Going The Distance

The biggest story in San Diego, without doubt, is the story of the border, and the thousands of people who try to cross illegally everyday. In fact, on the very next day, Tuesday, 3 trucks carrying 74 people burst through the border at Tijuana resulting in gunshots from the US authorities, and 1 critical injury.

We really wanted to be able to tell the story through a couple separated by the border, or one who had struggled across the border and made the American Dream work. It’s proven to be the hardest story to crack of our entire trip, and we have, shamefully, had to give up.

We contacted a representative at the Mexican Consulate in San Diego who put us in touch with representatives from 3 charities who work with the immigrants, specifically, trying to prevent the two deaths a day which result from people trying to cross the border. We started by trying to track down Rafael Hernandez, founder of a group called Angeles del Desierto: volunteers head into the borderlands to leave food, water and sometimes clothes for those stuck out there (http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=21518) Rafael and his wife are now US citizens, having come across 21 years ago. We organised an interview – joy! – but at the last minute, Rafael had to pull out to make a trip into the mountains on a rescue mission. When we spoke the next day, his wife was no longer with him, having to go north to be with her ill sister. We were crestfallen.

Hours later, I receive a call from Enrique Morones, San Diego native and founder of Border Angels. www.borderangels.org, inviting us to come and hear him talk at the San Diego Activist Group meeting. Border Angels does food and water drops in the desert to save lives of illegal immigrants, but also campaigns politically to raise awareness of the plight of Mexican workers (and what drives them to make the treacherous crossing), and the importance of Fair Trade. One of the issues high on his list at the moment is that of Friendship Park (www.borderangels.org/friendshippark.html), an area established by First Lady Patricia Nixon in 1971, on the US-Mexican border at San Diego-Tijuana where families divided by the border can go to talk to each other, hug through the bars. Since the US government vowed to strengthen the border a few years ago, the park has been closed because of the added 3 layers of wire fence which now separate families. Campaigns now rage to reopen this vital and important link between two worlds.

Enrique gave us a contact in Tijuana, Micaela, who runs a refuge for people deported from the US back to Mexico. I spoke with her in the hope of finding a couple who could tell the border story, but she said that she only had single women in the refuge at the moment. We left San Diego deflated by our lack of luck in being able to tell this story – we will try in Nogales, but it’s unlikely we’ll have much luck with the short time frame we are operating under.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 9:55 am and is filed under Uncategorised. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.