💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › crimethinc-four-stories-from-the-border.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 08:31:13. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Four Stories from the Border Author: CrimethInc. Date: May 22, 2011 Language: en Topics: borders Source: Retrieved on 9th November 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2011/05/22/four-stories-from-the-border
This story accompanies Designed to Kill: Border Policy and How to Change
It, an analysis exploring how the actual effects and objectives of US
border control policy differ from its ostensible purpose.
We were walking up a small canyon. One of my companions was doing very
loud and rather florid call outs: “!COMPANERAS! ¡COMPANEROS! ¡NO TENGAN
MIEDO! ¡TENEMOS AGUA, COMIDA, Y MEDICAMIENTOS! ¡SOMOS AMIGOS! ¡NO SOMOS
LA MIGRA! ¡ESTAMOS AQUI PARA AYUDARLES! ¡SI NECESITAN CUALQUIER COSA:
GRITENOS!” The great majority of the time no one is there to hear these
call outs.
We turned a corner in the canyon, and there were about thirty five
people: men, women, children, and teenagers, dressed in all blacks,
browns, and desert tans, dead silent and taking up a very small amount
of space. “Holy shit, um, did you hear us coming?”
“Yes, we heard you coming.” It was very hot. We gave them lots of water,
food, socks, and treated a number of blisters and sprained ankles. They
were all from Guatemala. They said they had been together every step of
the way. As we prepared to part ways, one of them handed us a large sack
of money—pesos and dollars.
“Um, no, you don’t understand, you don’t have to give us any money, this
is why we are here.”
“No, you don’t understand,” he said. “We found this money at a shrine in
the desert. We decided that it was not doing anybody any good there, so
we took it. If the migra catches us they will take it from us, and it
will never do anybody any good. We want you to take this money, and to
use it to help other migrants.” We carried out their wishes.
We got a call from the Mexican consulate. A man’s family had contacted
them. He had been missing for nine days. The last time anybody had seen
him he was somewhere near a small body of water with a fractured rib.
They thought that he was in our area somewhere. For about a week we
searched and searched, but we never found him. His brother had papers.
He came up, with a horse. He combed the desert on horseback for another
week, and eventually found his brother’s body.
Two weeks later a man came walking into camp. He was carrying an almost
empty gallon jug of water with our markings on it in one hand, and a
white shirt tied to a long stick in the other. He stuck the jug under my
nose: “This water saved my life! I was praying to Jesus for water! I was
sure I was going to die, and I found this water in the desert! I think
Border Patrol leaves it on the trails for people!”
“No, man,” I said, “Border Patrol couldn’t give a shit if people live or
die. We left that water.”
“Those bastards,” he said. “I’ve been waving this flag at their
helicopters for three days. They just fly on. When you want them they’re
nowhere to be seen, and when you don’t—there they are.” I checked the
markings on the bottle. It had been dropped two weeks earlier, at an
unusual location we had only gone to because we were looking for the man
who died.
One day my colleague and I drove way out into the middle of nowhere to
drop water in the desert. Four days later it was time to check on it. On
our way out to the spot we saw a man sitting by the side of the little
dirt road. He had a ripped up piece of blanket tied around one knee.
“How are you doing?” I asked him.
“Badly,” he answered. “Look at this.” He pulled up his pant leg to
reveal a black, swollen, thoroughly broken ankle.
“That’s bad,” I said. “You need to go to the hospital.”
“Yes,” he said. “Look at this.” He pulled his shirt aside.
“OH SHIT!” my colleague and I shouted in unison. He had a large open
chest wound, bloody, half scabbed over and oozing pus. “You need to go
to the hospital right NOW! What happened?”
“Four nights ago I was walking with three other men through those
mountains over there. I took a blind fall, ten or twelve feet over a
cliff. I broke my ankle and sliced my chest open on a rock. They carried
me down from there all through the night. In the morning we saw you
drive by, but we were still too high, we couldn’t get to the road in
time. When we got here they left and said they were going to find help.
I haven’t seen them or anybody else since then.”
“You’ve been here four days?” It had been well over a hundred degrees
every day. “Have you had any food or water?”
“Food, no. A couple times a day I crawled over to that pond. I didn’t
want to get very far from the road in case someone drove by.”
A hundred yards from the road there was a dried up cattle pond, at best
an inch deep, mostly manure and sludge. There were about a dozen sets of
drag marks where he had crawled between the pond and the road. We drove
him to the ambulance. He was remarkably stoic about everything. I asked
him if the bumpy road was hurting his ankle. “No.”
“Your chest?”
“No.”
“You didn’t get sick from the bad water?” I was sure that he would have
died if he had.
“No.” The ambulance took him to the hospital and I never heard from him
again.
We got a call from our neighbors. A man had crawled up to their door. He
was in terrible shape. He could barely stand or talk. He had not eaten
or drunk water for three days, and he hadn’t urinated for a day and a
half. It had been deadly hot. We tried to give him fluids, but he would
vomit immediately every time.
“This is really bad,” I told him. “You need an IV. We don’t have one
here. You may have kidney damage. We can’t treat that. You need to go to
the hospital. They will deport you after they treat you, but if you
don’t I am really afraid that you might die.”
“No,” he said. “Don’t call them.”
“Please, I understand, but—”
“No. Don’t call them.”
“But—”
“No.” We laid him down. After several hours he managed to keep down a
tiny amount of water. We nursed him through the night as best we could,
giving him water every hour or so. By the morning he was able to hold it
down without vomiting, and he finally urinated a little bit. He could
barely sit up, but he was able to talk again.
“I’ve never seen anyone so sick refuse to go to the hospital,” I said.
“What happened to you?”
“I’ve lived in the states for eighteen years,” he told us. “I’ve never
been in any trouble. I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket. My wife
and I finally paid off our house. All my children are here. So are my
grandchildren. For work I take care of elderly people. Six months ago I
had an accident and I broke my back. I was in bed for nearly four
months. I was working again, and I got pulled over. The policeman said
that I didn’t use my turn signal. I’ve been here eighteen years and I
never got pulled over once. I’ve always been very careful. They sent me
to a detention facility. They kept me there for fifteen days, with
chains on my hands and feet. They fed us peanut butter and crackers
three times a day. I was shackled the whole time. They dropped me off
across the border with nothing. I had nowhere to go. I hadn’t been there
in so long. I left with a group that night. They drove us way out into
the desert. We walked for three days. I couldn’t keep up any longer. I’m
not a young man any more. They left me out there with no food or water.
I was by myself for three more days. I had no idea where I was. I drank
dirty water from a cattle pond, and it made me even sicker. I was
hearing voices and seeing things. When I saw that house up there I
didn’t know if it was real or not. I kept walking towards it. I thought
that I might have already died. I can’t do this again. My whole life is
here. There is nothing for me in this world if I can’t make it back. If
I die I die. This is my only chance. I have to keep trying.”
He recovered slowly. He called us a week after he left, from his house.
A month later he and his wife sent down a huge package of shoes and food
and clothing to give to other migrants. “I almost always stay inside,”
he said. “I can’t afford to risk being sent back again. I suffered so
much out there. I’m still healing. I know that I could never make it
another time.”