From South to North: Migration and Displacement
The van pulls up to suburban residence in Green Valley, Arizona just a short 30 miles south of Tucson and about an hour drive north from Nogales, Sonora. The day is bright and the climate decent. Shura Wallin of Green Valley Samaritans greets, her stature is petite, but her humanitarian contributions are great. She leads us on a five minute walk up through the neighborhood, and right there with just a small wire fence and a makeshift metal door lies the Sonoran desert, the real desert. For Shura, this is a place that hold many stories, some heartbreaking and some of miracles.
As she leads us through the gate and into the mercy of the desert she begins to point out the cholla (Cylindropuntia) to the right, to the left, in the front, and to the back of our group. Cholla surrounds us, and soon some us find ourselves victims to its prickly defense. As we walk we discover backpacks, empty rusted cans of food, jackets, and other remnants of human activity. The scene evokes despair, fear, and rampant impulsivity. Shura explains that perhaps the owners of these objects left in a hurry, running to hide from potential danger or running to their Coyote (the person hired to sneak them across the border). The brave men, women, and children cross with hopes to find a better life. They are migrants from the southern countries like Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico. The risk is tremendous, but the payoff is safety, comfort, and opportunities not available to them in their home countries.
Often cited as the reason to migrating to the United States is the chase for the American Dream. In “Selling the American Dream Myth to Black Southerners,” Alan DeSantis states “the American Dream is a mythic story which posits that with effort, hard work, optimism, and egalitarian cooperation, anyone in America can morally achieve material success and enjoy the freedom, leisure, and religious and social independence that attend wealthy economic status.” This idea of the chase for the American Dream is a false one. Not only through a migrant’s expectations but the reason behind their movement. This falsehood is projected by economic development. In Lives on the Line, Miriam Davidson says:
“With the creation of the maquiladora industry, hopes were high that as Mexico developed an industrial base, wages and living would rise, just as they had in the United States. A 1972 article in Newsweek sang the praises of the maquiladoras in Nogales, ‘People used to eat meat once a week, but now they’re eating it five times a week, and there’s bread and milk too,’ one local official boasted. ‘Many people have been able to move out of their cardboard shacks into decent homes,’ said another (27).
Maquiladoras are foreign-owned factories in Mexico known to produce and export products to the company’s country of origin. Many of the maquiladoras in Mexico are located in Nogales. The implementation of maquiladoras in Mexico was made possible by the 1994 establishment of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) allowing, as the name suggests, trade without restrictions among Canada, Mexico, and the United States. NAFTA is the man behind the curtain, the catalyst of displacement, and the culprit of the mythical American Dream.
Walking on the fringe of the desert listening to Shura talk about migrants crossing the border and being in immediate danger one has to remember this was not always the case in Arizona. Arizona was part of Mexico before the Mexican Cession of 1848, and as Davidson claims Nogales was not a major crossing section until 1993, and then declared a high-intensity drug trafficking zone in 1995 (87). Constant shifts in development and social factors cause people to move and implement new patterns of migration. Shura describes this too in her guide across the desert. She tells us migrants do not always stick to one route, and so offering humanitarian aid becomes a game of logistics tracking new patterns of movement constantly.
The guided desert tour comes to an end, but the experience remains in my thoughts as I walk back into the suburban neighborhood. As a migrant myself that has come into consciousness of global issues it has become difficult to attribute my family’s migration and position due to the myth of prosperity and freedom through the American Dream. Larger concepts are at work, and migrants are one of the many outcomes of global issues.