Thursday, June 10, 2010

Sin Voz

After graduation, I travelled to San Diego with a group of students as part of the Saint Joseph’s University Summer Immersion Program. We had planned all year on a border trip to Mexico; however a travel warning and poor communication led to the trip being changed to San Diego. We spent nine jam-packed days learning about U.S.-Mexico migration (economic, social, political components), working with immigrant and refugee populations, and attending talks and tours of institutions that work closely with migrant communities. I had a few moments of revelation on the trip…

One day I lost my voice. It wasn’t much of a problem. I could make enough noise to be audible, but only barely so. The first moment that I found this lack of voice to be problematic was when I tried to sing. Matt and Jeff, two of my friends on the trip, were playing guitar and I tried to chime in on a line. I took a breath and felt the musical notes in my throat but when I opened my mouth nothing came out. When something finally did come out, it was a light faint croak. I realized that I really was “sin voz.” It was a humbling, and helpless, feeling, even though it was something as minor as recreational singing. I guess I took for granted the power of participating in music, and thus expressing complex feelings and states of being, and the role it has in my life. And I’m not even a musician.

A few days earlier, a 12-passenger white van clunked along to a stop on a dirt road after passing a large building and proceeding through the gates of a double-fortified, silver chain link fence with barbed wire looped around the top.





The people who were inside the van—including me—filed out, hopping from the platform of the vehicle and stretching in the dusty brown road. Like clockwork, we reached into our bags, pulled out our cameras and turned them on. We clicked away as we approached a second fence, an old, rusted 10-foot corrugated metal structure adorned with graffiti and raised one foot off of the ground. Beyond the fence was an expansive vista of rolling hills cluttered with ramshackle dwellings and lopsided roads.



On that side, dogs barked, roosters crowed, and children yelled. Visible within the mix of one-story shacks were a few individuals, at first lost among the sprawl of the crowded community. They suddenly became evident as our eyes adjusted to the scene, and we detected their movements, which were far away. A family sat outside their home; the little girl’s head poked out of the door to her home as she spotted us up on the hill, just beyond the rusty red-brown wall, with our clean white skin and shiny gray handheld devices suspended in front of our eyes. A couple of blocks to the right, a group of men lounged in the shadow of a tree ten feet from the fence, eating lunch and also watching us. One of them yelled “ayyyy” to us. A dog ran up and down the length of the fence. A street also ran parallel to the fence a half mile from where we stood. A couple cars zoomed back and forth. The only visible sign was a storefront reading “Lupita Miscelanea.”

This is Tijuana.



The group of 12 and myself, on a tour with the U.S. Border Patrol, were standing in front of the official United States-Mexico border, the corrugated metal fence which was built years ago to prevent vehicles from crossing the border illegally. The massive silver fence behind us was begun in 2006 and completed this past year, constructed by the U.S. government to stop the flow of human bodies. The land between the two fences, since completion of the second wall, has been dubbed “No Man’s Land,” a 20 foot stretch of territory illegal for any human—Mexican or U.S.—other than Border Patrol agents, to stand on. The construction of the large silver fence was part of the 2006 Secure Fence Act, an initiative intended by the U.S. government to curtail illegal immigration through formidable physical obstacles in high traffic border areas in California and Texas. The result has been an increase in attempted traverses across the deadly Arizona desert; since the late 1990s, over 5000 Mexican migrants who attempted to pass the desert have died in the process.



Days later, when I lost my voice, I thought back to the morning spent in No Man’s Land. These two days were very closely interwoven in my San Diego experience. Whereas I, through my lack of ability to express myself through song, lacked voice literally, I met and saw several individuals in San Diego who lack voice figuratively in their inability to participate in society, large-scale decision-making, and a truly free life.

Take Jose, for example. A migrant minor from El Salvador, he spent months coming from his home country to Mexico, and finally crossing into California. A quiet young man with beautiful brown eyes that shroud a complex and conflicted interior, Jose had been caught by the police and sent to the shelter where I met him, while he waited to be sent to Maryland to live with his brothers. I spoke with him in between resident-volunteer soccer games when I saw him leaning on the fence gazing out on the overlook visible from the backyard of the shelter. I have no idea what he was thinking, but I knew from his eyes and the way he spoke, that he had faced more physical and ideological adversity than I could even begin to imagine.

Now in the United States safely, what will become of him when he turns 18? I will probably not ever find out. There is a possibility he will be deported. Or maybe he will just have to live under the radar, opting out of active participation because of the risk of deportation. Or maybe he will enroll in school, the DREAM Act will be passed, and he will be legalized. Like I said, I will probably never know, but talking to him for the few minutes that I did, and more importantly, looking into his eyes in the way I did, I will never be able to forget Jose and his story. And I will never be able to look at the politics of immigration in the same way.

Sin voz. Voiceless. Jose is a representation of a large group who is without voice in our country. Contributing members of our society, who are without the right to speak up or participate. Losing my voice for a day made me feel the pains of not being able to participate. And it made me feel called even more towards being a voice for the voiceless, at the risk of sounding cliché. But it is not cliché, because I experienced it and I now understand the profoundness and necessity of using my own privilege and education to fight for the rights of a group who has the same capabilities as I have, yet who are unable to capitalize on them because of their position in a marginalized and targeted community. My hope is that I continue to use my privilege to give voice to those without means to be heard.