"When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you, tells you of its unreality and the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God: for now I know that the Creation which first seems to reveal Him, in concepts, then seems to hide Him, by the same concepts, finally IS REVEALED IN HIM (Author's emphasis), in the Holy Spirit: and we who are in God find ourselves united, in Him, with all that springs from Him. This is prayer, and this is glory!"

Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas, p. 343.

Some commentators on the last post wondered what and why people would leave their country and come here.

I am going to post the migrant's story to share the difficulties these people are willing to endure to escape their poverty:

The Migrant’s Story

Even before arriving at the Guatemalan border town of Tecun Uman on their way to Tapachula, Central American migrants are oftentimes victims of extortion. The road from El Salvador already seems long, and you’ve really just started. You left your family, your property your coffee farm. You’re in debt up to your eyeballs. You know you shouldn’t go out on the streets after six. It’s too dangerous. This city is a free-for-all of drug-runners and black-market arms dealers. Territory of human smugglers. City of hortelanos, tricicleteros, loan sharks, and restaurant owners who live off people like you, people just passing through.

It was already risky getting this far. It’s not like it used to be. The U.S. Border Patrol trains the Guatamalan special army forces called kaibiles. It provides them with technology. Now you don’t have to wait to get to the Unitedf States to suffer. The hard line begins in your own country. Then it gets harder in Mexico. Mexico has become Washington’s southern gatekeeper, guarding the backyard entrance. The government’s Southern Plan sealed the border. Santiago Creel, Mexico’s Minister of the Interior said as much: “The Mexican government is prepared to cut off the growing flow of foreigners that use the country as a transit point in their efforts to reach the United States.”

The house where you wait to cross is not big enough for everyone who’s waiting. You’re piled on top of each other. In the night they lock you up with chains and armed guards. They tell you that you’ll be part of a crew going to work in the fields of the Soconusco using false papers. You should carry a machete and a gunny sack. You won’t cross the Sucihiate River in a tire boat, or swim like others do. But you have to learn to talk like a Mexican, know about that country even if you’re just passing through. They sold you a booklet for ten bucks. There you read about Mexico’s “Child Heroes,” what the president’s wife’s name is, the colors of the flag. Others even obtain a voter card to given them a new identity.

You wish you could travel in a banana trailer. It has air conditioning so you wouldn’t be asphyxiated. But you don’t have enough money. Not even for a chicken truck. You have to go by train. You’re young and strong. You can stand the days. You won’t go by boat. You know what happens to those who take a shark boat to Salina Cruz and then a smaller boat to Acapulco . How they suffer on the rogue seas. What happened on August 16th when two boats sank, one with 20 people on board, the other with 30. Not one person made it to shore. No, this business of “kill or be killed” isn’t for you.

You don’t know the numbers but it’s a lot. Travelers like you who die at sea, in the rivers, on the bridges, on the train tracks, in the trailers. The Center for Central American Resources in El Salvador says that between 1997 and 2000 almost 25,000 Central Americans disappeared seeking the American dream. Ten thousand were Salvadoran. Many of the families still don’t know what has happened and may never know.

You’re on the Mexican side. You wait for the train, the beast, as it’s called here. The train stations stink. You wait hours. There are others like you. Biding their time in graveyards, vacant lots, underneath bridges. As you go on your way, the vigilance will get worse. Soldiers guard the rails. Your itinerary is not made up by a travel agency. The routes, the operatives of the Migra, your own fatigue, and pure luck will determine your course.

The beast arrives. When the wheels of the convoy begin to move you run as fast as you can, grab hold and hang on. If you get run over, it’s the end. How many like you have lost arms and legs? Every month seven or eight train amputees arrive at the regional hospital in Tapachula.

Bad luck. This train doesn’t carry grain or sand. But at least it’s not raining. Better not to go inside the wagons--if they close you can get asphyxiated. Better to hang on like a monkey, taking care to duck the high tension wires. In the tunnels you move onto the side and tie your arms on with wire. You cannot sleep. If you doze off you fall. You protect yourself from the cold with a windbreaker. You wrap up your hands. In tunnels and on cold days the steel of the train freezes.

This time there aren’t any gangs. Often they jump on to steal. To them, 50 pesos can cost your life. The Maras. They chase you, catch you, and beat you up. Hit you in the face and body. Throw you off the train. Abuse the women.

When the immigration agents get on you run to the back and jump. It doesn’t matter if the train is moving. They can’t catch you. You wait until another train comes by, start to run, then get off in Huamantla. It’s near Apizaco, at the end of the longest tunnel, there’s a checkpoint. When you see a red antenna that announces the arrival in Lechería and you do it again. That’s where most of the cargo trains heading north end up. It’s the halfway border, and they’ll get you for sure there. If it’s not the thieves, it's the police. So you go around the station and wait for the next train. From there the freight trains head out for the north.

You already have a different gaze. Same with everyone else traveling with you. You’ve become tougher--from the hardships, the fear, the waiting, and the horrors. You smell different. Not just for the sweat and dirt. Little by little, the smell of death gets under your skin. That’s what the refuges that help migrants along the route smell like.

You head out to Coahuila, another stop for the freight trains. You cross at Piedras Negras or Ciudad Acuña. You think the vigilance will be less there. But private guards watch the trains. They’re even more violent. In less than a year three migrants were assassinated in Coahuila. Elmer Alexander Batrahona was shot. Ismael Jesus Martinez was stoned to death in November 2002. All by the employees of a company called Canine Protection Systems, hired to guard the trains. Its president is Miguel Nassar Daw, son of one of the main men responsible for Mexico’s dirty war.

In Saltillo the police stop you. They hit you and take your money. It’s like Gabriela Rodriguez Pizarro, Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants for the UN says: "In Mexico there is a generalized climate of hostility and many take advantage of the migrant’s vulnerability.” It doesn’t matter that in El Salvador in September of 2000 Vicente Fox offered major efforts to respect the human rights of migrants. Pure rhetoric. Nothing personal.

You arrive in Laredo . Finally the border. Salvadorans like you work outside the municipal building. They wash the pick-ups of the law enforcement officers. From here you can’t get to the other side. Operation Hold the Line, or Rio Grande on the Mexican side, leaves no holes. So you go to Las Antenas, 14 kilometers away. On the edge of the river there are some small beaches. You pay the patero--that’s what they call polleros or smugglers here--to use the rafts and hide in the bushes. They, in turn have to pay a quota for “use rights” to the “Z,” the thugs of Osiel Cárdenas, head of the Gulf Cartel.

You shove off into the river and the current takes you. When you reach the other side you start to look for a safe house. There you wait until they put you in a truck with 60 other people. That’s how your compatriots died in Victoria, Texas. But it’s not your time yet. You’re off to Georgia. Your cousin is working the harvest there. It all starts again.

Source: http://americas.irc-online.org/am/959 (copied 2-27-08)

The site noted above also has a good explanation of how the coffee trade or lack of it has contributed to the problems of Central America.

Aid volunteer cited in littering

By Stephanie Innes
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 02.23.2008

An immigrant-aid volunteer is facing a $175 fine for leaving water jugs in the desert for illegal entrants.

Daniel Millis, 28, was cited for littering Friday by a Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge law enforcement officer.
He said he'd left 22 water jugs in the desert and told a refuge officer where they were located.

Millis said the officer was planning to go get them. The officer seized another eight jugs he had with him, Millis said.
Millis and three other volunteers with the Tucson-based No More Deaths organization had been placing 1-gallon plastic water jugs on a trail in the refuge, which is known to be heavily traveled by migrants who are illegally crossing into the U.S. from Mexico on foot.
Ironically, Millis said, he was also picking up trash while he worked.

No More Deaths regularly helps illegal entrants by offering them food, water and medical aid. They say their purpose is to eliminate the annual toll of people who die in Arizona's borderlands while trying to make the illegal trek into the U.S.

The federal citation from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service amounts to a $150 fine, and a $25 processing fee. If he doesn't pay, Millis said, he's facing six months of jail time or a $5,000 penalty.

Officials with the wildlife refuge, which is about 60 miles southwest of Tucson, say they have an enormous problem with trash, caused mainly by the illegal entrants who regularly travel through, and it's imperative they enforce littering laws.
"Littering is illegal," acting refuge manager Sally Gall said. "I understand the humanitarian group was trying to do what they think is good for immigrants. But at the same time we have a big trash problem, and the immigrants are contributing to it."
"At the worst of times, we have 5 to 10 pounds of trash per immigrant coming through, and at one point we had 2,000 people per day coming through," she said.

"We have football-field-size areas of trash that are just piled continually, and we are trying to clean them up."
Bill Walker, a lawyer for No More Deaths, said he hopes the whole incident was a misunderstanding. "Our people are a net asset, as opposed to a detraction, for the refuge," he said.

But Gall stressed that even though the volunteers were picking up trash, plastic jugs like the ones Millis was leaving are a particular problem for wildlife.

Cattle and other wildlife can ingest the bottles and die. Other wildlife have cut themselves on lids from tin cans and other pieces of trash left in the refuge, Gall said.

"We know it's been happening; it's just a matter of catching them doing it," she said. "They cannot leave things behind. And there are other sources of water through the valley. … It's kind of a controversial issue."

Gall said the Tucson group Humane Borders has permits to have two of its 65-gallon water tanks, which are for illegal entrants, on refuge property. A third water station is on a piece of county property in the refuge area, she said.
She added that the special-use permits for those stations were issued when the refuge was under different management.
Millis said the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge confiscated all the water Millis and other No More Deaths volunteers had been planning to leave in Brown Canyon, which is about 20 miles north of Sasabe.

He said one officer also photographed the volunteers and their vehicle.

"Two of the volunteers tried to appeal to his humanity. We were actually picking up water and trying to help people who are dying of thirst," Millis said.

Millis, a Spanish teacher now working with No More Deaths as a full-time volunteer, said he is upset that he could be punished in the course of offering help.

He said he was particularly motivated to offer aid in the desert Friday after finding the body of a 14-year-old girl this week.
Millis and another volunteer were working Wednesday with No More Deaths near Arivaca, which is near Buenos Aires, when they discovered the body of Joseline Hernandez Quintero.

The Pima County Medical Examiner's Office said Joseline, a native of El Salvador, died of exposure.

The local group Derechos Humanos said Joseline, who was barely 100 pounds, had been missing since Jan. 31 when she was left behind by a group of illegal entrants, including her 10-year-old brother, traveling across the desert.

They'd been traveling for three days, and Joseline reportedly couldn't keep up. She'd been hoping to reunite with relatives in the United States.

? Contact reporter Stephanie Innes at 573-4134 or at sinnes@azstarnet.com.

Joy is the overflow of the interior life.

Joy is not a possession, it is a release.

Joy is the natural release of a soul filled
with the Spirit of the Divine Lover.

(c) 2008 Ronald Friesen

"So to listen to God means, first of all, to recognize our helplessness, our stupidity, our blindness and our ignorance. How can we ever hear Him if we think of ourselves as experts in religion?"

Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas, p. 295