The desert

July 6

Today was my first patrol. Three other volunteers and myself drove into the Poco Verde region. It is very close to Mexico, and in some parts you can actually see the border fence. It is also quite mountainous.

The desert is one of the most striking contradictions I witness out here. For starters, seeing it for the first time challenged my initial notions of what a desert is. Before coming to Arizona, when I thought of desert I would imagine sand dunes and smooth sand stretching out for miles upon miles. I am sure there are deserts like that, especially in some parts of the middle east. However, the Southern United States and Northern Mexico is a different story entirely. The terrain is very rocky and the soil is red. There are shrubs everywhere, and you could swear sometimes you are looking at a small forest of bushes. The Sonora desert is very green, especially this time of year.

On one hand, it is extremely beautiful. The greenery and great variety of plants out there, as well as the Saguaro cactuses that you can see towering above are just awesome. There is another interesting type of cactus called the choya. These are fairly small, and believe it or not sometimes grow on trees. There are literally choya trees.

You can see beautiful mountains towering overhead and there are usually hills upon hills. It reminds me of the Book of Genesis, God created the earth and looked upon His creation and saw that it was good.

However, there is a darker side to the desert. Every year, it consumes the lives of hundreds of people- primarily young men, but also women and children. Hiking through the desert is at times an enjoyable but almost always exhausting thing. The sun beats down on you, and often we stop every 15-20 minutes to drink from our water bottles. We wear sneakers, but the rocks give you blisters. At times they can be crumbly and people do fall sometimes, especially in parts where you have to climb them.

For migrants, the small inconveniences we face are magnified immensely. Fearing capture and deportation, people move when it is dark. They walk quickly, sometimes trot. The choya cactuses embed themselves into people’s clothing or rip apart skin. The shaky rocks cause many to lose their balance. Any fall or trip that leads to a small sprain or in other ways inhibits their ability to keep up with the group can be a death sentence. People are left with a small supply of water and food, and then the group has to move on. A gallon of water is enough for perhaps a few hours in the incredible heat. If help is not found, the person gets dehydrated, burnt by the sun, and usually ends up dying. More on how dehydration really works later. In spite of how green the desert looks, the plants there offer no comfort or shade to most. Almost every tree I have seen is thorny and even the leaves are sharp and prickly. To escape from the heat and law enforcement agents or others who are looking for them, people also hide in caves in the daytime if they are lucky to find them. A scorpion or tarantula bite, as immensely painful as it is, may not result in death but may make walking more difficult and cause a person to fall behind. Young children, sick people and the elderly are at risk of death. A rattlesnake bite almost always means the migrant will die, as medical care is usually inaccessible.

God’s creation is beautiful, but human greed and callousness to the suffering of others has turned it into a death trap. Satan tempted Adam and Eve to eat the apple and they were removed from the garden. He also tempted big business leaders and politicians to conduct trade in a way that makes life impossible for millions of people and forces them to look for work elsewhere, and to plan a border policy that will funnel them through such a hell. The most tragic thing however is that the people who are paying for the temptation of greed are not the people who have given in to the evil one, but innocent campesinos who had no role in the signing of such agreements.

Las montagnes, a view similar to what I saw when driving into Poso Verde. I actually lost my camera when I was there and had to buy a new one. The pictures in the following sets were taken from other parts of the desert where we work.