placement. I have three classes that I have to attend in The Historic Y offices, close to downtown. I really enjoy my classes, regardless how intense they can be. We do have a lot of work, and no matter how unhappy you are about it, it still is a part of the learning process. I guess, the biggest reason I enjoy my classes is because of the impact those classes have on me and my previous knowledge. It often happens that while sitting in my class, my thought process will be challenged so much that I will feel like I just discovered the bloody continent of America all over again. Sometimes my only reaction will be either WOW or WTF! Just blows your mind away.

But then, as much as I enjoy my classes, I enjoy my field study even more. I love working at the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos. I am usually the only male in the office, except when we have abuse clinics, when one or two more show up to help us out. I am just there to learn and experience having a chance to help or feel helpless where there is nothing you can do to better someone’s situation. Besides living with my host family, this is the most real part of the program. It is a real world job, and we deal with human issues of major importance on a daily basis. You can re-write your essay, but you cannot re-write someone’s life. What I really love about this internship is the fact that I have been given a responsibility and the only way I am judged is how I use that responsibility. I am learning how to help myself by helping others. I am learning that being an ally and an agent of change means sacrifice, trust and a conscious mind. If you are fake in the environment of change, then you are going to suck at what you do.

I have not really answered the question about my position in Tucson. At this point, I am more concerned about telling my story as a building block of the change and lucha I strongly stand for. I like this city a lot, and I hope I will have a chance to come back. I enjoy having to take a 25 minute bus ride every day to get to my work, and then another 25 minutes to get back home. It is simple things like these that make us human. It is simple things that make us understand other humans. And all those simple things make me a Tucsonan; they make me a part of the system. And we are all together in this thing. We are all Arizona.

Santa Anita, Guatemala - Erin McIlvain

Santa Anita la Union was the last place that we traveled to in Guatemala before venturing to Mexico. It was a small community founded by ex-guerillas. The community was founded on the idea of creating a self-sustaining community free from the government in order to try to bring the power back to them. They grow, harvest, roast, and package amazing organic, free trade coffee that we had the privilege of drinking everyday! The community is settled in the mountains and surrounded by lush, green life.

It was mind blowing for me to see this environment working together towards a common goal of becoming independent from the government then comparing that to the United States. I think that being in that place helped me to see the world of living off of the land and the resources that surround you. Land is taken for granted in the United States, but seeing the way the resources of the Earth are used and cherished is truly beautiful.



We spent a day with families in the community and in our particular experience we ventured into the jungle for wood for the stoves. The experience was particularly rewarding because Grace and I found ourselves with only each other and without someone who is fluent in Spanish, which was a first. It ended up being really great because we were able to carry a conversation and understand what was going on which really helped with our Spanish. We were with a family that had about fifteen different trees growing in the backyard each with a different fruit! They were growing corn in the garden and had thirty ducks and a few chickens in the backyard. In the right season they would be able to live completely off their own land.

While walking through the jungle I was thinking about the guerillas fighting against the government and wondering if I could be that brave? Could I leave my home with (maybe) a gun and travel through the mountains and jungle of Guatemala? Could I stand up to my government and physically fight against them?

From a City to an Open Road - Julia Sisson

The transition from Oaxaca city to the two-lane highway that leads to the coast hit me quickly and unexpectedly. One moment we were sitting in traffic, stopped at red lights, breathing in the heat and fumes rising off the asphalt, and the next we were barreling down a road, hardly a house or person in sight, just cacti, mountains, and speed.

The month long travel seminar is already over. It's 'spring break' now, time to go back home, travel to the beach, or just disappear for awhile. I wanted to relax and disappear for a week, so I went to the beach (Mazunte, Oaxaca). But I realize that I cannot disappear, I cannot escape. My mind is still churning through all that we Border Study students have done this past month. Who we've met, what we've learned, what questions people posed to us, how our beliefs and perspectives on the world have been challenged or changed.

So I sit on this beach and think about tourism, escapism, and the layered inequality that is so foundational to the world we live in right now. And the bright sun and beautiful ocean with its rolling calm waves do not match my mood. And the cold beers and dancing at night do not clear my mind, do not help me put my thoughts on hold for a moment.

This vacation hot spot, this chilled out escape, it just embodies the privileges and power some people are able to hold at the expense and smothering of many others. And no matter how friendly people are, no matter how much music is shared, this is a very self-indulgent, individualistic, and violent place in my opinion. It is a dream, what many people want and strive for, but its fun times and faux idyllic feel cannot completely cover what this place is built on. And the relationships of server and entitled client, entertainment and entertained, worker/producer and consumer are ever-present and oppressive.

Borderlands Learning - Beth Lowry

Since around the third week of this semester, I have been experiencing a sense of apprehension when I look forward to my return to the small liberal arts school I attend in Ohio. In these weeks spent in the Borderlands and farther south, my eyes are opening to a new reality about our country and indeed our world that is all too easy to ignore when one dwells among well manicured college grounds nestled among the rolling hills of Amish country.

The landscape of Tucson - the saguaros and cloudless winter skies and parched redbrown earth - is so dramatically distinct from that which I have occupied for the first 20 years of my formal education. Even more dramatic, though, is the contrast between the nature of the education I have received during those many years, and the learning environment in which I am now ensconced. Like most who are privileged enough to have the opportunity to pursue higher education, I have spent a great deal of time learning in classrooms, from text books and lectures and overhead projectors. It is a landscape of facts and figures, syllabi and grading rubrics. By my sophomore year at Kenyon, I could define import-substitution industrialization on my history midterm and spit out a a ten page paper on the implementation of neoliberalism in Mexico and call myself a Latin American Studies major, and a GOOD one at that, with a GPA that put my name on the Merit List semester after semester. And so coming to the Borderlands with these definitions and historical processes ingrained in my mind I felt well prepared, sure and confident in my world analysis.

Yet the landscape of my education with Border Studies has caused me to question and rethink, indeed unlearn, nearly everything I had learned about Latin America until now. This learning process has most assuredly been informed and enhanced by facts and figures, but in Gambier, Ohio, those facts don't manifest themselves so visibly as I have seen on the border and the communities we passed through this past month on our travel seminar. In these places, we did not so much learn the facts of militarization and the figures of free trade agreements as we did see and feel them. Leaving Mexico, I have a more profound sense for the impacts of neoliberalism there in a way that no letter grade could communicate. There is no formal or personal affirmation for owning that knowledge, but there is a lot of guilt and frustration.

The excerpts that my peers have shared of their individual and our collective experiences this semester give shape to that newly defined landscape of the way we learn about the world and our role within it, one that is fraught with confusion and sorrow that are at times overwhelming. And this is where that aforementioned dread begins to take root. It is a dread of having to reconcile these two landscapes, to return to a midwestern campus with the weight of the Borderlands reality bearing heavily upon my mind and heart. I hope that in these coming five weeks we will continue to develop a better sense of how to navigate this challenge, but a more realistic part of me recognizes that reconciling the realities learned here with the way I learn after this semester is a process that will be part of the rest of my life, wherever I find myself.

Inspiration - Irhad Strika

I have once again been reminded of the cruel reality surrounding us, whether we like it or not. Being able to have had a chance to hear an extensive talk about the reality of militarization in the state of Chiapas and the Zapatista uprising has again made me feel a little bit upset about the unrealized and often hidden truths of continuous dehumanization and exploitation of ordinary people. I have realized that the only certain thing about the current travel experience is the battle between hope and despair. My group and I are learning about the horrifying stories of people's suffering, while trying to build up our own. These experiences are often so harsh that it is almost inevitable to get to the point of feeling desperate and powerless. It is as if there is no way out. It is striking to the point where people feel no desire to keep living; they feel like dying.

Then again, there is another half of the wave, the one that strongly picks you up. There is a light at the end of the tunnel; every storm ends with the shining sun; every closed door opens another. I have to come to realize that very often one specific event or one day can depict the most profound emotions and oscillations in our lives. On a sunny day of 9 March 2011, I have had an opportunity to enter the sacred space of Centro Indigena de Capacitacion Integral (CIDECI). Just roaming around their campus made me feel very optimistic and energized, as if the buildings, plants and humans were exhaling a unique, powerful and epidemic sense of hope.
Centro Indigena de Capacitacion Integral (CIDECI) is a campus based community that works on providing opportunities for people from indigenous communities that have no chance of proper basic human needs, and specifically education. It is completely free, and they currently have around 120 students learning number of different areas of knowledge including literacy, agriculture, agro-ecology, philosophy, systems of autonomy, analysis of world systems, automechanics, hidrography etc. All of these areas of knowledge have a very pragmatic approach in terms of the way they are thought, and teachers have a position of being a role model and a close friend to students. The most significant part of the community is their autonomy, which is defined as the independence from the central government and ability to live their lives as they please. They have their own well, electric generator, sewage and trash system. Farm produces 30-50% of their food needs and surrounding forest is where they have houses for sheep, pigs, chickens and rabbits.

A center of “knowledge building” breeds a life of dignity and trust. It is a place where those previously ignored get their voices heard; those without opportunities are given a chance for the first time in their life; those misinterpreted and misunderstood are carefully listened to; those without hope find it and fortify it all over again.

How Was Your Trip? - Sam Williams

Just fresh off of our talk with Witness for Peace, at then end of our time in Oaxaca, and after discussing how we were going to approach sharing the information we had learned to the people we talk to post-trip, I got my chance. Twice. I woke up in Oaxaca city, had a lovely breakfast with the last girls left, and then set off on my trip back to Tucson.

On my flight from Mexico City to Houston I began writing to a friend, but about half an hour before landing started talking to a very nice man in my row from Chihuahua (what’s up Yessenia), who ironically (as I found out after we had been talking for a while) sells transformers to electric plants all over Mexico. But he asked me what I was doing and then began to ask more about my semester. He became the quintessential supportive, interested party we talked about in our debrief in Oaxaca, and wanted to know everything he could about NAFTA, the School of the Americas, and a bunch of other topics we got into as he peppered me with questions. I ended up leaving our Spanish NAFTA reading from the WfP booklet with him, but all the time sort of wondered who exactly he was selling these parts for these hydroelectric plants to, which he told me at the end are mostly state-owned clients. Hmmm… Then we landed in Houston.

George Bush International Airport is always an interesting experience. Waiting in line to get through immigration and customs is, in my expert opinion, the best people watching to be had anywhere. I finally made it through the line, after a number of families got put through the wringer ahead of me, getting fingerprinted and photographed. I got asked one question and sent on my way. After I found out my flight was delayed I set off to find dinner. I ended up at Chili’s, hoping I could get a salad and a soup after all our digestive adventures in Mexico. I asked for my salad, and my absolutely enormous and bearded waiter asked me what dressing I wanted: Ranch, Bleu Cheese, or Honey Mustard. Coming from the land of lime juice for dressing all I could think was “Welcome back to America,” a feeling that was only compounded by the conversation being had to my left between three young men rivaling my gargantuan waiter in height and breadth. Their accents were by far the most Southern I had ever heard in my life and they talked about school lunches and barbecue. Cue a call from Riley. As I spoke it became clear they were listening to every word I said, and as soon as I hung up they asked me where I had just come from. The test of a lifetime…where do I start?

I knew for certain that I could not broach the topic of the corrupt and dominant U.S. Government and its questionable tactics abroad, so I started with the basics, sort of hoping I could just avoid the conversation and eat my food. But it was not to be—they were just as interested as my seatmate from the plane, but clearly in a slightly different way. I told them about the program and my work at Florence to start. More questions… They tell me how they work construction near College Station, TX, and how so many of their colleagues are illegal aliens who don’t pay taxes, and aren’t the people you work with just criminals? They weren’t letting me go so easy. So I thought of how I might convey the impossibility of avoiding migration experienced by so many Mexicans and other Latin Americans. NAFTA for enormous Texan McCain supporters? OK, here goes… So the U.S. signed this free trade agreement blah blah blah they said they would cut subsidies to their farmers and didn’t blah blah blah but the Mexican government had to, and now the farmers there can’t sell their corn for anywhere near as much as they could before blah blah blah, but the point is, if the government here stopped paying subsidies to the farmers, they would be just as in need of a living wage—which they barely make now anyway—as are many of the migrants you see in the U.S., those here with and without papers. Then I laid some stats on them for good measure.

After that, one of them, to my surprise, nodded and smiled, said that made sense, one started hitting on me, and one was totally nonplussed. But they kept asking me questions about whether these aliens would ever pay taxes if you gave them the chance? And, aren’t the ones in detention criminals? And, Can’t they just move to cities if they can’t work in the country? I tried to answer in the least inflammatory way possible without ever saying Obama, Liberal, Republican, Democrat, McCain (until about 1 minute before we parted) etc., hoping not to push any buttons that would turn off the information receptors of my bafflingly interested countrymen. As they had me talk to them about PPP and the SOA and paramilitaries, and then one of them talked to me about what they knew about gangs, and how construction workers on the border are allowed to carry pistols to shoot at the narcos coming to kill them and sell their body parts on the black market, I felt for the first time (not) that I was maybe, possibly, fighting a losing battle. But they just kept asking more questions and by the end generally agreeing with some (a couple) of the points I was making (while ignoring or disagreeing with others), and as I was paying for my dinner asked THE question. Yeah, you know the one. “Yeah, but all this is bad, but why should I care, it’s not like I can do anything about it right?”

Just another moment where you have identified your audience from the beginning, and just try to find some common ground, have an amiable (and in my case, quite funny) conversation, and hope that any one of your ridiculously demonstrative facts stuck with them in some sort of positive way. Like the kind of way that will elicit a dissenting vote when Jannie Bannanie Brewer, the puppy dog of governors, asks for her own personal militia. My three behemoth Texan acquaintances walked me to my gate with smiles and handshakes and told me they hoped they never saw me on the news.

San Cristóbal - Julia Sisson

I find this city to be strange and complex, feelings which are accentuated by the rain and hail storms that rush through with little notice. The juxtaposition of dreaded Europeans opening up bars with the name of Revolución, and indigenous women and children trying to sell bracelets and shawls to indifferent tourists only makes the feelings stronger.

While at CIDECI - Centro Indígena de Capacitación Integral - a man named Ivan talked about the density of San Cristóbal, the energy and mixing of peoples, cultures, modernity, and the post-modern. The complexity, and contradictory nature of the city and the businesses here can be overwhelming to me. CIDECI, an 'anti-school,' where teachers are learners and learners are teachers, and practice and theory are explored together, is an autonomous space where the strangeness of San Cris can melt away.

There is also a cafe in San Cristobal with the name of 'TierAdentro' - within the earth. It claims to support Zapatista communities, but I have heard mixed opinions, like most things here. Many businesses profit off the commodification and commercialization of revolutionary ideals, Zapatismo, and alternative ways of organizing (socially and economically). Cafes, hotels, boutiques, and other businesses have recognized how profitable it is to incorporate anti-neoliberal Zapatismo into neoliberal capitalism so that 'radical,' 'alternative' tourists can buy it up and feel like they are supporting a movement of the people, like they are in solidarity with Zapatista communities in Chiapas.

But walking by TierAdentro almost everyday, has made me think more about this idea of within the land. It is where roots grow and life's foundations are formed, and without your roots, how do you know who you are? How do you sort out your identity? Without your roots how do you know where to go?

My roots are not in this city. And this trip has helped me realize that I want to work in the U.S., where my roots are, because that's where i can push and grow, that is where I'll understand where I want to be going and why.
I want to dig deep into the earth, and understand the soil that my roots are in.

Acronyms - Sam Williams

PPP NAFTA CCA TPD USNG DHS ICE PCJ CADC CAFTA PROCEDE DESGUA FIRRP NMD FCC ADM CONASUPO MASECA WB IMF G8 PAN PRD PT PP PROCAMPO SAP IDB FTAA SPP IBRD WTO MI PM CAF BCIE FTAA CIA FBI TLCAN OMC APPO ASARO PEMEX CEMEX PRI PVEM OPEC CCAMYN DESGUA INM HRW AI EZLN FRAYBA SOA WHISC WHINSEC BP UNE UCN PU URNG GAN MAREZ GC PFP PEP PEC PEF PSP PJF PJE INM GAFE OCEZ NU USA EUM PRONACOM FTN UPRR PGT MRP FAR EGP ORPA IFI DF COMI EDUCA CODIGODH CDH CPS PCADC SPC INS NSC NSA USM USMC DD BP CIS MIDP USDA CBP NTA DOE DOL IV NISGUA VAWA THE ALPHABET OF NEOLIBERALIZATION MILITARIZATION REVOLUTION RESISTANCE GLOBALIZATION AND NOT EVEN CLOSE TO ALL THE ACRONYMS OUT THERE…

Caracol Time - Julia Sisson

When we went to Morelia, a Zapatista caracol, an autonomous space where the seat of buen gobierno (good government) or civilian government is located, our sense and relationship to time changed. We were no longer part of our rigid, right agenda.
The caracol, or snail, is a spiral, where inside meets outside. And when the story of the caracol was shared with me, it was in the context of the seemingly slow pace of Morelia - turbine of our dreams - from an outsider's perspective, when in reality there is a lot happening and being discussed and figured out in that space. The story I heard goes something like this, although I doubt I can fully do it justice, or tell it as beautifully as I heard it.

When the world was formed, full of colors happiness and brightness, the snail, or caracol was a very fast animal. Caracols were messangers from one place to another, one world to another, because of their speed. But when the caracol was in the middle of a journey taking a message from one place to another, the world began to change. Everything became faster, people began running around, machines sped up production, life took on a sense of hurriedness. And so when the caracol arrived back to its world everything was different, the caracol's speed was now slow. Now we view the caracol as being slow, because our worlds have changed, and the caracol did not change with them.

It was so beautiful to be on caracol time, to play basketball and soccer, eat lunch together, talk, and to observe and feel the new space that we were in, reflecting on the meaning of the caracol and caracol time.

Psychological Borders - Michelle Jahnke

We humans are incredibly complex beings. I know that sounds obvious, but I think we often forget it. In "mainstream" middle class white US society the tendency is to essentialize someone without papers as "illegal", indigenous culture as primitive or backward or underdeveloped, a Latina lesbian living in the barrio as underprivileged and a straight white middle class man as privileged. We have been systematically taught to divide up our society and our world, and, no matter what geographical and social part we belong to, we have been systematically taught to build psychological barriers and borders against others who are different than us. The system has taught us to fragment ourselves and we perpetuate this within our schools, social groups, neighborhoods, families, even our work to "change the world." What better way to break down the fabric of society and make us all rely on policies and ideas from above, instead of relying on ourselves and each other.

In Guatemala we met many wise and beautiful people who have helped me to think about the world in this way. One woman in particular, Maria Elisa, put it like this: "Al final tod@s vamos a salir afectad@s. Hay que romper con las fronteras en nuestras cabecitas." "In the end we are all affected by the situation in the world. We have to break down the borders in our own little heads."

Lately I´ve started doing a sort of silly thing and putting my thoughts and feelings into the form of haikus - those three line 5-7-5 syllable Japanese poems. I don´t really think of myself as a poet or anything, but the exercise does help me start thinking and writing about things I´m experiencing. I have written a bunch of them based on what different places we went and people we met in Guatemala made me think about and feel. I think they have a lot to do with the ideas I expressed above. Here are a few written in English, Spanish, and Spanglish.

The poor are so poor
Cus the rich don´t ask themselves
Why they are so rich

Mujeres mayas
Unidas en su lucha
Crean dignidad

Autonomia
Es tomar justicia y paz
En manos propias

Ya basta con las
Visiones importadas
Hay que unirnos

Take back our histry
Luchar to break the silence
We are all HIJOS
More info: www.hijosguatemala.es.tl/

Outsiders come in
Passports heavy with privilege
We are here with you
www.nisgua.org

Guatemalan dreams
Un desmadre hermoso
Roots deep as mountains
www.desgua.org

Travel Seminar in Guatemala - Carmelle Kniss

We spent the first 2 days in Guatemala City learning about the next 2 weeks of our life and getting to know our delegation/tour guides. There we vistited a Casa del Migrante (migrant shelter), and learned a bit about what information they provide to migrants about the journey. Though we had spent quite a bit of time studying the trek and the dangers, it was interesting to hear it from the shelter´s leader. He told us that $3.2 billion is sent to Guatemala from migrants in the U.S. each year, making remittances one of the most important parts of Guatemala´s economy.

We also met with HIJOS, an urban youth resistance movement that has been fighting for justice in Guatemala since 1999. Specifically, they are concerned with the injustices of the government, who initiated a civil war, genocide, and fight with the people of Guatemala for 36 years. They are trying to bring these ex-combatants to trial, and make them pay for the war crimes they committed. It was so great to see how the youth are involved in such a powerful movement. The rhetoric and images they use are powerful and arguably contreversial--many of the teens were holding signs that said "BUSH", but the "S" was a swastika....

The next day, we drove for an hour or two up this windy, bumpy road and ended up in this gorgeous mountain village. The town was literally in the clouds and the people were so friendly. We met with a man who had been part of the Postville, Iowa raid, which was a mass deportation of Guatemalans that were living and working in Iowa in the early 2000s. He was working 18 hour days in a meat packing factory and trying to send money home. Like many Central Americans, the effects of NAFTA and CAFTA have essentially forced people to abandon their lives, their families, and their comforts and head north. U.S. government subsidies and free trade agreements have destroyed virtually all industry, agriculture, and autonomy here. This town was a perfect example. After spending 5 months in prison, not being fed for several days, and losing 50 pounds on the journey back to Guatemala, he will never return.

Yesterday, we had a conference on the migrant journey, and learned that the average trip to the U.S. from Guatemala costs $4,000, yet the average person earns $2-$5 a day. The cost of a pound of chicken is the same here as it in the U.S. Seventy-five percent of Guatemalan products are exported elsewhere, making it impossible for the country to support itself. Ninety percent of the women who make the journey experience some sort of physical assault or abuse on their journey. Most are robbed; many are raped. Each day, roughly 200 Guatemalans leave the country and travel north. Of those, only 17 make it the U.S., and they don´t get their travel money back. Ever.

We then had a panel with four migrants who all shared different stories. It was shocking. The first man who spoke had spent 19 out of his 22 years of life living in the United States. For years, he trained to be a professional boxer, and was about to sign a contract when Immigration crossed his path. Years after committing a minor crime--which became a closed case--he was deported to Guatemala, a country in which he had no family or friends. Luckily, he came in contact with DESAGUA and is now getting back on his feet and working for justice in Guatemala, but the injustice he experienced in the U.S. will live with him forever.

The next story was incredible. Juvaldo went to the U.S. at age 15 and began washing dishes and studying English. He wanted to study medicine, but he couldn't afford to pay the tuition. He came back to Guatemala for a little while, couldn't find work, and then decided to make the trek back north. He paid $5,000 for a coyote to help him cross the desert. Along the way, he was deserted. He spent twelve days in the desert--alone--without food or water. He eventually passed out and was later found by Immigration, who put him in jail for 11 days before he was deported.

It is these kinds of stories that make us forget that we feel too hot or too uncomfortable at any given moment. These are the stories that silence our complaints about not being able to check our email or not getting to eat the food we want. These stories show us what pain and suffering really are, because we will never in our lives experience anything even remotely similar. This is why we're here.

My New Normal - Kaitlin Morris

My new normal revolves around the bus schedule. I feel the urgency around 4-5pm to start my commute before it gets dark. I feel the fear of walking home down the dark street alone in a not so safe neighborhood. My new normal is eating tortillas y frijoles cada dia. My new normal is living without running water or heat. My new Saturday night is staying in a house across the border with dirt floors and no door. It is waking up at 6am everyday, and depending on which side of the border I am, hearing roosters. My new normal does not include days off. My new weekends are spent attending memorials or doing desert aid training. It is sharing a meal with Jeremias Algar Garcia who spent the last 24 days traveling from his home in Guatemala riding on top of a train. (and the last 15 of those days without a bed). Jeremias will be crossing al otro lado in the next three days. Sometime in the next three days the man who I sat next to, shared tortillas and stories with, will be walking through the desert under the scorching sun. Did you know that if you are doing moderate exercise in the sun that you need 4 pints of water an hour? There is no way that someone can carry enough water to last the 3 to 4 days walk. And those 3 days is just the minimum, you can get lost or get blisters that are so bad that half of your foot comes off when you take off your shoes. Or you can suffer from heat exhaustion or hypothermia.


And then there’s la migra. I have read over forty cases of border patrol abuse. (These are just the cases that I entered into the data collector. No More Deaths has collected over 1,000 since they published their report Crossing the Line just two years ago) Stories that make you sick to your stomach, that make you want to cry and rage at the same time. I don’t want to demonize the border patrol, I know that the agents are humans for better or for worse and that they are just individuals within a greater system. But it is not just a case of “a few bad apples” it is far more pervasive than that. It is systematic violence and abuse. This is happening right now, those cases were from earlier this year. So for the next three days, for the next 15 weeks, and perhaps for the rest of my life I will be praying that God will watch over Jeremias and all the Jeremias. Jeremias is not an illegal alien. He is a human who is in search of a better life for himself and his family, like 98% of the people who are crossing the border.


We met with the two agents of the Border Patrol and took a tour of the station. When asked why they think people cross the border, they both said that most people are looking for jobs or to reunite with their families. They then went on to say that there are criminals and terrorists too, which is why the border needs to be secured. Daniela, a student with the program, asked them how many terrorists they apprehend in a year. They didn’t know. She asked them how do they know if they’ve apprehended a terrorist. “Well if they’re involved in terrorist activity” they answered. She asked them, “What is terrorist activity?” They thought for a minute and stumbled “well if they’re smuggling a bomb across and that sometimes Chinese terrorists try to cross the border”. Their story was that Chinese communist terrorists go to Mexico, learn the language and stay there for a few months before crossing the border into the United States. I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. That doesn’t make any sense. If the whole point of having the border secured is to prevent terrorism how come they don’t even know how many terrorists they’ve caught? Or how to define terrorist activity? And why would Chinese terrorists go through mexico when they could enter through the Canadian/U.S. border which is far easier to cross?


My new normal is feeling so many emotions at once that I don’t even know what I’m feeling anymore. My new normal is loneliness. It is desperately longing and needing to talk to a familiar loved one but when I get on the phone you’re speechless. I can’t relate my experiences, there’s just this disconnect because we no longer live in the same world. Well in actuality, the scariest thing is, is that we both still live in the same world I’m just looking at it from a different angle. Its like those illusions in which you can see two pictures in the same drawing, and although we’re looking at the same picture we are seeing two different things.


My new normal is finding out that the privileged developed world I’ve lived in for the past twenty years is a lie. That it would not exist without the world I’m living in now. Development and Underdevelopment are both a product of Capitalism. There can not be one without the other because Development is not based off of natural resources or “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. Developed countries are developed because they effectively exploited underdeveloped countries and people. My new normal is realizing the government, the state, is not benign. That laws aren’t written to protect the people but to protect the interests of the dominant group in society.


My new normal is not even knowing what normal is anymore. My life, two, almost three weeks ago, feels as distant as a dream. I don’t know how or if I can return to that world knowing what I know now. I feel like Neo. I took the red pill and now I’m seeing how far the rabbit hole goes. I am waking up to reality and the illusions of this world have been shattered. And how do I communicate that to someone who has not seen what I have seen or been where I have been? I don’t know. Everyday I feel the gap between my old life and my new life widen and I don’t know how to bridge that gap. I know if I read this blog, or heard myself talking that I would think I was crazy. But I’m not, it’s the rest of the world that is crazy. It is the people in power who define what is crazy or not, and they want to protect themselves. So if you’re reading this, please listen, and don’t be so quick to dismiss what I’m telling you.

Field Study at Manzo Elementary - Erin McIlvain

I am doing my internship/field study at Manzo elementary school where about 98% of the students are Hispanic and a large portion of the families are migrant families. Manzo is a Title I school with about 250 students. The school is facing a lot of difficulties with the recent budget cuts in the school system and is on the list of schools that might be closed next year. To avoid this Manzo is doing a lot of things like creating an ecology and sustainability program.



Manzo is a school unlike any school I have ever seen. I have been working with the guidance counselor, Moses Thompson, and he believes in using horticulture therapy as a counseling strategy. As a way to accomplish this he has led the school in many projects. The students have created a desert biome on an empty lot that was previously filled with old mattresses and couches and was used as a place to drink and do drugs. The biome contains plants that are all native to this area and was created entirely by the students. I have taken groups of preschoolers out to the biome to water the plants and they get so excited about it!

The next project he led was a Kino Tree Heritage Project in the front of the school. "Father Kino" was a man from Spain who came to the Tucson area in the 17th century and brought these trees with him from Spain. A lot of the trees are nearly extinct now, or native only to the Tucson region, so the school created the Kino Tree Heritage Project and planted some of the trees in front of the school. The landscaping in the front of the school was also done by the students and is supported by two rainwater cisterns that were made also by the students and paid for by grant money (as were all of the projects).

Manzo students are almost finished creating a desert Tortoise habitat in one of the two courtyards of the school complete with a stone mason wall (cement made by preschool and kindergarden students and everyone helped to make it!) and a lot of landscaping. All of the plants in the habitat are to support the desert tortoise, for food or shelter. In April the school will get a desert Tortoise from the Desert Museum! Currently the habitat is being finished and they are working to add in the final touches and then next week will be building a rain jar to support the habitat!

They are now currently working on a vegetable garden planted in the way that the Native Americans of this area used to plant their vegetables. The vegetables that will be planted are all plants that were grown by the Peoples native to this area. Then they will put in rainwater cisterns to support the garden!

Manzo Elementary is doing some awesome things for their students and the coolest part is that all of the students are so eager and excited to participate! When working with the students that is the first thing I notice, how excited they are to help. They are also so eager to show off the various things that they have helped with in the school. It is very awesome how Manzo makes the school a home to every student and helps them to make it their own.

Basic Questions - Maddie Campbell

The times I’ve spoken to family and friends from back home, there have been three main questions that people tend to ask me.

1.) Do you like it?

2.) Are you having fun?

or

3.) (the basic) HOW IS IT?!

I still don’t really know how to answer any of these questions… I feel like there is no way I can give adequately answer without rambling on for ages.

Yes I “like it”. I love Tucson, my home stay family is GREAT, the classroom where I do my field study is one of the most inspiring places I have ever been, the classes I’m taking are excellent, and most importantly I am so so so grateful that I have this opportunity to be see, learn, work with, and experience all that is a part of this program

And yes… I am having fun. Tucson is awesome and I’ve met a lot of really amazing people!

But something inside of me feels weird about using the adjective “fun” to describe my experience and / or dwelling on all of the things I “like” about being here and doing this.



I feel like I’ve concerned some people in my attempts to give a truthful answer to the enthusiastic HOW IS IT?! question. In reality, this experience is great and amazing, but draining, intense, saddening, and a slap in the face. In reality, I’ve been happy and have had fun since I’ve been here, but I’ve also felt hopeless, guilty, sad, angry, and even completely unfaithful in the world and humanity.

I’ve gotten quite a few “are you okay” responses to the descriptions I have given of my experiences thus far. The answer I often feel inclined to give is no I’m not okay with this atrocity, this side of my country that I’ve been exposed to but I decided to come on this program because I felt that if this is happening, if people are suffering from dehumanization every day, I at least want exposure and I want it in its rawest form. There are plenty of people in the world who are not doing “okay”… and what gives me the right to just dillydally around in my sheltered world while people are suffering.

But then sometimes I ask myself what good is it for me to be here? Last Thursday, when we sat in on an Operation Streamline court proceeding, is one particular time when I felt this way.

During Operation Streamline, individuals whom were found crossing the border illegally are pressed with criminal charges (these can include incarceration for 6 months, 5 years of probation, or a $500 fine).

In the court room, there were 65 defendants (one of my group members counted) seated. Each one was wearing headphones for translation purposes and was placed in shackles. The judge announced that in this situation there is either the option to plead guilty or go to trial. Every attorney in the court today was representing somebody who plead guilty.

The judge tells the defendants to stand up “if you don’t know the nature or punishment for your offense” and/or if “you feel forced, obligated or intimidated to plead guilty.” A few individuals stood up after the first remark, mainly to clear up some details (often a result of language miscommunication) and nobody stood up for the second remark. I would be curious to see what would happen if somebody publicly revealed feelings of force, obligation, or intimidation.

Next the judge called between 6-7 defendants to come up at a time, accompanied by their attorney, to answer a series of questions. He asked “Are you pleading guilty today?” “Do you understand your plea?” “Do you object to your attorneys objections”

Each group would respond to these questions in unison with “si”, “si”, and “no” (the attorneys would translate each word… yes, yes, no)

The judge would then go through the line of defendants and ask “did you enter the U.S. illegally? Did you receive permission from an immigration official or U.S. government official in order to be here?” A decent amount of the defendants had even already been deported… meaning they had already endured this exact same process. It just blows my mind to comprehend what desperation could possibly lead people to place themselves in this situation once, not to mention MULTIPLE TIMES.



After the judge had finished questioning each group, Border Patrol agents would accompany them out in their shackles. Because I was sitting two rows away from the court I made eye contact with a few defendants as they were being escorted out. I kept the most neutral facial expression that I could because I didn’t know what would possibly be appropriate right then… but I felt so uncomfortable with just keeping a blank face, void of all emotion while looking into the eyes of people who had just risked their lives by crossing the border for nothing but to be put to shame.

All I wanted to be able to do was help them… even in the smallest way. If I could even just send my regards to them, to wish them good luck I would have felt better about the situation… but nope. Any form of communication was impossible at that point in time let alone any opportunity to REALLY better the situation. I felt hopeless. I felt guilty… guilty that I could just be watching this for my studies as a privileged student at a liberal arts school, guilty that I could just walk out at the end of the day and proceed with my problem-free life.

The Beginning - Carmelle Kniss

This semester's Border Studies program began seven days ago, yet it seems like we've all been here for several weeks. Last Wednesday, students from various schools around the country found ourselves in Tucson, AZ at BorderLinks, an organization that leads groups of students on trips around the borderlands. We stayed there for a few days, getting to know each other and learning about the next four months of our lives.



There are fourteen of us--thirteen women and one guy--as well as three instructors who will be teaching our classes and leading the program. We all come from different parts of the U.S. (and also Bosnia), and a variety of schools as well. While we're in Tucson, we'll all be living with different host families and working for a variety of organizations in and around Tucson.

On day three, we left early in the morning and headed South to Nogales, Sonora. We stopped briefly in Nogales, AZ, which almost already seemed like Mexico. Everyone spoke Spanish and seemed surprised to see our large group of backpack-carrying college kids. In our big, white vans, we crossed the border into Mexico, entering an entirely new world. Many of the buildings were falling apart, trash littered the ground, and people stared at us as we drove through the town.

We first went to see the muro, the wall that divides Nogales, Mexico and Nogales, AZ. It was shocking. Made out of concrete, metal, and barbed wire, the wall appeared to be not only a barrier, but a symbol of despair and devastation. It was literally in someone's backyard. We visited the wall not only to see its role as such a harsh, tangible barrier, but also to view the paintings and murals that many artists have placed on the wall. There was graffiti, as well as professional art, and both expressed the feelings from Mexico regarding the wall.

After, we went to the cultural center to meet with Guadalupe and Diego, two artists that helped start the border art movement in 2003. Their work was incredible and inspiring; they were combing something they love with one of North America's most complicated debates.

From there we met Kiko, a community activist who used to work and help manage a maquiladdora, an American-owned company that operates along the Mexican side of the border. A few years ago, Kiko started a daycare in a community where it was much needed. He lives in "Colonio Kennedy", Nogales' strikingly wealthy neighborhood, but his experiences would suggest otherwise. From Kiko we learned that the workers in the maquilas make $5-$8 a day. When he was a manager, he tried to change the system and raise the workers' wages, but the maquila association forbit it. Unlike all other business and homes in Mexico, maquilas, being American-owned, are exempt from paying taxes to the city of Nogales. In fact, Nogales' government even spends its tax dollars on improving the raods and scenery around the maquilas to entice the companies to have their business here. Without this added privilege, the maquilas would move their businesses to other countries where the labor is even cheaper. Thus, while the maquilas are providng jobs, the workers are barely making enough money to survive on their own, let alone support their families.

We then went to lunch in a small neighborhood called Flores Magon, where Maria Cruz, a BorderLinks volunteer and community activist, lives. The town was almost shocking. It was difficult to remember that this is the way most of the world lives; the way we Americans live is both a privilege and a rarity. This woman was joyous and spoke of how she is involved in politics and her community. She lives a very modest lifestyle, yet served us all lunch. Many of the homes in the community had neither electricity nor running water, no paved roads nor sidewalks, and several houses shared a rundown outhouse. We were just miles from the border, yet the living situation was unbelievably different.

Next, we met with Rosario, a materials manager at Curtis--one of Nogales' many maquilas. She boasted of the high wages ($7 a day) her employees receive, and considers maquilas a blessing for Nogales. We walked around the factory and noticed that most of the employees were women; their fingers are small and nimble, therefore they are often more efficient. Rosario explained that the workers receive bonuses (maybe a dollar if they've reached 150%) based on their productivity levels, and that they all work 10 hours a day, 5 days a week.

We ended the day at El Hogar de Paz y Esperanza, the home of peace and hope. It serves as both a community center, part-time school, and hostel for travelers. The family who runs it was incredibly sweet and enthusiastic for life. They made us a fabulous dinner and breakfast, showed us around the place, and even played music for us.

In the morning, we packed up and headed to the border. This time, Katie, Jeff, and Riley had us cross the border on foot and take shuttles from Nogales, AZ back to Tucson. We met a few people on the ride, and it was interesting to see how many people travel across the border. While at the crossing, we saw two women get arrested, as well as a huge WANTED poster, with just a few photos stamped in red with "CAPTURED". It was distburbing. The highway from the border to Tucson is equipped with a few mandatory checkpoints that ask for ID and often search vehicles. That doesn't really sound legal, does it? The borderlands live by a different set of rules...

The adventures and learning process continue!