The killing of Jose Antonio

     Two months ago today, 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was killed by the Border Patrol here in Nogales, Sonora.  Today is also International Human Rights Day commemorating the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations on December 10, 1948.  It seems like an appropriate moment to consider the impact of the United States’ militarization of the border.

     A Border Patrol agent in Nogales, Arizona fired at least 14 shots from his assault rifle into Nogales, Sonora on the night of October 10.  Jose Antonio was hit twice in the head and four times in the chest.

     The Border Patrol claims the agent fired in self-defense after rocks were thrown at agents who were pursuing two drug smugglers.  Their brief statement issued the following day notes that the agent “discharged his service weapon” and “one of the suspects appeared to have been hit.”

     “They ripped out a part of my soul” said Araceli, Jose Antonio’s mother, during a gathering of border organizations in Ciudad Juarez.  “He was and is part of my life.  I still hear his voice.  My son had a lot of dreams.  Why do they have to kill innocent people?”   

     I moved back to Nogales ten days after Jose Antonio was killed and I’ve been drawn to that site several times.  I went there the day after I returned here and my last visit was two days ago.  I’ve also walked along the U.S. side of the border wall near where the shots were fired.

     Jose Antonio was killed on the sidewalk in front of Dr. Luis Contreras’ home and clinic on International Street.  The agent placed the barrel of his rifle between the steel beams of the border wall and shot down into Nogales, Sonora.  That section of the wall is about 20 feet high and set on a hill that is 25 feet above the street.

     The initial shots were fired from at least 100 feet away and eight bullets hit the corner of the building.  The final shots were fired from about 50 feet away and three bullets hit that side of the building where Jose Antonio died.  It would have been extremely difficult to throw a rock from there and hit the agent who fired all those shots.

     The killing took place approximately 100 yards from a Border Patrol surveillance tower.  The video that was recorded by the cameras that night has not been released to the public or to Jose Antonio’s family.

     It would appear that the Border Patrol is able to get away with murder because the victim was Mexican.  Would the U.S. government show more concern if an agent on the northern border had killed a 16-year-old Canadian, or if the roles were reversed and Jose Antonio had shot into the United States and killed someone there?    

     “Why are they able to go out and kill here?” asked Araceli.  “Why are they covering them up?  I want to know who they are.  I want them arrested and I want justice.” 

     “There have been very many young people, teenagers, who have been killed at the border” said Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.  “The reports reaching me are that there has been excessive force by the U.S. border patrols.”

Araceli with a photo of her son

Tito and Jeannette standing where Jose Antonio died (circles were drawn around the bullet holes)

The first shots were fired from the border wall above the car parked in the middle and the surveillance tower is on the left

The final shots were fired from that part of the wall

Sentenced to death in the desert

     The president and members of congress sentenced a woman from Guatemala to capital punishment for crossing an imaginary line in search of work.  The sentence was carried out on June 30 in a remote section of desert 50 miles southwest of Tucson.  The woman was struggling to hike up a hill, collapsed face down on the ground, and died.  Her body was found two days later by a University of Michigan archaeology team that returned on July 15 to create a memorial.  It appears she was in her early 30s and her name is unknown.      

     Professor Jason DeLeon showed us the place where she died - a dark stain marked the ground.  He has hiked that trail many times in his work to preserve migrant artifacts (items left behind on the journey) and he often rested in the shade of the mesquite tree where they were building the shrine.  The view looking down the hill from there is starkly beautiful, but she was heading uphill and not able to focus on the scenery.

     Her sentence was imposed by the individuals responsible for policies and laws that enable U.S. corporations to freely move their products around the world while placing severe restrictions on the movement of workers.  The border city of Nogales, Sonora has nearly 100 assembly plants that manufacture goods for export to the U.S.  More than 3,000 people work in the Chamberlin factory producing garage door openers.  Those openers cross easily into Nogales, Arizona but the people that make them would have to hike for days in the southern Arizona desert if they dared to seek better-paying work in the U.S.

     Since the North America Free Trade Agreement was implemented in 1994, the border with Mexico has been enforced through a policy of “deterrence.”  Unauthorized immigrants are forced to cross through the most isolated and dangerous areas along the border.        

     The Border Patrol station in Nogales is the largest in the U.S. and a 20-foot-high border wall separates Nogales, Sonora from Nogales, Arizona.  The woman was prevented from safely crossing between the two sides of the city and, instead, had to cross through the remote desert about 30 miles to the west.

     A patrol from the Samaritans organization was driving along Batamote Road on June 30 when they encountered a young man from El Salvador who was in very bad condition.  He said he walked an hour to reach the road and he was seeking help for a woman from Guatemala who was dying.  He asked that the Border Patrol be called to rescue the woman.  The Border Patrol didn’t find her, but they did apprehend the young man and he was then taken to the hospital.

     The mission of Samaritans is to save lives in the Southern Arizona desert by providing humanitarian aid to migrants in distress.  It is an expression of compassionate resistance to policies and laws that enable garage door openers to cross the border while punishing people that are crossing in search of a better life.

     

Vigil at the Tent City jail

     Three men dressed in camouflage and armed with assault rifles were watching us as we stepped off the bus to protest sheriff Joe Arpaio’s tent city jail in Phoenix on June 23.  Sheriff agents on horseback and with an ATV, patrol car, and SUV were posted just down the street.  They weren’t concerned about the armed civilians but they did video people who walked by porting “Standing on the Side of Love” placards.

     The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) was holding its general assembly in Phoenix and more than 3,000 people participated in the candlelight vigil outside the jail.  Peter Morales, UUA president, was given a tour of the jail by Arpaio and he said it seemed like “what you’d see in a fascist country.”  Geoffrey Black, president of the United Church of Christ, called it “a national disgrace.”

     We all chanted “Close it down!” with enough force to be heard inside the jail.  The inmates are kept in tents where they have to endure the heat of summer and the cold of winter.  The temperature reached 106 degrees that day and was still over 100 at 9 P.M.  Arpaio calls himself the “toughest sheriff in America.”

     The sheriff has ordered sweeps of Latino neighborhoods to round up people suspected of being unauthorized immigrants.  A Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation concluded that Arpaio oversaw the worst pattern of racial profiling by a law enforcement agency in U.S. history.  The sheriff and his commanders created a culture of abusing the rights of Latinos.  The DOJ filed a lawsuit against Arpaio last month because of “unlawful discriminatory police conduct directed at Latinos.”
     Standing on the Side of Love is a campaign sponsored by the UUA to “harness love’s power to stop oppression.”  The day after the UUA assembly ended, the Supreme Court upheld the clause of Arizona’s law SB1070 that requires police to check the immigration status of people they stop and suspect are unauthorized immigrants.   UUA moderator Gini Courter said, “It violates our faith to comply with SB1070 and we are called to resist the mass detention and deportation of immigrants.”

Memorial Day in the desert

     We commemorated Memorial Day by hiking to three shrines in the Sonoran desert and leaving water and food along the trail in an effort to prevent the creation of future shrines.

     We were walking along the side of a hill when Bob stopped and began peering around.  He stepped off the trail and started working his way up through the spiny ocotillo.  After a few minutes he saw the cross and a small pile of rocks.  He took some rope out of his pack, knelt down, and lashed the cross solidly together again.  Bob had found the remains of a migrant there in March of last year.  We sat down in the scant shade of a mesquite tree and contemplated the tragedy that had occurred at that site.

     The trail continued up to a saddle between the hills a quarter mile away.  This is a resting place for migrants where Bob and Dorothy had hung four packs beside the trail a week before.  They checked the packs and the water and food they had placed inside was all gone.  We unloaded the water and food packets we had carried and restocked those packs.  It felt like an appropriate way to honor the person who had died just down the trail.

     We continued hiking and after a while Bob led us to a tree which has a cross and a candle at its base.  That marks the site where he found the remains of a migrant in February of this year.  We again sat in the shade for a long moment of silence.

     A short distance away, Bob brought us to the third shrine.  He found the remains of another migrant there on that same day in March 2011.  The bones he encountered were of a small person, probably a woman. 

     I asked Bob a few questions about the shrines and I started to feel overwhelmed – sadness at those painful deaths and anger over a border strategy that deliberately funnels people into such remote and deadly terrain.  I took a few steps away and tried to focus on the mesquite trees and the feel of the breeze on my face.  The cactus behind the cross was in bloom – beauty and tragedy, side by side.

     “I don’t want to have to place another shrine in the desert,” Bob told me.  “It hurts to do so but I don’t want people to be forgotten.”

     

Alone in the desert

     We had been hiking for a couple hours on May 5 when we saw a man walking towards us on the ridge.  We were following the trail south towards Mexico and he was heading north.

     “Are you OK?” we asked.  “They chased us this morning,” he replied.  “I got separated from the group and I’m lost.”  “Who were they?” we inquired.  “La Migra (Border Patrol).” 

     “Do you have water and food?” we asked.  “No,” he said.  Al gave him a pint bottle of water which he quickly gulped down.  It was just 10 A.M. and it was already getting warm.

     “Have you seen a group of people?” he asked.  We did see a group about an hour earlier.  We had reached the edge of a cliff and were looking into the canyon when Al saw four people walking down an ATV (all-terrain vehicle) trail.  We watched as a Border Patrol truck came into the canyon and drove towards the bottom of the trail.  We heard some noise and saw two Border Patrol agents on ATVs riding down that same trail.  The people, ATVs, and truck disappeared from view behind the trees and we couldn’t see what happened next.

     We told him what we had witnessed and pointed out where it had occurred.  He was hoping to catch up with the group but that no longer seemed possible.  “Can I go with you?” he asked.  We explained that we’re members of the Samaritans and put water and food along some of the trails.  We were just out for the day and we weren’t going to be hiking further north.        

     We gave him bottles of water and food packs, and talked about the danger of continuing the trip alone (see photo of the terrain heading north).  He said he was going to wait and see if another group came along that he could join.  If not, he would walk back to Mexico.

     We asked where he was from and he told us Guatemala.  I asked where in Guatemala and he said Quetzaltenango.  I had gone to language school there twenty years ago.  Quetzaltenango is in the western highlands of Guatemala at an elevation of 7,500 feet – a world away from the arid landscape of the Sonoran desert.   

     He looked to be about my age and all he was carrying was a sweater, and no pack.  He thanked us, gathered up the water and food in his arms, and walked south back up the ridge.  We turned around and started down the ridge into the canyon.  Shortly after reaching the canyon road, we passed two Border Patrol trucks parked (with engines running) in the shade of some trees.

     We continued on to the main road and began walking back to where we had parked the truck.  Along the way, we saw a road sign: “Travel Caution: Smuggling and illegal immigration may be encountered in this area.”

     

Images from the migrant trail

     I hiked along the U.S.-Mexico border with two other members of the Samaritans organization on January 21.  We were looking for active migrant trails where we could leave water and food for people that might be in distress.  The images from three scenes that day have stayed with me.

     We started off hiking along a streambed that parallels the border.  After an hour of walking, we passed a pool of water and Bob noticed a piece of clothing under the water.  We were both intrigued and haunted by that sight.

     A few hours later, we found an active trail and followed it south towards the border.  We saw occasional footprints made by tennis shoes and then came upon a resting area.  A small shrine had been erected beside a tree - a cross, candle glasses, and Bible.  There was also a photo of a woman hugging her two daughters.  The photo was next to a prayer to Saint Gabriel – “May your divine providence extend over my family so that together we may give thanks to God.”

     At the end of the day, as we drove back to the main road, we passed a Border Patrol truck parked alongside another truck with a portable surveillance tower.  They were on top of the highest hill in the area – waiting to detect and apprehend people for crossing an imaginary line in the desert in order to provide for their families.

     Just a few days earlier, the Border Patrol announced they are going to launch a new program – the “Consequence Delivery System.”  Unauthorized immigrants will be classified into seven different categories that will receive varying degrees of punishment – which could include a criminal conviction and being sent back to distant areas in Mexico.  One of the unmentioned consequences of the system will be increased profits for the corporations involved in the detention and deportation industry.

     I’ve been able to talk with many courageous migrants in Nogales – some on their way north and others who have recently been deported.  Their motivation for risking arrest and death in the desert is either to provide for their families in their communities of origin or to be re-united with their families in the communities in the U.S. where they have established their lives. 

     I believe that a parent’s love for their child is ultimately more powerful than the heartless technology and policies created to enforce inequality and exclusion.