207 bodies in the desert

I read an article today about people dying crossing the deserts at the borders of this country and Mexico. This year alone, just in Arizona and about 16 miles of the border in California, 207 bodies of women, men, and children have been found. People dying of thirst and heat stroke. It’s just fucking ridiculous, tragic, and sad. I hope that someday borders are just an old memory; that people finally become humane enough to get rid of states and borders. And economic and trade systems based on greed and consumption that treat whole groups of people as resources and labor for those in power and those who happen to be of a certain ethnicity or nationality.

It’s almost funny, if the whole thing didn’t have such immense consequences, that the people who support “free” trade and economic policies like NAFTA, CAFTA, and all the others are the same people who think that human individuals, as well as families, can be “illegal” and then disregard the inhumane and tragic consequences of the people affected by their ignorance, ethnocentrism, and lust for consumption. For anyone reading this that doesn’t know much about free trade policies and organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have you noticed how, since the passing of NAFTA, immigration into this country from Mexico has drastically increased? There are reasons for this and, once learning a little bit about international trade, it isn’t very difficult to understand what they are. But I don’t see these policies, which cause so much suffering in so much of the world, or their consequences being discussed in public dialogue. In fact, what I usually see are ridiculous accusations and fear mongering that distort and distracts the public’s perception of these situations. For example, a growing trend is for people in the middle and upper middle classes to claim that immigrants should be stopped at all costs because they are a threat to the environment! This is coming from people who live in big houses in the suburbs with all their SUVs, addiction to consumption, huge yards far from their workplaces and grocery stores, and everything else that goes into this kind of consumption and consumerism based existence. Meanwhile, immigrants are riding on the bus systems, biking, walking, and sharing apartments with extended families. I think one of the scariest things to threaten the environment is the possibility of these elitist, racist members of Club America having children who will continue in their parents oversized footprints.

And the reality of all of this is that normal human beings are dying by the hundreds under the sun south of Tucson. So, I guess after reading this article (which is only one of many that have seeped into my consciousness), I feel sick; I feel an allegiance to humanity, not to some flag or some line drawn through the sand and made “real” by a razor-wire fence and motion detectors. Where does that leave me? What do I do? I don’t really know. That’s why I am writing this. To verbalize; to communicate how I am feeling and to make my feelings clear. I have read about humanitarian groups which have set up water and first aid stations at different locations near the border, along crossing routes. This is something that seems worthwhile. I want to change policy, to change concepts of state and border, of foreign and native. I want compassion, awareness, unity, cooperation, understanding, and love to be the founding principles of interaction and co-existence. But I don’t know how to do these things. Nor do I think that I can make them happen. So, it seems that smaller scale actions are the paths to create and follow.