Week 5
Politics plays a significant role in this week’s reading and reflection. A quote that stood out to me was:
“Consul Flores Vizcarra says it isn’t the desert that kills immigrants. It isn’t Coyotes. It isn’t even the Border Patrol. ‘What kills the people,’ he says, ‘is the politics of stupidity that rules both sides of the border.’”(Urrea 215)
Rita Vargas wonders why the U.S. doesn’t simply reallocate the money spend on sending dead men back to Mexico on bettering local Mexican communities. The Consul comments about the stupidity of both the Mexican and American governments. Truly, the deaths of immigrants is a political issue as much as it is a humanitarian one. The issue starts in Mexico, where the government and businesses refuse to pay citizens a livable wage. Mexico impoverishes its own people, and does nothing to stop them from crossing the border. On the other side of the border, the U.S. government sets up a system of immigration that is nearly impossible to successfully get through legally. Still, the U.S. expects immigrants to come into the country legally, and demonizes those who cross illegally. Americans believe that illegal immigrants are a drain on the U.S. economy; they’re not. On both sides of the same coin, we see insensible treatment of Mexican nationals. We see a home country that ignores the financial needs of its citizens, and we see a land of opportunity that cannot stand to see its opportunities used on immigrants. Deaths of immigrants might not have to happen; if Mexico were to treat its citizens respectably, and if the U.S. could realize the benefit of immigrants and reform its system, maybe fathers and sons wouldn’t have to waste away in Desolation. Maybe the Coyotes would lose their profits on human smuggling and wouldn’t be able to abandon any more unfortunate souls. Maybe, if Mexican immigrants were seen as people, they would become more than a tragic news story once they entered the United States (that is, of course, if they died in a large group; otherwise they are forgotten entirely). Heat kills, but it doesn’t have to. Coyotes kill, but they don’t have to be allowed to. Border Patrol agents can kill too, but what if they weren’t given a reason to kill? What if the issue of immigration was tackled at its roots, starting with the Mexican economy and U.S. immigration system? It’s all idealistic thought, but the Yuma 14 didn’t have to die. No one has to, or should have to, die in Desolation in the ways that they do.
The Tortilla Curtain and The Devil's Highway 