“Where are your sisters?” she
asked.
I could not look at her.” Probably
dead.” (Alcala, 44)
The story of Concha in Kathleen Alcalás’
novel, The Flower in the Skull,
puts a narrative to the compiled stories of the many borderland deaths and
survivors. To have understood that shark tooth walked through the border, the
very air of death clung to her story. The “Bodies on the Border” put the
journalistic eye on the struggles for many migrants have to pass and for the
many that weren't able to make it. Seeing that over 2,200 deaths have occurred
within the last 2 decades, and over 800 bodies were still left unidentified was
an extremely overwhelming reality. Putting into perspective I thought back to
my own graduating high school class of 800 seniors, the numbers are the same
and to think that all the stories, personalities, hardships, and aspirations
that so many of my peers carried would be one that’s erased and lost in the
deserts along the border.
Unfortunately the deaths are seen
as justice for crimes committed because of the one dimensional view that so
many Americans share. The logic is blatantly ignorant and in scrolling down the
article through the comments the hatred opens a dark hole in the pit of my
stomach. Similar to the Opata, living conditions affected their way of life
which left them to migrate it wasn't an intent to purposely break the law. Like
the Opata, living conditions for so many peoples south of the border became
unbearable where they risked their life to look for opportunity. The
one-dimensional view of the deaths is an inhumane way of looking at the issue
and it’s something that congress and politicians continue to reproduce in their
practices. Arizona, my second home, carries the blood marks of so many migrants
that like Concha were forced to leave their homes.
below: The Divided Nogales Border Town
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