A dose of border reality

Yesterday was an interesting day to say the least. We were steeped in the complex history of the border at Camp Naco and heard Becky's amazing life journey that involved many borders. We finally saw the border fence, and that somehow made where we were even more surreal for me. How could this landscape that seems so continuous be cut in half so sharply? Naco seemed to me like some form of "border concentrate" with all its layered history and proximity to the reality of living at the border, but still it wasn't hitting me.

My dose of reality at the border came from a little shack behind two of the uninhabited officers' houses at Camp Naco. It probably used to be a storage shed at some point, and I didn't even notice it was there as they took us around the back of one of the houses. But it was there, and it had a different purpose. As our guides then made clear, this was a stop for undocumented migrants crossing the Mexico-U.S. border not even 100 yards away.

It's hard for me to describe what I felt and what I still feel about that spot. I first went to Mexico when I was fifteen to paint a house with a Mexican youth group there, and the relationships I formed there brought me back again and again until I finally studied abroad in Puebla last fall as an exchange student. When I picture migrants, I can't stop their faces from being familiar ones, faces of the people who welcomed me, fed me, laughed with me, and loved me when I came to their country completely alone. It hurts to see places like this.

To see that shed pulled me into an emotional place that I didn't expect to go yesterday. Yesterday was supposed to be this scavenger hunt for historical significance and good light and admirable backstories, but to see a part of what it means to be alone in a foreign place was not on the list for today and I was caught unprepared. The shed was full of what people couldn't take with them. Most of it was trash, but you could see humanity there. Rusted cans of what had been someone's rushed meal, a doll half buried in the dirt. There were even tire tracks nearby in the grass, marking this shack as a pick up station.

I took six photos, wondering what I would see if I had more time to look. I didn't realize until it came up later that I and other photo-takers had made some in our group extremely uncomfortable, and I can understand why. A lot of us unknowingly take part in a sort of poverty porn, were we snap a photo of a few dirty-faced kids and their living space on our way by as some sort of momento, never registering them as people and homes. For me, this small place in an old backyard was so significantly part of someone's life that I couldn't ignore it. I spent an hour snapping photos of an abandoned military camp. No one lives there anymore, no one uses it. It's significance is centered on the past, no matter what it will be used for later. This, however, is a place of significance because of the now. It is a piece of reality for people crossing the border every day. It is a thin safety against the reality of being undocumented in the United States. So I felt I had to save a picture of it, because it means something, and it was the first thing this trip to put a knot in my chest.

I'll end this here before I write a novel. I'm writing this blog post this morning with conflicting emotions. I feel so happy to be here and to learn, but I have found that I will not avoid the harder parts of this land like I was able to do in the classroom. Probably a good thing. Doesn't make it any easier, though.