THE BORDER / LA LINEA

Life is worth nothing / No vale nada la vida

The Final Choice:

You get to die by violence, starvation, or trying to be free. 
Which do you choose?
For you? Your family?

Honoring all those who will never be found or identified.

She Comes for Them / Ella Viene Por Ellos

For I really am your compassionate mother, yours and of all the people who live together in this land, and of all the other people of different ancestries, those who love me, those who cry to me, those who seek me, those who trust in me …

Ca nel nehuatl in namoicnohuacanantzin in tehuatl ihuan in ixquichtin in ic nican tlalpan ancepantlaca, ihuan in occequin nepapantlaca notetlazotlacahuan, in notech motzatzilia, in nechtemoa, in notech motechilia … 

Nican Mopohua, 29-31
​Nahuatl version of the apparition of Nuestra Señora to San Juan Diego.
Living near the border over the years has taught me a lifetime's worth of humanity and humility that I wouldn't have learned otherwise.  This searing land has hidden a slow-motion humanitarian crisis that has been growing each year since the mid-90s, and neither money nor man-power nor technology or even a "Big Beautiful Wall" will address.  As of November 2021, the number of Known deaths had reached 3,790.  No one knows how many more may never be found.
America has long had two insatiable needs: cheap labor and illegal drugs.  Border communities have bi-national cultures and intermarried families that go back many generations.  The Border Industrial Complex has militarized their towns and, indeed, controls the first 100 miles of land  inside the entire country.
Razor-wire Nogales
Nogales, US |
La Virgen De Guadalupe, Nogales, MX
| Nogales, MX in an alley
In Arizona, the militarized zone contains  malignant militia groups hungry for action,  as well as  human and drug smugglers.  Also, there are the stalwart humanitarian groups looking for abandoned, weather-stressed migrants and for skeletal remains.  They set out water stations, which are often vandalized.  It's a game of whack-a-mole.  Relationships with CPB are tenuous; not to mention getting accosted by armed "patriots" who aren't bound to any laws but their own.   The Dept. of Homeland Security is the major player.  The most powerful law enforcement agency in the land, it is exempt from the 4th Amendment and operates in a culture of sanctioned secrecy.
The vast expanses of desert are the perfect cover, and gathering evidence of anything is difficult indeed.  Profits are unlimited, fear and loathing are the fuel, disposable people are the collateral—all ages— on both sides of the line.  The rays of light that persist are those of the ephemeral Human Spirit.  It never ceases to inspire me.

Navidad Baja AZ 2013

Navidad en Baja AZ
Navidad Baja Arizona 2013

Navidad MPP 2019

"Migrant Protection Protocols"
Navidad 2019
Navidad MPP

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*  La Corúa  was a large water serpent that lived in springs of water and protected them. They say it had a cross on its forehead and cleaned the veins of water with its long fangs or tusks. It was a shy creature but could sometimes be caught sunning on the rocks of the spring.  According to Sonoran folk beliefs, if one killed the Corúa, the spring would dry up.  Vanishing water sources and  economic pressures have pushed the folklore of La Corúa  to the dustbin of history on both sides of the border, but La Corúa remains in the minds and memories of elders in the Pimería Alta.

Serpents have been sacred for millennia to indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and are respected as guardians of water sources and bringers of rain.

* Beliefs and Holy Places - A Spiritual Geography of the Pimeria Alta  -  James S. Griffith, University of Arizona Press, 1992

Background painting:  Baboquivari Peak - the monolith landmark defining the Baboquivari mountains southwest of Tucson. The center of Tohono O'odham cosmology, it is sacred and is the home of I'itoi, their Creator and Elder Brother. The peak is visible from Casa Grande in the northwest, south into Mexico.  (I'itoi is also the figure in the O'odham 'Man in the Maze' basket design.)
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