Mariposa – AZ Trip Part II

Today’s Word of the Day is mariposa, or butterfly. The image of the monarch butterfly – which every year journeys from North America to Southern American wintering grounds – is recurrent motif in migrant activism and, thus, the Mariposa Aid Station we visited on Saturday is aptly named.

My thoughts on the experience we had there still aren’t very concise, but hopefully the prose-poem reflection I wrote for my Writing in Society class will help you to at least understand what I was feeling at the time.

The White Flag

“There is no reason for us to feel worse today than any other day of our lives”, she tells me. We hold each other and cry beneath the bridge.

We do not -
Can not -
Do not want to -
Understand “Why?”

Today it smacked us in the face. But today is every day. We created the system.

White women tend the wounded. White men do the wounding.

_______________________

We bandaged blisters, massaged muscles, put a dislocated knee back in place.

He had – he was told – a daughter, a little girl, in Los Angeles. He spent one day in the desert. And then was deported.

Another had crossed at Tijuana. He spent four days in the desert. He was processed in Phoenix. He was deported at Mariposa.

And this one… he still hasn’t crossed yet. He’s jittery, and chugging water. Cup after cup, he slakes and prepares for thirst. He hasn’t eaten in three days. And he won’t accept the sandwich being offered to him.
________________________

They give them no food, no water, no medical attention whatsoever. It’s available. But only if you request it.

They call it deterrence.

If they make the crossing hard enough, if we can make it not worth it, we can keep them out of our land.

But this is their land.

___________________

We stare at the wall, a rusted metal thing that looks like a scab someone won’t stop scratching.

It’s ugly. Heinous. Inhuman and inhumane. And, in the end, it’s paper. Words. One person, one people, telling another that they do not belong.

That we will hunt you down with our cameras and helicopters, and when you see us you will be so beaten by this alien land that you will be happy to be sent back.

You will tell the white women who are washing your feet, “No más”. Never more.

______________________

Mejor, “Never more muros”.

Never more the walls that tear us down.

This land of chain-link and barbed wire is a prison.

________________________

“Patrol this”, someone says. We laugh. We want to put it on a T-shirt.

_________________________

Back at camp, I kneel before the broken man.

“Put your feet in the water. It’s warm, it will help”.

We wash his feet, dab them dry, and put iodine on open sores. We cut clean strips of white gauze to size, and then wrap and tape them in place.

He thanks us. We wish him good luck.

And I want to die.

To be the dirt beneath his feet. To give him my tears and my blood and my chapstick. Anything I can.
Anything except the land, which he more than earned, but is not mine to give.

_________________________

“Knowing all this is not enough”, she says.

“There’s got to be something we can do”, says another.

___________________________

I surrender.