Patrolling the Border for Migrants From Mexico, With a Humanitarian Goal
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: July 20, 2005
SUNLAND PARK, N.M., July 16 - The small airport in this town on the edge of El Paso does more than straddle two countries. As seen by Armando Alarcon, an amateur pilot engrossed in an effort to prevent migrants from dying of thirst on their odyssey across the Chihuahuan Desert, it straddles two worlds.
One world belongs to the Learjets and Citations owned by the Mexican industrial magnates of Ciudad Juárez who keep their planes discreetly and safely tucked away in hangars across the border. Mr. Alarcon's 30-year-old Cessna with its cramped cabin captures another reality on its weekly flights above creosote bushes, extinct volcanoes, a humble fence marking the line in the dirt between Mexico and United States, and, sometimes in surreal slow-motion, migrants on foot reeling from heat exhaustion.
As armed militia-style organizations like the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps call attention to the disarray along the border, Mr. Alarcon has created a group in El Paso called Paisanos al Rescate, or Countrymen to the Rescue, that tries to limit deaths among those who risk everything for a chance at a better life in the United States. About a dozen volunteers in small planes drop bottles of water by parachute to migrants on the desert floor.
"The Paisanos bring a little bit of dignity and hope to a trip that nobody wants to make," said Eduardo Samano, 36, a laborer from the state of Morelos who was gathered with others in a trash-strewn plaza in Palomas, a Mexican town about 50 miles from Sunland Park where migrants often prepare for their journeys. Mr. Samano, who said he hoped to find work cleaning the manure in cattle pens in the Texas Panhandle, had heard of Paisanos al Rescate from reports on Mexican television....
***
The plastic water containers that Mr. Samano and others carry when they depart Palomas for their trek across the desert are easily depleted before they reach a destination, often Deming, N.M., about 30 miles away. At least 262 migrants who were crossing the border with Mexico have been found dead since October, a sharp increase from 178 in the comparable period last year, said Salvador Zamora, a spokesman for the United States Border Patrol in Washington. With summer temperatures above 100 degrees, most of the deaths are a result of dehydration and heat stroke....
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/20/national/20border.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
