Traveling south

[This is one of a series of reports from a border trip sponsored by Witness for Peace. Seven of us drove from Minnesota to Mexico, visiting towns on both sides of the border, meeting and speaking with a wide variety of people, and finally meeting up with the Border Trail Walk for the final leg of their seventy-five-mile journey from Sásabe to Tucson.]

May 31: Random thoughts from the road, in the middle of the night, in the middle of Colorado

Fifteen hours on the road so far. I’m betting at least fifteen more before we get to Tucson. My knees complain – I’d never make it as an immigrant, stuffed in the back of a truck, without our frequent stops for stretchng or chasing the frisbee. (I stretch – the twenty-somethings chase the frisbee.)

One of my daughters asked me this morning: “So why are you driving for 28 hours just to walk at the end?”

The Border Trail Walk: We call for action now to prevent the tragic deaths of migrants in the desert. Thousands of men, women, and children have died due to border militarization and unjust immigration and international economic policies. http://www.migranttrail.net Co-sponsored by: Migrant Trail Walk Committee, American Friends Service Committee, Borderlinks, Casa Maria, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Coloradans for Immigrant Rights, Derechos Humanos/Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras, GUAMAP, MEChA[UofA], No More Deaths, No More Deaths Phoenix, Samaritans, Tucson SOA Watch, West Coast Mennonite Central Committee, Wingspan, Witness for Peace

The walk covers about 75 desert miles in a week’s time. We will only join it for the last two days, Saturday and Sunday. Last year, 460 people died in the desert, trying to make it from Mexico to the United States. That is, 460 bodies were found. We really don’t know how many died.

Now we exit the interstate to take a shortcut promised to save time and route us around Denver and around some of the mountains. Brush, Colorado. At least that’s what David says. David is a doctor from Red Wing, Minnesota, seventy-something and retired, a member of Vets for Peace. Oops – a u-turn as we overshoot the intersection in the dark.

Lucky for us, there are plenty of younger eyes to do the night driving. Patrick, originally from Oregon, lives in Minnesota now and is the main organizer of this excursion. Marlon, an ex-marine, is now a student at St. Scholastica in Duluth, preparing to become a high school history teacher. Maria (originally from Venezuela) and Meredith both work at Casa Esperanza, a Twin Cities sheltler for women and children who are victims of violence. Eric, the youngest of our group, is a Macalester student with a video camera and ties to IndyMedia.

Tomorrow we will travel to Nogales and Altar and Sasabe in Mexico, meeting people who are waiting to cross the border and the desert, people who have been deported from the United States or just chased back across the border, people who run migrant shelters for the penniless deportees, the footsore travelers from Chiapas or Guatemala or El Salvador, the victims of robbery and rape along the dangerous trail.