“Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail”
C-SPAN video program: Tucson Festival of Books, University of Arizona
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/PanelonH
By Kathryn Ferguson, Norma A. Price, and Ted Parks
“Peel back phrases like illegal alien and undocumented worker and you’ll find the voices heard in this book, poor people coming north to survive. And the local people who try to help them. Homeland Security has a nice ring to it, but the migrants hunted in this book have no homeland and no security. Learn the tragedy that is the border and listen to the tales of our fellow human beings as they are hunted down on American ground.
–Charles Bowden, author of Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder and Family
“This is an extraordinary book about the courageous journeys of peoples crossing the U.S.–Mexico border —and about U.S. citizens who are erasing those borders with acts of mercy and defiance . . . a page turner.”
–Demetria Martinez, author of Mother Tongue
Look beyond the politics to the people.
Over the past ten years, more than 5,000 people have died while crossing the Arizona desert to find jobs, join families, or start new lives. Other migrants tell of the corpses they pass—bodies that are never recovered or counted.
Crossing With the Virgin collects stories heard from migrants about these treacherous journies—firsthand accounts told to volunteers for the Samaritans, a humanitarian group that seeks to prevent such unnecessary deaths by providing these travelers with medical aid, water, and food. Other books have dealt with border crossing; this is a view from the ground, the first to share stories of immigrant suffering at its worst told by migrants encountered on desert trails.
The Samaritans write about their encounters to show what takes place on a daily basis along the border: confrontations with Border Patrol agents at checkpoints reminiscent of wartime; children who die in their parents’ desperate bid to reunite families; migrants terrorized by bandits; and hovering ghost-like above nearly every crossing, the ever-present threat of death.
These thirty-nine stories are about the migrants, but they also tell how each individual author became involved with this work. As such, they offer not only a window into the migrants’ plight but also a look at the challenges faced by volunteers in tragic situations—and at their own humanizing process.
Crossing With the Virgin raises important questions about underlying assumptions and basic operations of border enforcement, helping readers see past political positions to view migrants as human beings. It will touch your heart as surely as it reassures you that there are people who still care about their fellow man.
- University of Arizona Press synopsis
Huffington Post
November 6, 2010
Anis Shivani: The 17 Best Social and Political Awareness Books of 2010
Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail
The meaning and emphasis of the border keep changing in response to economic and political needs. The foreword to this book tells us that “the U.S. Border Patrol was not established until 1924. Its primary mission during Prohibition was to keep contraband whiskey from crossing. Then, in the depths of the Great Depression, the border enforcement became serious. Anyone of Mexican descent (whether or not a U.S. citizen) was rounded up and deported at gunpoint.” The big change came in 1994 when the plan was to “seal off those cities [urban areas where migrants crossed] with steel fences, technology, and a dramatic increase in personnel. The plan anticipated that when the urban areas were secured, migrant workers would try to cross the border in isolated, hazardous, and wilderness areas.” Operation Gatekeeper, as it was known, did indeed turn the Sonoran Desert into a zone of death. It’s not coincidental, as the foreword notes, that the barrier went up in 1994, precisely when NAFTA was implemented, requiring “Mexico…to end all agricultural subsidies for corn, rice, and beans,” even as the U.S. maintained its own subsidies on agriculture and exports. The result was a disaster for Mexican farmers. This book collects the stories of migrants told firsthand to volunteers for the Samaritans, a humanitarian group seeking to avoid unnecessary deaths by providing travelers with medical assistance and food. Ferguson, Price, and Parks share 39 stories of crossings, such as this one: “After twenty minutes, Sal couldn’t keep up. The pain was searing. He couldn’t take one more step. His collarbone was broken. He couldn’t move an inch to the right or left without immense pain. Even a single step was debilitating. He lay under a tree in the dirt. He was finished.”