Crossing into Nogales, Mexico

I watched the movie, Sin Nombre, alone one afternoon a few weeks ago. Finding the violence to be more extreme than I expected, and the fighting too real to watch, I fast forwarded through a number of parts in the movie. Having felt the terror of the migrants whose stories were told through the movie, I hoped that the movie was an extreme example of what a journey North might look like. I was wrong. On Friday, when we traveled south to Nogales, Mexico I had the chance to talk with a group of about 40 men who had just been deported. Some were deported after 20 years of living in the states (one man has a family in St. Paul and worked at Salut Bar), others were deported after their first border crossing, barely making it into the Arizona desert before being sent back. Some came from Florida, others from California. The border patrol has taken to deporting people as far from where they crossed into the US as possible in hopes of separating them from family that might be waiting right across the border on the Mexican side. The cruelty we (the US government) use is astonishing, and after looking at the faces and hearing the stories of these men, I have already been changed. I don’t think I will be able to turn back from fighting in some way for the justice of these migrants and refugees.

One of the men I met had come from Guatemala. Two young boys, 14 years old, had come alone from Honduras, traveling 14 days on foot and by train. The man coming from Guatemala described his travel, and I brought up the movie Sin Nombre. He had seen it, and went on to describe all the similarities between his own travel and the plot of the film. For each devastating moment in the movie, this man had a comparison to make to his own journey north. Like Smiley and Paulina, the main characters in Sin Nombre, this man had traveled atop trains for hundreds of miles. He had seen a man fall from the train, killed instantly caught under the fast moving cars. He had suffered with little food and water, and discussed the harsh realities of meeting gangs and racism along the way. After his story, I’m afraid Sin Nombre can’t be brushed off as overly dramatic or unlikely—he was a testament to its truth. Unfortunately the violence here can’t be avoided simply by pressing fast forward, and I know what I see and hear on the border will be much more real than the movie was as I sat alone watching it in my basement. I only hope I can learn and be open to these stories in a way that leads me to some kind of useful action for migrants and refugees from wherever they may come. Classes start tomorrow---knowledge and history of border issues will be a good place to start.