One of the reasons why Border Stories chose the web as its primary content distribution vehicle is the internet’s capacity to bring people and ideas closer together. The border itself is a division among two very different nations but when you travel along it and listen to people on either side of the boundary, you often hear a common tune: that the people that transit across the line do not do so without good reason. Now, when we shared this perspective with Brit or Glenn, and Tom and Dena Kay, their response was one of empathy and understanding. In Tom and Dena’s case, they deal with the consequences of having up to 1000 migrants cross through their cattle ranch a night, and yet, they don’t wag their fingers at these strangers. Instead, they blame the government and the country’s failure to address a more systemic problem. Glenn and Britt do too, and in both their cases, they have become so frustrated by the country’s systemic immigration failures that they have taken matters into their own hands.

When I saw who the latest person to register with our website is, I felt compelled to share this information with other members of the Border Stories community precisely because of the internet’s capacity to bring us closer together. Until this morning, I did not know who Federico Baradello is but after googling his name (as I do with every person that joins our website), I suddenly found myself reading about immigration in a way I wish Barack Obama or John McCain would talk about it.

As Baradello puts it:

“…the ‘migration problem’ facing American and European governments is more accurately labeled a ‘migration paradox’. Migration presents a paradox to governments forced to balance an economic logic of open borders with a sociopolitical logic of closed borders. In other words, migrants are both needed by domestic economies and unwanted by those same societies. Migrants are needed because of a declining domestic labor force unable to meet the increased demand for workers. Migrants are unwanted because of xenophobia, heightened by a mass media that characterizes migration as a threat and a drain on public resources, with no mention or explanation of the causes behind their presence.”

Migration is the most human manifestation of globalization and until we, as a society, find a way to elect and hold accountable a government that will actually take genuine leadership on this issue (i.e.: what is it about the world economy that makes these people come here in the first place?), “the metaphorical border between the South and North: between unemployment and employment, between a life of poverty and a life of economic and educational opportunity” will remain, and the migration, mired in tragedy, will persist.

Had I not called out to him, he would have kept walking, perhaps directly into the town of Arivaca, only a few miles away. A day ago he had left Mexico with a group of 20 but after a narrow escape from the border patrol, his group had diminished to three and then again to only one, which is why he now walked alone. It was about 9 am when we spotted him but he had been walking through the Arizona desert with only a basic sense of north for hours.

I mentioned breakfast and water and he came over to us quietly. I was nervous for him to be so exposed so I moved our camping chairs on the other side of the van, hidden from the road. The border patrol had driven by only a short while ago. As long as we didn’t offer to take him anywhere, it seemed appropriate to offer him a little food and some water. You could see that he welcomed the gesture.

Ricardo had left the impoverished agricultural state of Guanajuato a week ago. He’s come north like so many do in search of work, and a small piece of the sueño Americano. What Ricardo didn’t seem to realize however, was how far he was from reaching his goal. I pulled out the map and showed him where we were.  When I asked him where he was going he said Stockton. That’s in California.

I pointed to Tucson and asked him if that might be where he would head next. I don’t think he knew. It seemed that without the coyote, Ricardo had very little to go on, which is why he appeared to be walking towards a town where he would almost certainly be apprehended. More than anything, he referred to Dios and that with God’s help, he would make it. The more I talked with him though, the more I had this sense that Ricardo’s odds of reaching Tucson, much less Phoenix or California were slim. When he understood his next destination to be Tucson and not LA or Stockton, he asked me how far I thought he would have to walk. I looked at the map and then back at him and murmured, “pues, tres dias.”

More than two weeks have past since this exchange and I’m now safely in San Diego, staring out at the Pacific Ocean, watching surfers catch waves and beach goers enjoy the first days of southern California summer. With 2000 miles of borderland at our back, slinking my own two feet into the sand of such a free and open space, I can’t help but wonder where Ricardo is now.

Recent news of a shortage of jail beds in border towns that are implementing Operation Streamline begs the question: is Ricardo in jail? Given the reputation of certain detention centers in border states, the move to criminalize illegal immigration may very well become an effective form of deterrence but if Tucson judges have already imposed 3,700 sentences for Operation Streamline-related minor offenses this year, which is just 1000 shy of the petty and misdemeanor cases documented in all of 2007, one must also ask: who is paying for these beds? Secondly: are private enterprises running these facilities and if so, should there be concern that increased arrests of undocumented migrants is equating to higher profits for some?

As an American, I have never been forced to contend with the notion that I might have to migrate to another country to survive or feed my family. Here in California, where the state GDP ranks ninth in the world and extreme wealth is so glaring, the thought of perverse incentives for increased profits seems particularly depraved, as if America’s manifest destiny is exactly that: profit over people.

Recent U.S. state department warnings regarding travel to Mexico, particularly as they pertain to increased border violence and the targeted assassination of journalists made me fear Ciudad Juarez in a way I have yet to experience in other border towns.

Our role as multimedia producers is clearly not the same as the role of a journalist working for a daily in Juarez, however. The fact that we will only present three stories from this city and edited them in a motel room 200 miles away, statistically suggests that we are not the demographic to be delivered to the local morgue loaded with narco wounds.

And yet, wielding our cameras through the city’s grid in search of Juarez b-roll was unnerving. While stopped at traffic signals, for example, I was struck by my unprovoked suspicion of men in idling SUVs with tinted windows. I tried to keep my white eyes from wandering, but some of what is sinister about Juarez is also morbidly profound, and if you’re accustomed to standing behind a camera, it’s tough to hold your gaze upon the ground.

As a result of the brutal narco-turf war currently menacing the city, 230 people have died in Juarez in the first 113 days of this year. In addition to this record homicide rate, Mexican federal police have recently discovered over a dozen graves containing a total of 48 unidentified human bodies, some of them dismembered. Three of the bodies were those of women.

Estimates vary how many women have been murdered or have gone missing in Ciudad Juarez since 1993, but local women advocacy groups place both statistics above the 500 mark. According to Friends of the Women of Juarez, three of those women – all under the age of 17- have disappeared since the first of this year and 17 others have already been assassinated. Despite efforts by various Mexican police and government authorities to suggest otherwise, the Ciudad Juarez femicide horror is not over.

In light of this violence, Charles Bowden’s depiction of the Ciudad Juarez as the “laboratory of the future,” strikes me as a chilling concept and difficult to ignore given the city’s pattern of growth and role as a cheap labor hub for nearly 300 multinational factory-owners. 200,000 Mexican workers-mostly women-are employed by local maquiladoras but average wages remain unchanged at $60 per 50-hour work-week. Thus, the ability for one to transcend his or her economic class persistently evades the working class. All the while, migrants from further south continue the quest for improved livelihoods of their own, often choosing to settle in the outskirts of the city, in slums that lack electricity and running water. With few economic opportunities available in an already cash-strapped city, the lure of drug money becomes a powerful temptation.

In an attempt to gain some control of Juarez’s bloody drug war, the government of President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 2,500 soldiers and federal agents into this community of 1.6 million people. We saw them, in their tanks and anonymous ski-masks but our interviews with local residents revealed a reality that is becoming all too familiar to my border sensitive ears: try and squeeze the cartels here, and they’ll go elsewhere.

The question that I now find myself asking is: if Ciudad Juarez is really the laboratory of the future, how long will the current experiment be ignored? The militarization of the border appears to be an increasingly favored approach- by both governments -to addressing the systemic problems of illegal immigration and drug trafficking but I’m not so sure either country has the army power to perpetually patrol 2000 miles of a dominantly undeveloped no-man’s world. What seems more evident is that until regional economic disparity trends reverse, drug dealers, human traffickers, crooked cops and some very violent gangsters will have an indefinite supply of recruits for desperate armies of their own.

Searching for meaning within division continues to lead Border Stories in different directions. What repeatedly brings us back to the source of inspiration that launched this project however, is the notion that there are actual human beings behind the numbers so ubiquitously referenced by literature and media pundits that seek to instill fear among the Americans that are suspicious, if not resentful, of the northward migration of their Latin American counterparts. 

Fortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to manufacture and propagate disinformation without raising the suspicion of those willing to look into the numbers, so to speak. For example, Colorado’s Media Matters recently called  popular Colorado AM talk host, Peter Boyles, to task for not having challenged the Minuteman Project founder’s assertion that illegal immigrants kill “about 9,000 U.S. residents” per year. After looking into the claim, Media Matters determined that no such evidence exists. 

In our own effort to look into the numbers associated with the border and the human beings that cross it, we recently caught up with Jorge, a Mexico resident (Nuevo Laredo) who cleans pools and tends to the gardens of well-to-do families in the U.S. We chose to share Jorge’s story precisely because he reflects a more gentle, albeit fundamental aspect of the U.S. relationship with its workers, legal and illegal alike, who must leave their homes in search of employment. 

To be certain, numbers and statistics have their place in assessing how to manage the ebb and flow of the various peoples that affect our communities. It is for this reason that this blog caught our attention. Specifically, it points to a recent California state-wide survey that claims:

“A majority of state residents (59%) believe immigrants are a benefit to California because of their hard work and job skills, compared to 34 percent who say they are a burden because they use public services.

And what about illegal immigrants? 

Here again, state residents take a positive view. Two-thirds (66%) think illegal immigrants should be allowed to apply for work permits that would let them stay and work in the United States, about the same percentage as one year ago (64%)… Taking it a step further, seven in 10 Californians (72%) think most illegal immigrants who have lived and worked in the United States for at least two years should be given a chance to keep their jobs and apply for legal status; only one-quarter (25%) believe these immigrants should be deported. This supportive attitude is shared by majorities across all political parties (Democrats 80%, independents 72%, Republicans 52%) and among likely voters (65%) and is unchanged since December (72%).”

See the full report.

Jorge is not alone in his views it seems. 

To sit on the banks of where the Rio Grande or Rio Bravo releases its troubled waters into the Gulf of Mexico is something like putting your ear to the earth and attempting to listen for its pulse. The murky estuary that joins the US with Mexico, if only for a second, is a place where birds mate and squawk, feed and take flight, only to defy what keeps humanity so painfully aware of its international boundaries. With feathered wings there are no geopolitical demarcations, but here, despite how quickly the gulf devours what is the most crossed international border in the world, you can feel the heavy mark of man.

It was precisely at the mouth of the Rio Grande that the transient and elusive nature of a border story first struck. Tijuana still remained 2000 miles to our west, when two pickup trucks appeared on the US-side of the horizon, clipped past us and then came to an abrupt halt less than 100 meters from our sand-ridden van. Moments later, a man and his family began unloading goats out of a truck-bed concealed entirely in plywood. In chaotic but controlled procession, the goats were muscled over to a small, accomplice-operated fishing boat, and then escorted across the river where presumably, they would become Mexican goats.

I approached the scene, shirtless and with a small camera in hand, hoping to capture the frenzy as an unsuspecting beach tourist might, but this hasty and rather naive effort was called into question when the man saw my camera. Predictably, he snapped: “what the hell are you doing?”

To be fair, I didn’t know what I was doing. As the man positioned himself between the truck of goats and myself, I walked closer and tried to diffuse the tension by jumping into Spanish and professing of my past relationship with goats, and of my alleged affection for the curious beings. To my surprise, the diplomacy check worked. No sooner had I confessed of my goat attachment, was the man seeking my complicity in what is in fact, a federal no-no.

“Don’t just stand there then, help me.” And I did, until the last of what would be 22 goats were gathered in confusion on the opposite side of the river, and would soon be carted off into the Mexican horizon.

In a world characterized by flux and disparity, imposing international order with walls and an under-compensated police force, especially along terrain that is vast, rugged and largely uninhabited is fundamentally an imperfect prospect. Closing one hole somehow only serves to open another and though it was never my intention to engage in someone else’s international goat export scheme, I got caught in the very border story I now embroil in an international, albeit multimedia, scheme of our own.

The very proposition that borderstories.org seeks to capture the humanity that exists between our borders- physical, cultural, economic alike- is indeed but a transient and elusive one, given the inherently globalized, political and time-sensitive nature of border control. But if we can start from this premise, and proceed with compassion for those that are not responsible for the inequities that exist between the developing world and the ‘developed’ world, and yet are very much caught- sometimes desperately- in the middle, than perhaps, if only for a moment, we may be able to see through our borders and empathize with human stories very different from our own.

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