Hugs Not Walls
At Hugs Not Walls in May 2018, children, too young to understand the gravity of the situation, ceaselessly wept as they walked out of the dried river basin of the Rio Grande. They walked hand-in-hand or were carried by equally teary-eyed adults grappling with frustrations of being separated by a broken system and immense love for the family living on the other side—the Mexican side. For years, El Paso has been a testing ground for family separation. However, with the hot desert sun beaming down, families who have been separated by the border and would have no other way of reuniting with their loved ones are given a mere three minutes to hug, rejoice, and cry. Their participation, which would not be possible without organization from the Border Network for Human Rights in cooperation with Border Patrol, exclaims that those seemingly random lines we call borders can be transformed, even for a few moments, to a site for reclamation of space, for redefinition of what it means to be a family, and for the emanation of hope.
Nayeli Saenz
Nayeli Saenz grew up undocumented, married a US citizen, and had three children. As her marriage deteriorated, it grew increasingly abusive. Nayeli’s ex-husband would regularly threaten to drop her off in Mexico where she would never be able to see their children again. Trapped and fearing for her life, she called the police, risking deportation. Now, Nayeli dedicates her time as a human rights educator so others never feel captive as she once did.
Maybe I can’t leave the country, but I can mobilize within the country. It is not just about crossing the border or DACA recipients, but it is about the 11 million in this country trapped. There is a very popular song titled, “I Live in a Golden Cage”/“La Juala De Oro.” And this is exactly what it is for a lot of people.
Antonia ‘Tonita’ Morlaes
Barrio Duranguito is home to Toñita Morales, a fronteriza who has lived in Duranguito since 1965 and who takes fierce pride in making Duranguito a place where people are proud to live. When she first moved to Duranguito, she remembers seeing crime and dirt on most corners. At the same time, she saw the children who called it home, and thought that was no way for them to grow up. So, she organized and got to work restoring it, cleaning it up, and restoring its identity. She put years and love into the life of the neighborhood; she is its beating heart.
And now that Duranguito is under threat, Toñita fights for it once again. In fact, she is the only remaining resident of Duranguito. Many have left, making deals with developers, and now she is the only remaining resident. Watching the neighborhood you love being slowly transformed into a place you cannot recognize, undergoing the slow burn of a gentrification in process, is nothing but painful. Why does Tonita stay? “She doesn’t to it for herself, because she knows her life is about to end, so she’s not fighting for herself.
She’s fighting for the children that are here and the children who are to come. . . Where are they gonna go if they don’t have neighborhoods that they can afford?” Estoy aqui, here I am, she says. “She believes that the children, the children who are alive now and those who will be born in the future, have a right to know their history and to know where their city began.” Toñita vows to spend the last of her days fighting for her barrio, her people, her frontera: her home.
