Rupa & the April Fishes: Por la frontera, the graveyard

We woke up yesterday in El Centro and headed into Calexico to see the graveyard where the unidentified migrants found in that area are buried. They are found by the border patrol and taken to the County Coroner's Office and then sent to this grave site. I had contacted Calexico's Coroner's Office last month to see if they would grant me an interview during this trip. They politely declined. The officer I spoke to said he was "suspicious" of what I was doing, a doctor traveling with musicians to the border to do a project.

"Suspicious"--of what? Making music? Or practicing medicine? Of forming my own opinions based upon my reading, questioning and experience? Probably all of it.

So we went to the graveyard at noon. The earth was already cracked and hot, baking. Summer has already started down here and it's only April. It heats up quickly. The temperatures will soar to 120F next month. It was about 100F when we were there. There are two parts to the graveyard. The first part is a well-manicured part with grass, a sprinkler system, trees and marble tombstones. Apparently, one of the first US casualties in the Iraq war is a Mexican migrant who is buried on this well-kept side of the graveyard. Then there is the second part, somewhat hidden from view at the farthest side of the cemetery, separated by tall shrubs and a dirt path that had a chain across it. Beyond the chain you could see rows of tiny wooden crosses and bricks in the dirt.

I walked across the cemetery and stepped over the chain with our longtime Creative Collaborator Lars Howlett, the documentary photographer who is working on this project with us. He has been documenting the border and migrants for the past few years and is the one who brought us to this spot. I noticed the graveyard keeper near a shed and wondered how he would respond to our group of eight city-dwellers walking around.

We walked down the one middle dirt path and to either side of us, there was brush that had been cleared and open dirt space. On one side there was land, ready to be filled with caskets and on the other side, the lot was dotted with evenly-spaced bricks that served as grave markers--13 rows of 40 graves a row--520 people. The dirt path we were on was lined with small wooden crosses that were placed in the dirt with these words written on them:

"No olvidado" -- not forgotten. You cannot forget what you never knew, what you had never fixed into your mind. These dead are not even acknowledged, not even present in our national consciousness.

My eyes took in the barren sight--the repeating bricks marked "john doe" and an identification number were humble tombstones at every site where some nameless person was laid--someone's son, someone's sister. Someone who started the journey with hope for a better life, someone who had met a terrible fate on their way across the border. Dehydration, exposure, rattlesnake bite, fractured bones, drownings. There are so many ways to cross this line.

There in the shadowless dirt, with the alkali smell burning my nose, the white heat, my head was pounding from not enough water and too much weight.

The groundskeeper was heading towards us in his truck. I assumed he was going to ask us to leave. I wanted to hear from him and hoped the documentary film crew traveling with us would keep their cameras away so we could have a conversation. Somehow a microphone and face-to-face conversation offer a certain intimacy that cameras cannot. He drove up and immediately asked if we were from a university.

I said "yes" and told him I was a physician from UCSF and also a musician. I explained that we were on a trip to investigate the humanistic impact of the border. I asked him to speak to me about his insights being the groundskeeper. He was initially nervous about speaking and told me I should speak to his supervisor. But we didn't have time and I told him that his perspective was valuable to me in understanding a certain side of the story.

He agreed to speak and I will omit his name for the sake of his job security. He had been digging graves there for 23 years. His father was Mexican and his mother from the US. He said the graves in that yard had filled up fast, since 1997 and the rate seemed to be increasing. In the past he had received up to 10 bodies a day. He said that the cemetery owned the surrounding land and would clear it for more of these unidentified migrants. "There's plenty more room here" and he suspected it would be filled soon enough.

His main complaint was that folks in the US forget that the people who are crossing the border are coming to do the types of labor that people in the US do not want to do. He said he had never seen white folks in the farm fields picking the crops. They are all from Latin America. So why not give them protection if we benefit from their labor? It's a good question.

How expensive would our tomatoes be if they were picked by someone who could unionize, who could organize to demand workers compensation? A living wage? Health care? Safe working conditions? Would we be able to afford basic food anymore?

How much do we benefit from the poverty and desperation of the people who cross the border? Would the economy of the U.S. collapse even further if the undocumented people in the U.S. who live and work in fear of deportation actually had rights? If they had "certain inalienable rights"? And are we benefiting from and complicit in a kind of modern slavery? With a decentralized slave master? Not one person but rather a system where those in power benefit from the labor of those with no avenues to redress their grievances, with no rights, with no protection? And these questions do not simply apply to what is happening between the U.S. and Latin America. This appears to be a global phenomenon.

While I can hear the argument that people should enter this country legally through the processes that are here, there are no such realistic processes for the poor laborers who come to the U.S., the people whose labor we so heavily rely upon to keep our economy going. So they come through deserts. Over mountains, walking on beaches, swimming rivers. They come packed in cars. They are dying to get here--literally.

I feel if we as a society benefit from the labor of a disenfranchised people, we need to speak up for their rights so that the specter of slavery does not continue to loom over this country where so many people come to realize their notions of freedom.

"No olvidado"--we cannot forget what we never took time to really look at.

This trip is just the beginning, just a scratch on the surface of a deep and important issue. It is a problem we all must wrangle with because we are all tied inextricably to this issue of whose hands are picking the tomatoes and broccoli that we have on our table and who is clearing our plates when we are done eating.

The gravedigger finished by describing the dirt where the unidentified migrants were buried. It hadn't been leached. It turns to an oily muddy mess when the rains come. He refused to be photographed, afraid that he would get in trouble. I was grateful he had the courage to speak so plainly about his thoughts with us. Twenty-three years of burying the dead gives him an interesting vantage point on this life.

We got in the car and drove on to Tuscon. The border was a black line that snaked over the sand dunes. I have not yet had the chance to speak to a border patrol agent. I tried yesterday but she was too afraid to talk. I don't feel like calling HQ to schedule an interview with some mouthpiece. I want to hear how a person who patrols the border thinks. I am hoping we'll meet someone off-duty who is open enough to share their thoughts over a margarita. The Texans we have met are super hospitable and know how to make an amazing margarita.

The U.S. census is currently underway. How will we count for the people who are in the shadows? These people who will need and eventually use the services we provide?

How will we count for the people we don't even look to see? The invisible ones.

"No olvidado"--those crosses in the dirt have cast their own shadows in my mind.

From a long stretch of interstate 10E, heading through Texas... Rupa

Read more about Rupa & the April Fishes here and follow along this blog as they take their journey along the US-Mexico border.

Photo: Flickr.com @Wonderlane