Back in Chicago, reflecting on the border.

The tail end of my Border Studies Program experience was exhausting and memorable. It was sad to realize that I would soon be leaving the place I had become so accustomed to and began to fully prepare myself to go back to my life armed with this new knowledge. Completing final work was not nearly as strenuous as past semesters because information on the subject matter just flowed out of me. After being so totally immersed in our work, having something to show for it wasn’t too difficult.

Now that I’m back my border experience continues to be relevant in my everyday interactions. Whether its beginning to distrust NPR because of their funding from Monsanto and quoting of Assistant Secretary of Plan Mexico David T. Johnson as a reliable source about swine flu, or hearing the stories from a former farm worker in California’s Imperial Valley. It was surprising and incredibly interesting this past Mother’s Day to compare my experiences traveling through Yuma and southern California to those of a fellow celebration goer. This person worked the same fields in the early 1970s I had past by just a month ago. Things have changed a lot since his experiences there, when Bonzai runs were the way he got to work daily. The issues that I have studied these past few months continue to surround me here at home in the Southside of Chicago. I am so thankful that I pay so much more attention to these realities now!

Also, I’m cold.

Paz,

Viviana

Wrapping up Spring '09: reflections by Lily

Hi everyone, my name is Lily Huang and I’m the Program Associate for the Border Studies program. This semester I worked with Riley, the Resident Director, Dereka Rushbrook, the professor of the Research Methods class, and Heather Craigie, the professor of the Field Study and the Borderlands: Theory and Practice class. I’m from Boston, MA and while I was studying at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, I did the Border Studies Program in 2006. I lived with a wonderful host family, the Garcias, in Ciudad Juarez, had classes in El Paso and Cd. Juarez and did my internship at Biblioteca Infantil, an afterschool community center, in Colonia Anapra in Cd. Juarez. When I returned to Vassar in the spring, I did a BorderLinks delegation to the Tucson and Nogales border with my class: Nation, God and Human Rights on the US-Mexico Border. Later in the summer, I received a fellowship to return to Juarez and continue teaching and organizing at Biblioteca Infantil.

Now everything has come full circle and I live in Tucson. As Ruben Martinez, the author of Crossing Over, wrote, “The border is all around us.” Like in Juarez and El Paso, here at the Tucson and Nogales border I see these border issues that I have always been interested in: immigration and migration, nationalism/racism/class-ism, and cultural fluidity and change. Studying on and now working here with the Border Studies Program has helped me conceptualize the border and all these issues in Boston, in Poughkeepsie, in Mexico City, in Oaxaca and, of course, in Tucson, especially in South Tucson where the majority of people of color and working class/working poor people live their lives. Because I have had such a history with the Border Studies Program, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions at lily.yimche.huang@gmail.com.

After following all my students and sitting them down to write their blog entries ;) from here to Chiapas, it’s now my turn to write about the retreat! The pilot program of the “Roots and Routes of Migration”spring semester was wonderful. All the seis reinas, Callie, Miriam, Vivian, Alice, Sonia and Jessye, were so funny, smart and ready to go. Before we left to go on the retreat, I attended their final project presentations for Riley’s class. Jessye prepared a touching service called “A Service to Honor Migrants” that included a beautiful sermon and prayer along with hymns. Vivian created a beautiful stencil of a Mexican campesino holding the Virgin of Guadalupe that is/looks like an ear of corn to honor food sovereignty/native seeds/campesinos. Alice wrote thought-provoking letters to President Obama on exploitative employee sanctions, to Secretary Napolitano on the Department of Homeland Security’s ineffective, or perhaps disastrously and fatally effective, philosophy and practice of “prevention through deterrence” and to the House of Representatives on the REAL ID Act and the repeal of it with the Border Security & Responsibility Act. Sonia and Callie created a jam-packed PowerPoint presentation on the myths surrounding immigrants and immigration. And, finally, Miriam was able to put everything together in an amazing Zine. Wow, I was so impressed.

Anyways, the next day, I picked up most of the girls early in the morning and we met up with Riley and Jessye at the Historic Y, where our office is located. We drove southwest towards Puerto Penasco aka Rocky Point to CEDO, the Intercultural Center for the Study of Deserts and Oceans (http://www.cedointercultural.org/) located conveniently next to a beach. We arrived in Puerto Penasco, had lunch and went to CEDO. CEDO is a beautiful building that includes a museum, a library, rooms for their interns and other rooms for their visiting groups and other guests. We sat down with Alexis, the Field Education Intern, who gave us a great PowerPoint presentation about Tourism and Development in Rocky Point. She told us that the fishing industry will collapse in 50 years if fishing rates stay the same. Also that an average person spends 13,000 gallons of water per day while one gulf course uses 310,000 gallons per day or in the desert 1 million gallons per day. Afterwards the students spent their first free afternoon in a long time at the beach while Riley and I prepared a Thai-curry feast for all of us. It was a special night, sitting around the kitchen island, reminiscing about Orientation and first impressions, the month-long travel seminar through Chiapas and Oaxaca and everyone getting sick but still pulling through, the last days of finals and everything else.

The next morning and afternoon we were down to business. We met (on the beach) and had a verbal evaluation of the spring program because these students were the first students ever on the first spring program ever. They gave feedback on their field study sites and homestays, the structure of the program and its courses, and the schedules and lives. It was really helpful because it was obvious that they have been thinking about these things since the beginning of the semester and have really thought out their ideas and suggestions for future programs. Then while they filled out evaluations, Riley and I cooked again with the help of some of the students. In the late afternoon, we went on a kayaking tour with Alexis of the estuary and marine life. That was really fun and relaxing! We saw the extreme tide changes (the second biggest tidal difference in the world) and fiddler crabs and we beached many times in the middle of the estuary.

We ate bean burritos and drank Mexican soda on a little island, watched the sun set and then raced back to shore. At night, we had a bonfire and a closing ceremony. We all talked about our memories of people and events from the semester and how we can bring those memories back home with us. It was really nice to have closure or the closest thing that we can all get to closure. The next morning we juggled, played Frisbee, laid on the beach and swam. Alice and Jessye made a delicious veggie Pad Thai with almond sauce. We had a nice meal with a nice Tres Leches cake in honor of Sonia’s graduation from Lewis and Clark. We had our last moments in the beach, were rushed away by the rising tide and packed up to go back to Tucson. And that was the end of the Spring 09 semester.

Comparative trip to Yuma - San Diego by Alice

We were presented with two choices for our "comparative border trip": East or West. It was designed to be a chance to see another part of the border besides Arizona, because, as we've learned, each sector had its own unique geography, political situation and human impact. We chose West, and set off for a weekend in Yuma, Arizona and San Diego, California.

First we stopped in Yuma to talk to an organization called Campesinos sin Fronteras, or Farmworkers without Borders. Two strong, inspiring women talked to us about their group's work organizing amongst migrant field workers, teaching about sexual health and nutrition and helping people find safe housing. They would intercept workers crossing the border at 3 a.m., go out to the fields with them, give talks on the buses, etc. The woman who now runs the organization was a strawberry picker herself for 13 years, and told us about being in the fields while planes flew overhead spraying clouds of pesticides on the plants and the workers. This is the sort of thing she now fights.

After an interesting lunch at a Chinese/Mexican restaurant, we piled back in the van and headed for California. Just over the state line, we visited a cemetery that housed the graves of many unidentified migrants who had died crossing the border. It was such a sad and stark contrast, seeing the grassy, shady patch at the front with well-tended marble graves, then at the back, a barren dirt plot with little bricks with only a number and "John Doe." Someone had left crosses on some of the graves reading "not forgotten" and "I love you."

We got back in the van and resumed our standard van activities—eating Pub Mix, sleeping and listening to music--until we got to our destination, the Quaker house in La Jolla, CA. We got to sleep on the floor of their cozy library, surrounded by books on non-violence. The next day we had a lecture about the California border, about how only the wealthy can get legal visas, about cross-border pollution and about the rampant drug trafficking. We then set off with local activist Dan Wateman to see the border for ourselves. The paranoia, militarization, excess spending and environmental destruction were shocking to see, but the worst by far was the destruction of Friendship Park. Since the early 70s it's been an important cultural meeting spot, a park on both sides of the border where family members could talk and hug through the fence, where people could chat and as the name suggests, make friends, and where groups held binational salsa and yoga classes. It was a place that resisted the doctrine of fear of the other. Now the Border Patrol is building a double wall, destroying Friendship Park. Dan stood in front of the bulldozers and blocked the construction for hours before they hauled him away. Why weren't there hundreds of people with him? Thousands?

We also had the unique experience of walking on the beach right up to where the border wall marches into the Pacific. Through the bars we could see families playing on the beach, buying snacks from a vendor, laughing and splashing. On the U.S. side, it was desolate, empty except for Border Patrol, construction vehicles and us.

That night we went to a community presentation about Friendship Park, and the next morning we climbed into the van at the crack of dawn and headed back to Tucson.